February 13, 2018

Trump’s approval rating in NM continues to fall

Gage Skidmore

President of the United States Donald Trump speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. cc

New Mexico voters have soured on President Donald Trump, bringing his already-low statewide approval rating down below 40 percent in January.

That’s according to numbers from pollster Morning Consult.

Pollsters found that in January 2017, when he was inaugurated, 52 percent of New Mexico voters approved of Trump’s job performance. But just one year into his four-year term, that number plummeted to 39 percent. His disapproval rating in the state also increased, from 35 percent in 2017 to 58 percent in 2018.

Nationwide, however, his approval rating rose. Trump’s approval rating nationwide is 44 percent, driven by Republicans increasingly approving of his job performance.

And his approval rating rose in 20 states since the release of previous numbers in October.

Still, even those numbers are lower than normal for presidents and experts warned Morning Consult that Trump could end up being a liability for Republicans up for election in 2018.

In New Mexico, statewide positions, including one U.S. Senator position, are up for election this year, as are all districts in the state House and U.S. House.

His highest approval rating is in Alabama, where Republicans lost a U.S. Senate special election because of allegations of sexual misconduct by the party’s candidate, at 63 percent. Wyoming followed up at 60 percent, then West Virginia at 59 percent.

On the other end of the scale, his approval rating sits at just 16 percent in Washington D.C. and 30 percent in Hawaii and Vermont.

Morning Consult polled 802,543 registered U.S. voters between Jan. 20, 2017 and Jan. 29, 2018. The margin of error on New Mexico’s results are +/- 4 percentage points.

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