As Trump sticks with his wall, ratings stay stuck in place
By insisting on a border wall, President Donald Trump is emphasizing an issue that may be popular with his base but seems unlikely to attract new supporters.
There has been little polling since the government shutdown began last month, but what there is indicates that voters oppose a border wall, blame the president for the shutdown, believe the shutdown will have adverse consequences and don’t believe the government should be shut down over the wall.
The wall has consistently been unpopular, with voters opposed by around a 20-point margin over months of national surveys.
Support for the wall is closely tied to support for the president, though. Overall, polls show it consistently tracks just a few points beneath the president’s approval rating, and support for the wall is almost exclusively confined to voters who already support the president.
In New York Times Upshot/Siena College polls of eight battleground congressional districts this past fall, 89 percent of voters’ views on the president and the wall were aligned, more than any other issues except the tax bill and the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination.
Midterm exit poll data, election results, voter file data and preelection polls indicate that the president’s approval rating is below 50 percent in states worth at least 317 electoral votes (270 are needed to win).
Data from the Fox News Voter Analysis of the midterms indicated that a majority of voters opposed the wall in states worth nearly 400 electoral votes, including in several states where the president’s approval rating was above water in the poll, like Ohio and Florida. Even so, the wall still isn’t popular in Michigan or Pennsylvania, important battleground states. And voters in Ohio, a politically similar state, opposed the wall.