A veteran pollster warned that President Donald Trump’s approval rating has begun tracing a familiar downward path, one that once cost Republicans dearly.
Nate Silver, author of the Silver Bulletin newsletter and co-host of the Still Counting podcast, laid out the comparison in an episode of The Focus Group podcast released Saturday, telling host Sarah Longwell that Trump’s second-term approval ratings have closely mirrored those of former President George W. Bush, whose slide came before Republicans lost the White House in 2008.
“Yeah, it’s eerily similar,” Silver said of a graphic he had posted comparing the two presidents. “It almost seems like some biological process, right?”
Silver chalked it up to voter fatigue, likening a long-serving president to house guests who overstay their welcome. “People stop giving incumbents the benefit of the doubt after this much time in office,” he explained, adding that “it feels like Trump has been president for three terms.”
He also noted that Republicans have fared poorly in elections held while Trump was in office, arguing that “voters like the idea of Trump more than the reality of Trump.”
The conversation followed Tuesday’s midterm elections, which Longwell, the publisher of The Bulwark, said put Democrats on track for more than 250 House seats and at least 54 Senate seats. Silver called it a “9.6 out of 10 night for Democrats.”
Longwell, a former Republican strategist, recalled that Bush left office with an approval rating of around 32%, a low she said cleared the way for “a total remaking” of the GOP. She dubbed the threshold “the Bush line.”
Silver said he found it “very hard to see” Trump’s numbers turning around, citing the “steady” pace of the decline and the president’s age. Lower gas prices might give Trump a modest lift, he allowed, but even a rebound to 40% or 42% would be “not great for re-election anyway.” He added that only about half of the 37% who approve of Trump do so strongly.
That slide spells trouble for Vice President JD Vance, according to Silver, who noted that Republicans turned to the late Sen. John McCain, a onetime Bush critic, in 2008. Vance’s biggest liability, he said, “is that he is the vice president to the president with a 37% approval rating.”
Still, Silver stopped short of predicting a repeat of 2006 and 2008, when Republicans suffered back-to-back landslides. “I’m not sure that’s the default outcome,” he said. “It definitely isn’t the default.”
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