| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. How about a check on President Donald Trump's popularity to begin the new year? After I last looked at the numbers, Trump's approval rating (as estimated by the FiveThirtyEight adjusted polling average) spiked up to the highest level since his honeymoon in 2017, briefly exceeding 43% in mid-December, then dropped back down to 42.6%. That's still at the upper edge of his range since March 2017. It's also not very good: Trump is dead last among polling-era presidents after 1,077 days in office. The news is worse when it comes to disapproval. Even during his recent spike, Trump couldn't get his disapproval rating below 52%; he's back up to 52.9% now. Why's that so bad? Because when a clear majority disapproves of a president, he's unlikely to be re-elected. Yes, Trump got some crucial votes in 2016 from people who didn't like him — that is, he out-polled his "favorable" ratings. But it's one thing to vote for someone you dislike, it's another to vote for someone you think is a bad president. In other words, asking people whether they approve or disapprove of how the president is handling his job is going to be a better predictor of their vote than asking them whether they have a favorable opinion of a candidate. And again, this level of disapproval is highly unusual. Trump has been at or above 52% disapproval for almost his entire presidency. Most previous polling-era presidents either never touched 50% in their first four years or only did so briefly. Only Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter spent more than a few weeks above the 50% mark during their first term. The good news for Trump? Although some predicted that impeachment would drive his approval numbers down, there's no sign of that. His popularity is basically as stable as ever, and that means that there's very little electoral pressure on Republicans to abandon him. It's possible, then, that my speculation last spring was correct. When Democrats moved toward impeachment, it had the effect of pushing voters who actively disliked Trump to support impeaching and removing him. But the process has focused voters on the question of whether the president should be ousted from office, not on whether his actions were improper. That frame makes it more likely that marginal Trump supporters will back him, since it raises the stakes of opposing him. That's not to say that impeaching Trump was a mistake for Democrats — just that it was never likely to be a good way of lowering his approval rating. If that's correct, then Trump's upcoming trial in the Senate probably won't hurt his approval rating either, unless high-profile Republicans, especially Republican senators, turn against him. If that happens, though, it will have to be because of the weight of the evidence or their other disagreements with Trump. Public opinion isn't going to push them. 1. Leah Gose at the Monkey Cage on the grass-roots energy in the Democratic Party. 2. Also at the Monkey Cage: Sarah Binder on 2019 in Congress. 3. Annie Lowrey on the state of capitalism. 4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Feldman on the Supreme Court going forward. 5. And E.J. Dionne Jr. on Bob Greenstein. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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