GOING STRONG

CNN Data Guru Reveals a Twist Trump Critics Didn’t See Coming

Harry Enten said polling shows there’s no incentive for the president to rush toward ending the shutdown.

The government shutdown isn’t hurting President Donald Trump where it matters to him most, according to CNN’s data guru.

Harry Enten said the president’s net approval rating went up by a point even as the shutdown dragged into its 20th day on Monday, reversing his fortunes during the 35-day standoff in his first term.

Popular support for Trump had dropped 3 points by the 20th day of the December 2018 to January 2019 shutdown, Enten said. But things are starkly different the second time around, as Democrats and Republicans remain at an impasse over the extension of healthcare subsidies expiring at the end of the year.

“The bottom line is this: The first shutdown during Trump’s first term, 2018-2019 was hurting Donald Trump,” Enten said. “This one is not hurting him at all. There’s no real reason Donald Trump might say, at least when it comes to popular support, ‘I want to get out of this shutdown.’”

An average of various polls show that 44.2 percent of Americans approve of Trump while 52.1 percent disapprove, according to statistician and political analyst Nate Silver. That puts Trump’s net approval rating in the red at -7.8, which remains a slight improvement from his standing last week.

As for who Americans blame for the shutdown that has seen thousands of federal workers lose their jobs, Enten said the numbers once again fell into Trump’s favor.

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Only 48 percent of people blame Trump for the current shutdown compared to 61 percent in his first term, data from the AP-NORC Center showed.

“It’s a different world,” Enten said. “Again, it’s no real wonder that Donald Trump, at this point, looking at the shutdown says, ‘You know what, it’s not actually harming me politically,’ in large part, because he’s getting less of the blame.”

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An AP-NORC poll conducted from Oct. 9 to 13 found that 58 percent of Americans feel Trump and Republican lawmakers hold “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of responsibility for the shutdown, while 54 percent blamed congressional Democrats.

Lawmakers remain deadlocked over Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring at the end of the year, which Democrats are fighting aggressively to extend. The AP-NORC survey found that more people favored extending the subsidies than oppose them.

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