Most people who are on the Trump train say they are definitely, absolutely never getting off — no matter what.
Six in 10 people who approve of President Donald Trump (61%) say they can’t think of anything Trump could do that would make them disapprove of his job as President, according to a Monmouth University poll released this week.
Almost an identical number (57%) who disapprove of Trump say they are never going to change their minds on the President’s job performance either. This means a majority of Americans (53%) admit they have their opinion of Trump completely, totally and irreversibly baked in.
Interviews for this poll were conducted both before and after protests turned violent in Charlottesville over the weekend, but before Trump’s press conference Tuesday doubling down on his comments blaming “both sides” for the clash.
Trump has mostly maintained high approval numbers among Republicans during his presidency so far, though they have slipped slightly since Inauguration Day. The President repeatedly touted his hardcore following on the campaign trail, boasting that his supporters would stick with him no matter what.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Iowa last January.
Majorities of both parties — 53% of both Republicans and Democrats — say they can’t imagine anything that would change their approval or disapproval of Trump, respectively. A majority of blacks (55%) also say nothing could change their disapproval of Trump.
So who are the most hardcore groups of Trump backers? Women who approve of Trump are most likely to say they will never change their minds: 72% of female Trump approvers say they will never strip their support, vs. only 54% of male Trump approvers.
Also, 68% of approvers over 55 years old say they won’t stop supporting Trump, along with 67% of approvers who have a high school degree or less and 67% of approvers who make under $50,000 per year.
Recently, Trump has come under fresh scrutiny from both sides of the aisle after failing to immediately condemn white nationalists by name in the aftermath of the Charlottesville, Virginia, protests. He also said there were “very fine” people marching in those protests who, he argued, have legitimate concerns about the removal of statues commemorating the Confederacy.
Trump tweeted again Thursday morning, lamenting “the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” adding that “you can’t change history, but you can learn from it.”
A new poll this week from NPR/PBS/Marist shows the public largely agrees with Trump: Six in 10 Americans (62%) say Confederate statues should remain as historical symbols, and only a quarter (27%) say they should be removed because they are offensive to some people.
The Monmouth University poll was conducted from August 10-14, 2017. The sample size includes 805 adults for a margin of error of ±3.5 percentage points for full sample. The NPR/PBS/Marist survey was conducted from August 14-15, 2017. The sample size was 1,125 adults for a margin of error of ±2.9 percentage points for the full sample. In both surveys, the margin of error is larger for subgroups.
