Trump's Average Job Approval In 2018 Was Only 40%

The chart above is from the Gallup Poll. It shows Trump's monthly job approval ratings for all of 2018. Gallup questioned 72,453 adults nationwide between January 22nd of 2018 and January 10th of 2019. The margin of error is 1 point.

Trump started 2018 with a job approval of only 38%. Although he reached the mid-forties a few times (with a high of 45% in June), he averaged only 40% approval for the year. That's very low. Part of that is because his rating went down significantly at the end of the year, and is currently only 37% (probably due to his shutting down the government).

Did Things Get Better In 2018 - Most People Say NO

These charts are from a recent Morning Consult Poll -- done between December 7th and 10th of a national sample of 2,202 adults, with a 2 point margin of error.

Did things get better in 2018 than they were in 2017? If you are a Republican, then you probably think 2018 was an improvement. About 58% said things got better, while only 19% said 2018 was worse. About 55% expect 2019 to be even better than 2018.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats did not agree. Only 17% said 2018 was an improvement over 2017, while 51% said it was worse. About 28% expect 2019 to be better, while 35% expect it to be worse than 2018.

But what do all adults think (Independents, Democrats, and Republicans combined). Only 33% said 2018 was an improvement over 2017, while 36% said it was worse. They do have some hope for improvement in 2019 though -- with 38% saying it will be better and 26% saying it will be worse.

For me, the second chart is the most interesting. It asks respondents if 2018 was an improvement over 2017 in each of the issues facing the country. As expected, Republicans said yes on nearly every issue and Democrats said no. The telling column is the one showing what all adults think.

The chart shows those who think things got better minus those who think things got worse. On the economy, all adults were equal -- meaning they think the economy got neither better nor worse. The one area they think got better was unemployment (+12). On all the other issues, they think things got worse in 2018 than they were in 2017.

Was 2018 a great year? Most in this country don't believe it was. Can 2019 be an improvement? We can only hope. But it's unlikely with Trump still in the White House and Republicans still controlling the Senate.

10 Charts That Paint A Picture Of The U.S. In 2018

These charts are from The New York Times:

2018 Was A Year Of "Unprecedented Deception" For Trump

(Cartoon image is by Paul Szep at Creators Syndicate.)

For Donald Trump, 2018 was a year of unprecedented lying -- breaking even his own record set in 2017. Here is part of what Glenn Kessler had to say about it in The Washington Post:

President Trump’s year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with some morning tweets.

Over a couple of hours on Jan. 2, Trump made false claims about three of his favorite targets — Iran, the New York Times and Hillary Clinton. He also took credit for the “best and safest year on record” for commercial aviation, even though there had been no commercial plane crashes in the United States since 2009 and, in any case, the president has little to do with ensuring the safety of commercial aviation.

The fusillade of tweets was the start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,600 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before.

Even as Trump’s fact-free statements proliferate, there is growing evidence that his approach is failing.

Fewer than 3 in 10 Americans believe many of his most-common false statements, according to a Fact Checker poll conducted this month. Only among a pool of strong Trump approvers — about 1 in 6 adults in the survey — did large majorities accept several, though not all, of his falsehoods as true.

Similarly, a November Quinnipiac poll found 58 percent of voters saying Trump wasn’t honest, compared with just 36 percent who said he was honest. The same poll found 50 percent saying he is “less honest” than most previous presidents, tying his own record for the highest share of registered voters saying so in Quinnipiac polling. . . .

Trump began 2018 on a similar pace as last year. Through May, he generally averaged about 200 to 250 false claims a month. But his rate suddenly exploded in June, when he topped 500 falsehoods, as he appeared to shift to campaign mode. He uttered almost 500 more in both July and August, almost 600 in September, more than 1,200 in October and almost 900 in November. In December, Trump drifted back to the mid-200s. . . .

More than a quarter of Trump’s claims were made during campaign rallies. On Nov. 5, the day before the midterm elections, for instance, Trump held three rallies, yielding a total of 139 false or misleading claims. A review of every statement made by Trump at two of hisearlier 2018 rallies found that he exaggerated or made up at least 70 percent of his assertions.

Almost as many false claims came during remarks at press events, and about 17 percent were the result of his itchy Twitter finger.

From EPI: 12 Important Charts On U.S. Economy In 2018

These charts are from the Economic Policy Institute:

PolitiFact Picks Trump's 10 Biggest Lies of 2018

(Image of Trump with growing nose as he lies is from campaignlive.com.)

There is no doubt anymore that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. He lies about everything -- even things that can easily be disproved. In 2017 (his first year in office), he lied thousands of times. And in 2018, he topped his 2017 total. Currently, he is averaging between 9 and 10 lies for every day he has been in the White House.

The good folks over at PolitiFact have performed a Herculean task. They waded through the thousands of lies Trump told in 2018 to pick out the ten biggest lies of the year. Here are the ten lies they chose:

A "horrible law" requires that children be separated from their parents "once they cross the Border into the U.S."

