Voters are starting to think that America isn’t that great anymore: poll

(Credit: Getty/Win McNamee)

A pair of recent polls offer bad news for President Donald Trump.

The bipartisan Democracy Fund Voter Study Group has found that a disproportionately large number of Obama voters who supported Trump in the 2016 election are disapproving of his presidency, regretting their decision or both, according to Politico. Only 70 percent of Obama-Trump voters approved of the president’s job performance while 22 percent disapproved; by contrast, 88 percent of all Trump voters supported his presidency and only 9 percent disapproved of it.

The survey found a similar result when it came to voters supporting or regretting their voting decision last November. While only 6 percent of Trump voters overall said they regretted their decision, that number ballooned to 16 percent among Obama-Trump voters.

As Robert Griffin, a director of quantitative analysis at the left-wing Center of American Progress and one of the study group’s members, explained to Politico, “What’s surprising is in the face of all of these events that often are expected to shake up politics, we’re seeing a high amount of stability. But [Obama-Trump voters are] showing the highest amounts of regret in their vote of any group that we examined.”

In similar news: Despite Trump’s famous campaign promise to Make America Great Again, a survey by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal found only 14 percent of respondents thought America had a “strong” national character, while 34 percent said America’s national character was “weak” or worse. In 1998, less than 20 years ago, 23 percent of Americans thought the nation’s national character was strong and 20 percent of them thought it was weak.

Notably, 65 percent of Trump voters said America was either the best or one of the best countries in the world to live in, including 59 percent of Republicans, 56 percent of the economically affluent and 54 percent of white men. By contrast, 27 percent of non-whites, 27 percent of liberals, 24 percent of single women, and 23 percent of both Democrats and the poor/working class say America is either average or below average.

Not surprisingly, this was reflected in the groups which thought America had a weak national character, including 46 percent of African Americans, 43 percent of the poor/working class and 37 percent of Democrats.