New Poll Proves It–Trumpsters Live In Alternative Universe (TWEETS)


It’s no secret that there is a yuuuuuge gulf between the diehard supporters of Donald Trump and the rest of the nation. But a breathtaking new poll shows just how wide that gulf is.


Public Policy Polling, one of the most accurate pollsters in the business, released its latest nationwide poll early Tuesday morning. There’s virtually no good news for Trump here. His approval rating only stands at 41 percent, compared to 55 percent disapproving. Moreover, 57 percent of voters do not believe Trump is honest, and 52 percent believe he is a liar. When asked if they felt Trump has kept his promise to “Make America Great Again,” 57 percent of respondents say he hasn’t done so. Even more telling, 53 percent of voters wish Barack Obama was back in the White House, while 49 percent would prefer Hillary Clinton as president rather than Trump.

The poll also reveals that Trump’s war on the press is failing, and failing bigly. Trump’s three favorite whipping boys, CNN, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, are all considered more trustworthy than Trump by margins of 54-39, 55-38, and 53-38. Also failing is Trump’s attempt to convince the nation that the furor over Russia’s hacking of the election is fake news. Only 36 percent of respondents believe Russia is fake, while 51 percent believe it isn’t fake. Even more telling, 58 percent favor an independent investigation into the Russian hacking.

If Congress heeds Trump’s call to repeal Obamacare and start over, they could potentially be in big trouble. Only 35 percent of voters support repealing Obamacare, while 58 percent want to simply fix what isn’t working in the current system. Voters didn’t think much of the aborted Republican effort to replace Obamacare, which officially died just hours before this poll went to press. Only 20 percent supported the Republican health care bill, and a whopping 53 percent said that they would be less likely to vote for their current member of Congress if they supported that bill.

Trump isn’t the only one who could get heartburn from these numbers. Not only do Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell struggle to get their approval ratings above 25 percent–24 percent for Ryan, 18 percent for McConnell–but Democrats lead the generic ballot by a whopping 50-40 margin. On paper, this is more than enough to overcome the massive gerrymandering many Republican state legislatures did after the 2010 census. David Jarman of Daily Kos Elections crunched the numbers, and came up with this tantalizing figure.

For those of you keeping score, Democrats need to only flip 24 seats to take back the House. In other words–if these numbers are real, we could be seeing the beginning of at least a Category 4 Democratic hurricane.


As bad as these numbers are for Trump, it’s very possible that they are severely inflated. The first sign of this came on on Monday afternoon, when PPP dropped a rather sobering hint on Twitter.

To underscore how staggering this is, consider that Donald Jr. not only admitted going to the meeting, but was all but forced to release an email exchange which revealed he was literally salivating at the prospect of getting Russian-flavored opposition research on Hillary.

And yet, even in the face of this, 55 percent of Trump voters polled by PPP either don’t believe the meeting occurred or aren’t sure it occurred. It would have been interesting to see many of those voters believe the meeting was a Democratic false flag. After all, that seems to be the alternative fact du jour in the pro-Trump media. Remember how only 36 percent of voters believe Russia is fake news? Well, it turns out that 77 percent of Trump voters think it’s fake.

Moreover, it looks like Trump voters agree with the Donald’s contention that if any collusion took place, it’s just politics. While 58 percent of voters want an independent investigation into the Russian hacking, only 24 percent of Trump voters want one. While 48 percent of all voters believe Trump campaign operatives colluded with Russia, only 13 percent of Trump voters are of that mind. And while 54 percent of all voters want Trump to stand down if it does turn out his campaign colluded with Russia, 77 percent of Trump voters want him to stay on. Small wonder that PPP concluded Trump voters have “a certain degree of willful ignorance” about matters related to the Russian hacking.


This poll confirms what a lot of us have suspected for a long time. Trump diehards aren’t just influenced by alternative facts. They’re living in an alternative universe. When 55 percent of Trump voters either don’t believe or aren’t sure that Donald Jr. met with Russians even after Donald Jr. admitted the meeting happened, that’s the only plausible conclusion.

(featured image courtesy Gage Skidmore, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.