Trump loses support among core voters as the shutdown drags on: Polls

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President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018.

President Donald Trump is hemorrhaging support amid a political standoff over his proposed border wall that has resulted in the longest government shutdown on record, recent polls show.

As the shutdown of about a quarter of the federal government lumbers toward its fifth week, the president even appears to be losing favor with his core constituents, whose support for Trump until this point has been rock-solid since the 2016 campaign.

An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published Thursday shows that Trump’s approval rating has slipped 3 percent from last month to 39 percent, while his disapproval has climbed 4 percentage points to 53 percent.

And unlike in past political fights, the new polls indicate that some of the groups thought to comprise key parts of Trump’s base are not immune from the broader downward trend.

White evangelicals’ support for Trump, for instance, plunged a net 13 percentage points, sinking to 66-23 percent approval from 73-17 percent in the December poll. Trump also lost support from non-college-educated white men, with his approval falling to 50 percent from 56 percent and his disapproval ticking up one percentage point to 35 percent.

Cracks even appeared in Trump’s seemingly impenetrable facade of overall Republican support: 83 percent of Republican respondents said they support the president in the most recent poll — down 7 percentage points from the early December poll — while his disapproval in the party rose 3 percentage points.

Those results match other recent polling on the president’s approval. A CNN/SSRS poll published Sunday showed Trump’s approval among white men without college degrees at 45 percent, which CNN says is the lowest-ever level of support for him from that group in its surveys. Political data site FiveThirtyEight’s aggregated presidential popularity tracker shows Trump’s approval gap, which has been underwater for most of his presidency, widening markedly since mid-December.

Even Rasumussen Reports’ measure of Trump’s overall approval, a number that has generally skewed more favorably toward the president, has slid 7 percentage points to 43 percent from a Dec. 5 high.