Though 61
percent voted for him in the state, a bare majority approve now
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Tennessee’s 11 Electoral College votes were an easy
win for President Donald Trump in the November 2016 presidential election, with
61 percent of the popular vote in the state. Now though, only a narrow majority
of the state’s voters say they approve of the job he has done as president
since taking office in January, according to the latest statewide poll from
Middle Tennessee State University.
Trump’s
Tennessee “hangover” similar to Obama’s Tennessee “honeymoon”
The latest MTSU Poll of 600 registered
voters was conducted Feb. 12-16 with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
Asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of
the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?” the poll found that:
·
51
percent approve
·
32
percent disapprove
·
17
percent don’t know or don’t answer
For comparison, when the spring 2009 MTSU
Poll was conducted shortly after Barack Obama took office, it asked whether respondents
approved of the job he was doing as president and found that:
·
53
percent approved
·
27
percent disapproved
·
20
percent didn’t know or didn’t answer
Those were Obama’s best job approval
ratings in Tennessee during his presidency. In most of the polls that followed,
around 35 percent of Tennesseans said they approved of the job Obama was doing.
Similarly, when asked to look back on Obama’s presidency as a whole in the
latest MTSU Poll, only 39 percent said they approve, and 56 percent said they
disapprove.
Obama lost the state of Tennessee with only
42 percent of the vote in 2008. Trump won the state with 61 percent of the vote
in 2016.
“New presidents often enjoy a so-called honeymoon
shortly after winning their first election, when unifying inaugural addresses and
a public that hopes for the best contribute to even greater support and job
approval than their winning vote totals,” said Jason Reineke, Ph.D., associate
director of the poll. “But that doesn’t appear to be the case for Trump.”
“The numbers are very similar, but they
represent more of a hangover for Trump, whose job approval at the outset of his
presidency is actually worse than his winning vote total in the state,” Reineke
said.
Accounting
for a surprising win
The fall 2016 MTSU Poll, conducted
between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2 of that year, found that 48 percent of all
Tennessee voters and 54 percent of decided voters in the state chose Trump at
that time. Trump went on to win the election with 61 percent of the vote in
Tennessee.
The accuracy of polling about Trump has
been in question since his surprise, national Electoral College win. To address
this and determine whether Trump supporters were fairly represented in the
sample, the spring 2017 MTSU poll asked respondents whom they had voted for in
the 2016 presidential election.
Of poll respondents who answered the
question and said that they had voted in the presidential race, 60 percent
reported voting for Trump, just one percentage point different from the
proportion of voters who chose him in the state on Election Day.
Poll respondents who said they had voted
in the presidential election were also asked when they had decided on the
candidate they chose. According to the results:
·
52
percent decided before the party conventions
·
31
percent decided between the beginning of the conventions and the end of the
debates
·
14
percent decided after the debates
·
3
percent didn’t know or didn’t answer
Of those who said they made up their
minds after the debates, 58 percent reported voting for Trump, while only 18
percent said they voted for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Although Trump had Tennessee wrapped up
for some time, it appears that his ability to maintain his gains late in the
race helped to increase his margin of victory in the state,” said Reineke.
For more about the MTSU Poll and to see previous poll
results, go to mtsupoll.org.
Methodology
Between Feb. 12-16, 2017, Issues & Answers Network Inc. completed 600
telephone surveys for the poll among a random sample of registered Tennessee
voters aged 18 and over. Data were collected using a Tennessee statewide voter
registration sample with 60 percent landlines and 40 percent cell phones. The
average interview length was 13 minutes.
Quotas by gender and Grand Region were implemented. Data were weighted
based on respondent age to ensure the data are representative of Tennessee
registered voters. Landline numbers represent 58 percent of the completed
interviews and 42 percent are from cell phones.
The survey’s margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points, meaning one can
be 95 percent confident that the population percentage being estimated lies
within four percentage points, in either direction, of the result the sample
produced.
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