Monthly Harvard/Harris Poll Review

Each month, Presidential Pollster Mark Penn shares findings from the latest Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, which is released by the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and The Harris Poll. To sign up for regular updates and to learn more about poll results and coverage, visit https://harvardharrispoll.com and follow @Mark_Penn_Polls on Twitter.FULL TRANSCRIPTMARK PENN PODCASTHARVARD/HARRIS POLL MONTHLY REVIEWSEPTEMBER 9, 2019Welcome to this month's podcast of the Harvard/Harris Poll in which we conduct about 2500 interviews with registered voters at the end of August, on the dates of August 26th to 18th, 2019. And for this podcast let me say that joining us as places to find it are Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, SoundCloud, Buzzsprout, Castbox, RadioPublic, Podcast Addict and many more new platforms, we're growing. Make sure to follow this show for daily updates at @Mark_Penn_Polls. Importantly, take 30 seconds to sign up for the newsletter, go to, one word, HarvardHarrisPoll.com. Thank you very much, and now let's launch in to this month's data.We're going to cover approval and mood of the country, road to 2020, Trump and Twitter, China and trade, growing racial tensions, election fraud, gun control, Russia investigation, discussion of Greenland, and we're going to do a particular deep dive on immigration. Let's launch into the trends that we're seeing on the approval and mood of the country. In general, we haven't seen a lot of changes over time on the overall approvals of the key political figures in this country. President Trump remained this month at 45% job approval, where he's been for the last, really, three months within a point, coming down from a bump when we had 3.2% growth in the economy at 48. But again, within a tight and narrow range, 55% disapproving of his job.But, if you look at it by what he's doing on the economy, 55% approval, down slightly from highs. Stimulating jobs, 55%, a majority but down slightly. Fighting terrorism, stable, 55. Immigration actually up a little at 47. Foreign affairs, 43. Administering the government, 44. Very little change on the pattern. The most interesting thing of course is the credit he gets on economy and terrorism. What about whether the country itself is on the right track or the wrong track? Despite the economic progress and satisfaction that the voters appear to have, they continue to say that the country itself is going in the wrong direction. 54% wrong direction, 37% right direction, down slightly, and 9% don't know. Is the economy on the right track or wrong track? Well, all of the recession talk that really occurred in the last couple of months brought down some of the most positive sentiment on the economy we've seen. 46% in this poll said wrong track, 43% said right track, after many months of people saying that the economy was more on the right track than the wrong track, going back to December when it previously dipped because of recession talk. So every time there's significant talk about a recession, the public is very sensitive to it, they pick up those cues and signals, and down goes satisfaction with the economy.If you look at how strong do you think the economy was, back in April that was at a record high 74%. That's lost eight points now down to 66%, 34% say that it's weak. So still two thirds say that it's strong, but you see the trend as there's more recession talk. Will this month's job figures, will the fact that unemployment stayed at 3.7%, will the fact that the stock market seems to be coming back reverse that this month? Remains to be seen, it remains high, but is weakening.

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