Donald Trump’s favourability ratings remained “remarkably stable” throughout 2019, with the Republican base and a core of white evangelical backers firmly backing the president, while a majority of other Americans disapproved of him, a new Public Religion Research Institute survey found.
The PRRI survey, taken weekly over the course of 2019 among 40,357 Americans, showed only brief fluctuations in the president’s favourability ratings, which averaged 41 per cent favourable and 55 per cent unfavourable over the year.
The Republican base remained firmly behind Trump – despite April’s release of the Mueller investigation findings and December’s impeachment vote in the US House – with an average favourability rating of 79 per cent.
White evangelicals gave Trump the highest favourability ratings of any major nonpolitical demographic group — an average of 64 per cent. That rating dipped to a low of 54 per cent in May, roughly corresponding to the release of the Mueller report, and peaked at 72 per cent in September, when a whistleblower released call information between Trump and the president of Ukraine.
White evangelical men were more likely to have a favourable impression of the president than white evangelical women – 69 per cent to 59 per cent.
A majority (55 per cent) of Mormons, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also view Trump favourably. Here too, Mormon men (64 per cent) were much more likely than Mormon women (45 per cent) to say they approved of Trump.
It’s impossible to say if Mormon views changed in the aftermath of Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s decision to break with the Republican Party and vote to convict Trump on one of the articles of impeachment earlier this month, since the survey was fielded last year.
Other Christian groups rated the president favourably at near majorities: white Catholics (49 per cent), white mainline Protestants (48 per cent) and Orthodox Christians (48 per cent).
Among those with an unfavourable view of Trump were Democrats (83 per cent) and several other constituencies:
• African Americans: 77 per cent said they hold mostly or very unfavourable views of Trump. A whopping 81 per cent of black women viewed Trump negatively, compared with 71 per cent of black men.
• Hispanic Americans: Between 59 per cent and 65 per cent had an unfavourable view of Trump over the course of the year.
• Religiously unaffiliated Americans: 63 per cent hold unfavourable views of Trump. Within that group, atheists (73 per cent) and agnostics (72 per cent) disliked Trump even more.
• Non-Christian Americans: 61 per cent of this group, which includes Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Unitarian Universalists and other smaller non-Christian religions, disliked Trump on average.
In all these groups, there was a distinct gender gap. Women viewed Trump less favuorably than men.
The survey concluded that the most important predictors of people’s views of the president were party affiliation, ideology (liberal or conservative) and race.
The bilingual survey, part of PRRI’s American Values Atlas, was conducted on landlines and cell phones. The margin of error for the total sample was plus or minus 0.4 percentage points.
