It's been six months since President Donald Trump took office—and a new poll conducted by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News reveals what adults in U.S. counties that significantly contributed to Trump's election victory really think of his performance.
According to the poll, 50 percent of people in these counties approve of Trump's performance since becoming POTUS, and 46 percent of people disapprove of his job performance. Last month, the WSJ and NBC News released a national poll and found that Trump's approval rating was 40 percent and his dissaproval rating was 55 percent.
The most recent survey included 600 adults—including Democrats, Republicans and Independents—from 439 counties in 16 states: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. The WSJ and NBC News call the counties they selected to be polled "Trump Counties" for two reasons: Either because the counties previously went for Barack Obama and switched to Trump in 2016, or because they're counties where significantly more people voted for Trump in 2016 than Mitt Romney in 2012.
Even within the “Trump counties,” however, there’s a big difference in the approval ratings.
“Surge counties” are the counties where Trump’s win margin was much wider than Romney’s in 2012. There, 56 percent of the residents approve of how Trump is doing with his job in the White House. The “flip counties,” where Obama won in 2012 but Trump won in 2016, show an approval rating of 44 percent, twelve points lower than the surge counties. This seems to show that the tried and true #MAGA supporters are sticking by President Trump, despite his provocative tweets, accusations of Russian collusion during the 2016 election and other scandals and decisions that seem to make our nation even more polarized. But in the counties that previously went for Obama, voters might be getting sick of Trump's antics.