Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Trump keeps Fla. support despite shutdown, wall fight
Florida voters’ views of President Donald Trump’s performance remained virtually unchanged in January, even as his support nationally dropped, a new poll shows.
Polling from Morning Consult, released Thursday, shows 46 percent of Florida’s voters approved of Trump’s performance in January with 50 percent disapproving.
That’s a net negative of 4 percentage points among Florida voters. In December, 49 percent of Florida voters disapproved of Trump’s performance, and his net negative in the state was 3 percentage points.
Nationally, Morning Consult’s polling tells a different story. His performance had 40 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval in January, a net negative of 15 percentage points — a significant decline in his standing from a month earlier.
In December, 44 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s performance and 52 percent disapproved, a net negative of 8 percentage points.
From late December through January, much of the nation was watching — or feeling the consequences of — the partial government shutdown. An enormous amount of news coverage focused on Trump shutting government agencies over his dispute with Congress over funding for his proposed wall on the southern U.S. border.
Although Florida are divided roughly evenly over the president’s performance, there’s much more intensity among opponents than supporters.
The poll showed 25 percent of Florida voters strongly approve of Trump’s performance, with another 21 percent saying they somewhat approve.
It also reported that 40 percent of Florida voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance, with another 10 percent somewhat disapproving.
Trump’s standing has declined significantly in Florida since he
took office in January 2017. His approval rating among the state’s voters was 56 percent, with 34 percent disapproving, a net positive of 22 percentage points.
In January 2017, Florida voters provided the 12th highest approval rating for Trump among all the states. In January 2019, Florida was 22nd in presidential approval.
The figures come from the latest edition of Morning Consult’s “Tracking Trump” polling report, which provides survey data from every state every month.
Morning Consult provides research, news and brand-tracking technology for companies and conducts surveys for many major media organizations.
Its reports provide numbers — but not the reasons behind the numbers — so it’s not possible to know if the partial government shutdown or other factors led to voters’ views of Trump.
The January numbers were based on a total of 156,104 interviews of registered voters in each state and Washington, D.C., The margin of error in Florida was plus or minus 1 percentage point, which means the approval and disapproval numbers could be slightly higher or slightly lower.