The results of two new polls in recent days show that when asked how they feel about President Donald Trump, very few Americans come back with the answer "I don't know."
A just-released NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found among all Americans polled, those who strongly or somewhat approve of Donald Trump's job as president is at 45 percent. If you ask just Republicans that number balloons to 90 percent which is almost equal to the 89 percent of Democrats who either strongly or somewhat disapprove of his performance.
Recent research by the New York Times and Gallup found that 90 percent figure among Republicans at this stage of his presidency second only to George W. Bush's after Sept. 11.
"I think a lot of it has to do with President Trump has such a strong identity and that at the typical voter level where you identify strongly as one party or the other you're looking at the big picture," said News 5 Political Analyst Dr. Tom Sutton of Baldwin Wallace University. "And for President Trump the big picture for Republicans is he's achieved policy goals related to tax cuts and deregulation; the trade tariffs, they're waiting to see how that goes but they're not necessarily judging him on that basis and all of the other stuff that we're hearing about in terms of the Russia summit and everything else, they chalk that up to the Washington swamp trying to take him down."
As a bellwether state, Democrats running in this November's election will need Republican and Independent votes to win, so Sutton says running just against Trump is not necessarily the way to go.
"[Democrats] have to identify themselves as an alternative not as a 'we're running against Trump' because definitely, he has strong support," Sutton said. "And with Independents, if you don't give them something to vote for, they're either going to not vote or they're going to vote for the status quo, which in this case is going to be Republicans and President Trump."
"Bottom line I think that these elections that are coming up in the fall are going to be decided by turnout on both sides and by where the Independents go at the state level," Sutton said. "I do think that we're going to see an overall turnout that'll be up compared to 2014 and even 2010 but in terms of where this race goes in Ohio, really it's anybody's guess."
