Amazing what a little #winning will do:
President-elect Donald Trump’s popularity has surged by 9 percent since he defeated Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election, a Politico poll released Monday shows.
The poll found that 40 percent of respondents had a very favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of the president-elect, while 12 percent have a somewhat unfavorable opinion and 34 percent have a very unfavorable opinion of him.
Trump’s favorability, according to the Politico/Morning Consult poll, has grown by 9 points, rising from 37 percent right before the election to 46 percent now.
The 70-year-old New York billionaire’s unfavorability has dropped 15 points from 61 percent to 46 percent.
“Trump’s favorability among voters has reached new highs since he became president-elect,” Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at polling company Morning Consult, said.
The incoming president always enjoys a honeymoon period — it’s a sign of goodwill from the American people to the new chief executive — and as always the question is: how fast will he squander it? From the wretched GHW Bush, who blew the end of the Cold War and gave us both Vladimir Putin and Bill Clinton, through his son, presidential approval ratings tend to sink slowly, and then rapidly; an exception has been Barack Obama, whose sunny demeanor and electoral novelty will end up swimmingly instead of under water.
There’s a lesson to be learned there, somewhere.
On the surface, the message from the University of Michigan’s final reading of consumer sentiment for November is that President-elect Donald Trump will fix what ails the nation — fast.
The consumer expectations index of the survey rose by 8.4 points from October to 85.2 — a one-month gain last exceeded in the December 2011 — a testament to households’ optimistic view on the outlook for the U.S. economy and their own pocketbooks.
And ‘optimistic’ might be an understatement. According to the latest report, in some cases, Americans are the most hopeful they have been in more than a decade. For the first time since 2006, 37 percent of households said they expect their personal finances to improve in 2017. Also hitting decade highs: real income expectations, as wage growth continues to gain strength in a broadening swath of the economy.
It’s not just on the personal finance front either. The index tracking households’ expectations for changes in business conditions over the next year rebounded strongly after tumbling in October, with the share calling for an improvement in this area registering its biggest one-month gain last exceeded in 2008.
However, perhaps the most surprising element of the report is the extent to which it belies what was an incredible polarizing election that saw people vote uniformly on tickets so much so that there were no purple states, in some respects.
Perhaps the increased optimism on the part of consumers doesn’t necessarily speak to their confidence that the new regime will introduce sweeping change that buoys both their personal finances and Corporate America’s business outlook, but rather, they’re just happy the election is over.
The surge in consumer expectations “was perhaps exaggerated” by, among other things, “a widespread sense of relief that the election had finally ended,” he writes.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member