False. There is no such law. Families were rarely separated before Trump's "zero tolerance" policy to prosecute all illegal border crossings. Mostly, they used to be kept together in family detention centers or released into the United States as they awaited deportation or court hearings.

Democrats let cop killer Luis Bracamontes "into our country," and "Democrats let him stay."

Pants on Fire. Bracamontes’ last illegal entry was under George W. Bush, a Republican president, and Republican and Democratic administrations had deported Bracamontes.

"The Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country. And they want to sign them up for free health care, free welfare, free education, and for the right to vote."

False. The claim mangles what some Democrats had said about allowing immigrants to make asylum claims. No one talked of giving them benefits beyond existing laws.

Says 3,000 people "did not die" in two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico.

False. Trump refused to accept a dramatic uptick of 2017 hurricane deaths in Puerto Rico by researchers at George Washington University’s Milken Institute. He dismissed as "magic" the work of researchers’ estimates of "excess deaths," based on scientific methods, which is now generally accepted. Their estimate did not include, as he claimed, anyone who died after the storm from reasons such as old age.

People "went out in their boats to watch" Hurricane Harvey.

Pants on Fire. President Trump criticized people for recklessly taking to their boats to see the storm, forcing the Coast Guard to rescue them. In reality, people went out on boats to evacuate flooded homes and neighborhoods.

"California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amounts of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean."

False. The state’s firefighting agency said it had no complications accessing water, and fire experts faulted hot, dry and windy conditions for the infernos.

"In many places, like California, the same person votes many times. You probably heard about that. They always like to say 'oh that's a conspiracy theory.' Not a conspiracy theory, folks. Millions and millions of people."

Pants on Fire. It is a conspiracy theory, one Trump lamented all year without evidence. National experts have said that voter fraud is isolated and rare.

"The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they’re setting records, so okay, they’re at a record level."

Pants on Fire. Trump got it backwards. The numbers show that the extent of the ice at both poles is smaller than it was decades ago, particularly in the Arctic.

"U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills."

False, no matter how many times Trump brought it up during the midterm campaign. U.S. Steel, which owns four of the country’s steel-making facilities, announced it would restart two shuttered mills.

Saudi Arabia has ordered $450 billion from the United States, "$110 billion of which is a military order," producing "over a million jobs."

Pants on Fire. Trump’s rhetoric, which he used as justification for not more forcefully condemning the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, doesn’t match the facts. There are no orders totaling $450 billion or $110 billion, and no 1 million U.S. jobs. ​

Another Poll Shows Senate Race In Texas Is Very Close

These charts are from the latest Emerson College Poll -- done between August 22nd and 25th of 550 registered voters in Texas, and has a margin of error of 4.4 points.

It just verifies what at least four other polls have shown -- that the senate race in Texas (between Democrat Beto O'Rourke and Republican incumbent Ted Cruz) is very close. For the first time in quite a while, the Democrats actually have a chance to win in a statewide election.

How is this happening? It's a combination of Democrats having a very good candidate (who's running as a real Democrat instead of a Republican-lite candidate), and Cruz not being very well-liked (by his Senate colleagues or a lot of Texans).

By virtue of being the incumbent and wearing the Republican label, Cruz would still have to be the slight favorite. But this seat was not even supposed to be close. Now it looks like Cruz is going to need that GOP label, and even that might not be enough to save him.

Lest you think this is some kind of left-wing poll, note the chart below. The governor's race looks to be a runaway for the Republican Party. Texas is still a very red state (although demographic shifts are slowly changing that), but it is a red state that just might send a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.

Texas Dems Lead Primary Early Voting In Texas After 3 Days

If you had any doubt that Democrats are enthusiastic about this year's election, Texas Democrats are answering those doubts. After 3 days of early voting, Democrats lead the Republicans in turnout for early voting in the party primaries -- and Democrats are far ahead of their turnout numbers for 2014 (the last off-year election primary).

While the Republican number of voters after three days is very similar to 2014, the Democratic numbers are not. 43,895 more Democrats have voted this year than did in 2014. That's 5,953 more Democrats that have voted in the first three days than Republicans.

We'll have to see if this enthusiasm among Democrats continues, and whether they can duplicate it in November, but I see no reason why it wouldn't happen -- and if it does, then the statewide races in Texas could be much closer than prognosticators are predicting (especially in the Senate race, where Cruz is not really very popular).

The numbers in the chart above are from the office of the Texas Secretary of State.

Most Don't See GOP Government Making 2018 Better

Will out Republican government make things better in 2018 than they were in 2017? Most Americans don't think so. A significant majority believes things will stay the same or get worse. And they also believe the U.S. will not be more respected in 2018 than 2017. Can the GOP survive in the November elections with the public having such a negative attitude about their governing? I doubt it.

These charts use numbers from a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between December 31st and January 2nd of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,277 registered voters). The margin of error for adults is 3 points, and for registered voters is 2.9 points.