Can Donald Trump continue to defy political gravity?
he political future of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party over the next two years really comes down to one question: Do traditional measures of popularity mean anything when it comes to Trump?
If they do, the Republican Party and Trump could be in major trouble.
Usually, we wouldn't even think to ask whether a president with around a 40% approval rating would end up hurting his political party. Yet Trump did something that was seemingly impossible in 2016: He won the presidency, despite being the most unpopular candidate since at least 1952 and with Americans seeming to like the status quo.
President Barack Obama's net favorability rating in the final Gallup poll using a -5 to +5 scale was +16 percentage points. Trump came in with a -25 percentage point net favorability rating in the same scale. That 41 point difference should have been electoral poison for Trump.
