By Nicholas Fondacaro
Overnight, ABC News and The Washington Post released a poll that they probably didn’t want to see. According to their findings, President Trump’s job approval rating surged five points among “voting age Americans” to 44 percent since April, the highest their poll had ever uncovered. But, there was even better news for the President that went unreported during ABC’s Good Morning America on Sunday.
In The Post’s reporting on the poll, they admitted that “among registered voters” Trump’s job approval also surged five points to 47 percent, while Trump’s disapproval fell four points to 50 percent. The distinction between the two numbers was that the latter regarded the people more likely to vote in an election.
Despite that five-point jump, ABC was intent on spinning the rest of the findings as a bad sign for the President going forward. According to correspondent Rachel Scott:
The President’s approval ratings at its peak. But our latest poll shows just how vulnerable the President could be ahead of the 2020 election. For starters, the majority of Americans, 53 percent still disapprove of the President’s performance in office. And that’s not the only thing casting a shadow over those high approval ratings.
“Even though most Americans oppose impeachment, 65 percent say the President has acted unpresidential,” she added before boasting about how the poll predicted Trump would lose to various Democratic candidates. All of this was being reported while an unflattering picture of the President was on the screen.
Scott had no problem with relying on the numbers from “among registered voters” to tout that “in a nationwide head to head matchup, Joe Biden outperforms President Trump by ten points”. She just refused to use them to report on the President’s job approval rating. When Barack Obama was president, they would pull out all the stop to spin things in his favor.
Although, a few minutes later, GMA co-host Dan Harris turned to chief foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz noted that there could be some trouble for Democrats:
So, yes, there are causes for concern in there for President Trump and yet, the economy is strong, his approval rating is up in our poll to a record, and heading into 2020, he definitely has the power of incumbency at his back. So, should that taken together be a wake-up call for Democrats?
Raddatz managed to admit that Americans did approve of Trump’s handling of the economy (despite the liberal media’s doom and gloom pontifications about the “trade wars”). But ABC didn’t mention that the poll found 51 percent supported Trump’s handling of the economy.
To counter Trump’s positive economy numbers, Raddatz touted Trump’s poor numbers on immigration and how the Democrats would focus on that.
“But you also have to look at immigration that’s his signature issue. Things certainly didn’t go well this week on that with those reports about conditions at those migrant facilities. And that, too, is going to be a big issue, and his opponents are going to go after him on that in a very big way. They already are,” she said.
Meanwhile, The Hill also considered Trump’s approval rating among registered voters to be the more significant number. With the headline reading, “Poll: Trump’s approval rating hits highest point of presidency,” the first poll number they discussed was his jump to 47 percent.
Editor’s note. This appeared at Newsbusters and is reposted with permission.