With Donald Trump at helm, GOP rises to highest approval rating in nearly a decade

With President Donald J. Trump at the helm of the Republican Party, the GOP has risen to its highest approval rating in nearly a decade, a new Gallup survey found.

GOP favorability, at 45 percent, is higher than Democrats’ 44 percent. Gallup says the surge in Republicans’ support level–a nine percent rise among the public since last September–is the highest rating the party has had since when the GOP took the House majority it still maintains, in January 2011, after the 2010 midterm elections. Back then, in January 2011, Republicans had a 47 percent approval rating but have slipped below 45 percent ever since. That means the GOP, under Trump, has surged to its highest approval rating in seven years. Gallup’s Jim Norman wrote:

The parity in Republicans’ and Democrats’ favorable ratings marks a change from what has generally been the case since Barack Obama’s election as president in November 2008. Republicans have usually been rated less positively than Democrats over this time, with the Republican Party’s favorability rating for the last decade averaging 39%, compared with the Democratic Party’s 44%. Only one other time in the last decade has the Republican Party had a significantly higher score than the Democratic Party. That one exception came in November 2014, immediately after elections that saw Republicans capture control of the Senate and expand their majority in the House, when 42% rated the GOP favorably and 36% the Democrats.

A rise in intra-GOP approval is a big reason why the GOP has now surpassed Democrats in overall approval, just two months before the election, in the Gallup survey. Donald Trump, Jr., President Trump’s eldest son, told Breitbart News that the reason for the rise inside the party is because Republicans finally have a leader they can count on.

“It’s easy to see why GOP approval numbers are the highest in years,” Donald Trump, Jr., told Breitbart News in response to the Gallup survey. “Republicans finally have a president who gets things done, delivers on promises, and fights back when met with inevitable resistance from obstructionist Democrats. They haven’t had that in recent memory. Conservatives’ principles are being enacted–and they’re working, and people are taking notice.”

The new polling statistics showing Republicans on the rise among the American people come a year and a half into President Trump’s administration, as the establishment media bears down on the government in nearly every respect–and as Democrats aim to derail virtually anything they can from their minority perches in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. The latest iteration of this is the Senate Democrats’ effort to stop the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, but Democrats on both sides of Capitol Hill have aggressively fought Trump’s policies and nominees at every turn, from economic to security to social policies and everything in between.

The good news for the GOP also comes just weeks ahead of the all-important midterm elections, where political prognosticators and pundits have been convinced for months the Democrats will retake a majority in the House for the first time since the beginning of former President Barack Obama’s first term in the White House–and that Democrats may even retake the Senate, despite a 2018 map very favorable to GOP chances to hold their Senate majority.

Despite the conventional wisdom pointing to a Democratic House takeover, some recent polling has indicated the Democrats are not hitting marks they need to in key battleground districts to take the majority. For instance, in Maine’s second congressional district, Rep. Bruce Poliquin (R-ME) is ahead of Democrat Jared Golden by a comfortable five percent in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. In California’s 39th congressional district, Republican Young Kim leads Democrat Gil Cisneros–who Obama campaigned with recently despite the fact he has been credibly accused of sexual misconduct–by ten points in a recent Monmouth University survey. Democrats are having problems in many other districts, too, including Florida’s 26th congressional district, where Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) is polling ahead of Democrat challenger Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

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