S1 EP 27: President Trump's First 100 Days and France's Presidential Election

In this episode, we discuss the recent round of polls showing voter opinion of President Trump’s first 100 days. How important are these polls, how relevant are they to the 2018 midterm elections, and what are some important indicators? We then briefly discuss France’s Presidential election, the polling, and what it suggests for the future of European politics. 

Segment 1: President Trump’s First 100 Days

The last week has brought us two major polls, one from NBC News/Wall Street Journal and another from The Washington Post/ABC News, revealing public opinion of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. The two polls find similar measurements of Trump’s job approval, at 40% and 42%, respectively, and the NBC News Wall Street Journal survey found that 45% of respondents believe that the President is off to a “poor start.” Much of analysis in the media has focused on historical comparisons. NBC notes that at this same point, President Obama’s approval rating was 61%, George W. Bush’s was 56% and President Clinton’s was at 52%. Dan Balz and Scott Clement at The Washington Post report that President Trump’s job approval is the lowest recorded at this stage dating back to Eisenhower. Still, both surveys do find some positive data points for the President. The Washington Post/ABC News survey finds that only 2% of his voters’ regret voting for him, and his approval rating among them stands at 94%. Also, his efforts to pressure U.S. companies to keep jobs here enjoy broad support at 73%. And when respondents were asked whether President Trump is in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today, or is he out of touch, 38% said that he is in touch, which is a higher percentage than both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party generally. In the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey, 50% of respondents say they approve of the President’s handling of Syria. The first 100 days of Trump’s presidency also show a country that is incredibly polarized. According to the Huffington Post Pollster’s aggregate, 85% of Republicans approve of the job the President is doing compared to only 12% of Democrats and 40% of Independents. 43% approve of the President’s handling of the economy, while only 35% approve of his handling of health care.

Segment 2: French Presidential Election

The results of France’s first round of presidential elections are in, and Emmanuel Macron will face off against the National Front’s Marine Le Pen in a May 7th election. It was a good result for most pollsters, who correctly called the top four candidates and the order, and were remarkably close to the final percentage of the vote for each candidate. As Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight notes, polls in France have historically been fairly accurate, certainly more so than polls in the United Kingdom have been. At this point, Macron has an overwhelming, 26-point lead in a head-to-head matchup with Le Pen. Still, news coverage leading up to the May 7th election will almost certainly seek to draw comparisons to last year’s U.S. presidential election. That may be a mistake. As Nate Silver points out here, Le Pen finds herself in a much deeper hole than Trump was ever in. There’s not a lot of precedent for a polling error large enough to cover such a large, 26-point deficit. This has led to some prominent models giving Le Pen very little chance to win. Others, however, are far more cautious. For example, political scientist Ian Bremmer, who runs The Eurasia Group, gives Le Pen a 40% chance. At least partly underlying that kind of caution is surely a comparison to, again, last year’s U.S. Presidential election. However, the fact that France has no equivalent of our Electoral College is important to remember. Bremmer also suggested before the first round of voting what many suggest was a dynamic at play in the U.S. last year: that poll respondents are reluctant to voice support for Le Pen, just as they supposedly were for Donald Trump. While we’re skeptical that this phenomenon actually did play out last year, there is even more reason to be skeptical in a European election. This is because, as, again, Nate Silver points out, we have quite a bit of data on whether European right-wing parties actually outperform their polls, and the fact is that they generally don’t.