Most people’s headline from Public Policy Polling’s new survey out of Minnesota will be that 50% of respondents (671 quizzed yesterday and day before, margin of error ±3.8%) say Al Franken should not resign from the Senate. 42% say he should resign. Just before Thanksgiving, KSTP/SurveyUSA found 33% of Minnesotans calling for resignation, 22% wanting to keep Franken, and 36% waiting for the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate.
Since that train has already left the station, I’m more interested in the alarming support PPP finds for Donald Trump in our supposedly more humane and sensible neighboring state:
- 44% of Minnesotans approve of Trump’s job performance (what performance? stage performance?). Minnesotans have seen a year of Trump doing almost nothing but Making America Grate Again, but they are sticking with Trump in numbers close to his surprising 44.9% draw in the 2016 election. (53% approve of Franken’s performance in the Senate.)
- Trump scored that illogical approval rating in a pool skewed Dem: 40% of respondents identified themselves as Democrats, 32% independent, and 28% Republican.
- 10% of Minnesota Democrats said they approve of Trump’s performance. I cannot think of a logical route by which anyone who says “I’m a Democrat” and means it says “…and Trump is doing good work.”
- Minnesota’s younger voters in the PPP sample don’t offer signs of a progressive surge. PPP’s 18–45 age group gives Trump 45% approval, compared to 47% among the 46–65 group and 40% among the over-65ers.
Nationwide, Trump got a Christmas boost for signing his $4 trillion in tax hikes. Gallup finds Trump bounced from 34% on December 15 to 38% on December 26.