Wednesday, August 5, 2020

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Things are so bad in America right now that Trump is actually starting to lose his base in states like California, and that's only making things worse for Republicans down the ballot. The fever-bright, "own the libs!" faithful in the Golden State -- the kind of people so fanatical in their Trump support that they back him in a state like California -- are becoming less faithful by the day.

President Trump’s support among Republicans and other conservative voters has begun to erode amid the continued coronavirus pandemic and its associated economic havoc, a new poll from UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies shows.
The poll shows Trump far behind Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in California. That’s no surprise — even at his strongest Trump was unlikely ever to be competitive in California, a heavily Democratic state.

What is notable, however, is the size of the gap and the degree to which approval of Trump’s work as president has declined among groups that until now have supported him.

Biden leads Trump in California by 39 percentage points, 67% to 28%, the poll found. That’s 9 points larger than the margin by which Hillary Clinton beat Trump statewide in 2016 — a record at the time. And the share of Californians who approve of Trump’s performance in office, which has held steady in the mid-to-low 30% range for nearly his entire tenure, has now ticked downward to just 29%.

That’s consistent with other polls nationally and in battleground states that show a nationwide tide lifting Biden, swelling his margin in states like California, moving him solidly ahead in close-fought states like Pennsylvania and Michigan and making him potentially competitive in states that Trump won more handily last time, such as Texas and Georgia.

“There was a question of whether his support was already so low in the state that it couldn’t go lower,” said Berkeley political scientist Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies. The poll “shows the answer is no.”

Aides to both candidates believe the biggest factor in Trump’s decline is voters’ fear of the coronavirus and belief that the administration has botched its handling of the pandemic. The poll provides further evidence of that.

About two-thirds of the state’s voters see the health threat from the coronavirus getting worse. They back Biden 84% to 11%. By contrast, about 1 in 8 say the health threat is getting less serious; they back Trump 87% to 10%. About 1 in 5 voters say the threat from the virus is about the same as it’s been; they’re closely divided.

Imagine being in California and thinking Trump is the answer, imagine how God-awful your morality system there is, now imagine that Trump has finally broken you.

Yes, I keep telling people there are more registered Republicans in California than adults in about 42 of the 50 states, and they are a special breed of reality-deniers, but they're starting to crack.

You don't get more "hardcore Trump supporter" than his California contingent.

Even they are starting to give.

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