And the results start to appear. The Insider Advantage pollsters headline:
Insider Advantage’s Matt Towery writes:
“A flash InsiderAdvantage national survey of 800 registered voters shows Donald Trump’s initial approval rating at fifty-six percent, higher than our last survey of the approval of his transition. The poll has a 3.46% margin of error.
The Results:
What is your opinion of the job performance of Donald Trump as he starts his new term as President of the United States?
Approve: 56%
Disapprove: 39%
No opinion/Undecided: 5%
InsiderAdvantage pollster Matt Towery: This survey marks an amazing first job performance approval for Donald Trump. Obviously his speech today, regardless of coverage, was well accepted. Also of note, Trump’s decision to spare TikTok caused his support among younger voters to soar to that same fifty-six percent approval number. It is rare to ever see a Republican president do so well with the youngest segment of voters.”
Why is this important?
The hard, historical fact is that the time meter starts running on a president from the moment he takes office. His ability to get things done bears a direct relationship to his popularity.
Indeed, Members of Congress -who themselves have to keep an eye on their own popularity and its relationship to getting things done – are watching a new president and just how popular he is.
History records that President Ronald Reagan had had an operation to remove a cancerous polyp from his colon. Later, at a moment when he was undergoing a rash of unpopularity in his polls, he joked that maybe he should have an operation to remove a few more inches from his colon and the resulting wave of sympathy for him would drive his polls back up.
Which is a reminder that a poll like this one from Insider Advantage, showing Trump’s high popularity, reveals the starting point of just where Trump stands with the American people as he starts the journey of his new time.
Time – and events – move on, even if not especially for presidents. Insider Advantage will be there to record Trump’s standing in the polls as that time moves on.
Stay tuned.