… Most of the drops and increases in Trump’s overall approval rating can be traced back to policy success and failures, not big cultural clashes. Trump loses people when he shuts down the government or pushes unpopular legislation — and he may gain support when he takes out prominent foreign […] Read more »
What Should Senate Republicans Do About Impeachment?
What is the savviest political strategy on impeachment for Republicans in the Senate? In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew tries to answer that question in a new edition of FiveThirtyEight Debate. Each member of the team was assigned a position and then tried to poke holes […] Read more »
Why Trump may not see a sustained political boost from Baghdadi’s death
… We have a recent moment that seems as though it should provide some useful guidance on this question: the 2011 raid that resulted in the death of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. President Barack Obama’s approval rating rose seven points over the course of a week, driven in part […] Read more »
Is the Blob ignoring the American public?
… As President Trump has made Syria worse, I have heard kindred arguments from both ends of the political spectrum. Sure, the narrative runs, Trump is withdrawing from Syria in the messiest way possible, but isn’t this what the American people wanted? Don’t they want the forever wars in the […] Read more »
CNN Poll: Most Americans are concerned about Syria and think it’s likely ISIS will reemerge
Three-quarters of Americans are concerned about the situation in Syria and many see a reemergence of ISIS as likely following recent changes in US policy, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. But the country is divided over how to proceed. Just over half (51%) think the US […] Read more »
What Americans really think about US policy toward Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan
The following is based on new findings from two consecutive University of Maryland Critical Issues Polls, conducted September 3-20, and October 4-10. … From the day President Trump announced his decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, which we started measuring on October 7, support for his move was low, […] Read more »