14 October 2019 — 0556 mdt
Montana Trump approval and impeachment support
In September, President Trump’s mean approval rating in Montana fell below 50 percent for the first time in two years, but his mean net approval rating stayed above water. And although new national polls report a majority of Americans now support the impeachment inquiry, it is still opposed by a majority of Montanans, but that majority may be shrinking.
Trump approval
Morning Consult reported that on 1 September, 47 percent of Montanans approved of President Trump’s discharge of his duties, but that 50 percent disapproved. Civiqs, however, reported 51 percent approved and 47 percent disapproved. Moving to 1 and 10 October, Civiqs reported 52 and 53 percent approval, and 45 and 44 percent disapproval. These online poll have a sampling margin of error of approximately three percent.
For Montana, Morning Consult’s reporting stops at 1 September. Civiqs’ is updated daily; the latest numbers are from 10 October. Both polls are conducted online using methodologies documented on their websites. FiveThirtyEight’s numbers, an aggregate of numerous national polls, are updated daily, and are available for the current date.
Over the last two years, from 1 August through 1 September, Civiqs’ approval numbers have been higher than Morning Consult’s: the mean difference is 2.7 percent, the median, 3.5 percent. For the same period, Civiqs’ disapproval numbers have been lower than Morning Consult’s: the mean difference is 2.4 percent, the median, two percent. Because there’s no way of knowing which poll is closer to the actual value, the mean of the two polls probably is the better measure.
In the graphs below, I display the data (download xlsx) in a number of different ways. Please note that on many of the plots, the y-axis is not full scale (0–100 percent). It’s a trade-off that yields greater visual clarity at the potential expense of exaggerating the difference in values. Hitting the Double size link brings up a larger, easier to read, plot.
First, the approval numbers for Montana and the United States.
Now, the same numbers plotted against a full scale y-axis, with error bars. Trump’s approval rating has varied little since the summer of 2017, and there’s not much difference between the Civiqs and Morning Consult polls.
The mean approval and disapproval ratings for Montana for the last two years:
The net approval for the U.S. and Montana for the last two years:
The mean net approval for the U.S. and Montana for the last two years:
Here's the demographic breakdown for the Civiqs poll:
The breakdown of educational attainment in Montana is available at the Census Bureau’s American Fact Finder. Thirty-point-seven percent of the age 25+ population has a bachelor’s degree or higher. Both in Montana and the nation, support for Trump is inversely correlated with how much a citizen has been educated. Consequently, polls that do not weight their samples for educational attainment may underestimate the amount of support that Trump receives.
Montana support for the impeachment inquiry
Following the revelations that Trump tried to strongarm the Ukraine’s chief of state into digging up dirt on Joe Biden, and sold the Kurds down the river, several polls reported that a majority of American now support the impeachment inquiry now underway in the U.S. House of Representatives. In Montana, a strong majority still opposes the inquiry, but since late October support for the inquiry has slightly increased.
The next graph plots impeachment inquiry opposition and support, and approval for Trump’s job performance, using Civiqs’ data:
Civiqs has an excellent annotated timeline for impeachment inquiry support:
Here's the demographic breakdown for 12 October:
Support for or opposition to the impeachment inquiry is largely a partisan matter. Republican opposition to the inquiry may be slightly weakening, but it’s still strong enough that Rep. Gianforte’s and Sen. Daines’ opposition to the inquiry is consistent with public opinion in Montana. Whether their opposition is consistent with their oath of office is an entirely different matter.