Trump’s popularity slipping in rural America: Poll

NEW YORK: US President Donald Trump, who inspired millions of supporters last year in places like Morgan County, has been losing his grip on rural America.
According to the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll, the Republican president’s popularity is eroding in small towns and rural communities where 15 percent of the country’s population lives. The poll of more than 15,000 adults in “non-metro” areas shows that they are now as likely to disapprove of Trump, as they are to approve of him.
In September, 47 percent of people in non-metro areas approved of Trump while 47 percent disapproved. That is down from Trump’s first four weeks in office, when 55 percent said they approved of the president while 39 percent disapproved.
The poll found that Trump has lost support in rural areas among men, whites and people who never went to college. He lost support with rural Republicans and rural voters who supported him on Election Day.
And while Trump still gets relatively high marks in the poll for his handling of the economy and national security, rural Americans are increasingly unhappy with Trump’s record on immigration, a central part of his presidential campaign.
Forty-seven percent of rural Americans said in September they approved of the president’s handling of immigration, down from 56 percent during his first month in office.
Poll respondents who were interviewed by Reuters gave different reasons for their dissatisfaction with the president on immigration.
A few said they are tired of waiting for Trump to make good on his promise to build a wall along America’s southern border, while others said they were uncomfortable with his administration’s efforts to restrict travel into the US.
The Trump administration would not comment on the Reuters/Ipsos poll.
According to the poll, Trump’s overall popularity has dropped gradually, and for different reasons, this year.
Rural Americans were increasingly unhappy with Trump’s handling of healthcare in March and April after he lobbied for a Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare and cut coverage for millions of Americans.
In May and June, they were more critical of Trump’s ability to carry out US foreign policy.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English across the US. It asked people to rate the president’s performance and the results were filtered for people who lived in zip codes that fell within counties designated as “non-metro” by the federal government.
The poll combined the results of “non-metro” respondents into nine, four-week periods. Each period included between 1,300 and 2,000 responses and had a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 3 percentage points.