© Copyright 2020, Des Moines Register and Tribune Co.

President Donald Trump’s approval rating among Iowans has broken even for the first time in the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

Fifty percent of Iowans approve of the job he’s doing as president, a 4 percentage point rise from February 2019. The milestone is buoyed by fellow Republicans (94% approval), men (60%), evangelicals (63%), rural Iowans (68%) and those making $100,000 a year or more (57%).

“That is a high-water mark in the Iowa Poll,” said J. Ann Selzer of Selzer & Co., which conducted the poll.

Selzer noted that Trump’s rise in approval ratings coincides with an increase in the number of Iowans who think the country is on the right track: At 46%, that's another high-water mark for Trump’s presidency and the highest it has been since May 2003, when 55% of Iowans thought the country was on the right track.

It’s a positive showing as Trump seeks to win a second term in office. He flipped Iowa in 2016 after the state voted for President Barack Obama twice, and Iowa voters are leaning his way this year, too. More than 50% of likely general election voters said they would support him if the election were held today, while top Democratic contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each have the support of 41% of Iowa voters.

Trump’s latest numbers overshadow his lowest approval rating of 35% — about a year into his presidency, in December 2017 — then coupled with a 60% disapproval. That Iowa Poll also showed just 29% of respondents felt the country was moving in the right direction, while 60% felt it wasn't.

In the new poll, 47% said they disapprove of the job the president is doing. That sentiment is driven by near-universal opposition by Democrats (95% disapprove of the job he’s doing), people who don’t identify with a religion (69%), city dwellers (57%) and people who believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases (68%). People who make less than $50,000 a year also are more likely to disapprove of his job performance, though by thinner margins (54% disapproval vs. 43% approval).

The poll sampled 800 Iowans between March 2 and March 5 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. This includes a group of 667 likely general election voters, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

In Iowa, those with no party preference are the plurality of registered voters. In our poll, opinions among this group are mixed on Trump's performance: 44% approve of it, while 50% disapprove.

Trump’s job approval by Iowans roughly mirrors his favorability ratings: 51% said they hold very favorable or mostly favorable feelings toward him, an increase of 10 percentage points over the September 2018 Iowa Poll results. Combined, those who said they felt mostly unfavorable and very unfavorable about him likewise decreased, from 56% in September 2018 to 47% in the latest poll.

He remains a polarizing figure. Seventy percent of Iowans feel either very favorable or very unfavorable, as opposed to the lesser extremes. However, this poll shows an 11-point improvement in very favorable since September 2018 and a 5-point decline in very unfavorable. Just 2% said they’re not sure how they feel about him.

“This is a good poll for President Trump." Selzer said.

Steve Jorgensen, a 52-year-old independent from Manilla, falls in that middle category, telling a pollster he feels mostly favorable about the president and approves of his performance. Jorgensen is also quick to separate his support for Trump’s policies and the man. Jorgensen registered as an independent to signal that he votes based on policy, not political party or politician.

He supports Trump’s policies on work requirements for state aid, his immigration policies and his support for the right to own firearms. Jorgensen also points to the boom his investment-based retirement accounts have seen under Trump versus his predecessor. But he draws a line between confidence and arrogance and said he thinks Trump veers too far toward arrogance for his liking.

“There are some things about the man, personally, I don’t care for, but policy, yes,” said Jorgensen, a part-time farmer and full-time maintenance worker. “His trade policies — particularly for the farmers — I think in the long run are going to turn out great. A lot of us right now are kind of in-between. It’s tough out here, buddy. But it’s coming around.”

He acknowledges that Trump’s trade negotiations haven’t borne instant results, but he said it’s an uphill battle against countries that have spent years giving themselves an uneven advantage.

“Let’s give him four more and see what happens,” Jorgensen said. “My feeling is, it’s going to get better.”

For Kent Popinga, a 53-year-old political independent from Hampton, he's seen enough.

"I have never been a Trump supporter," Popinga said. "But when he got elected in 2016, I at least had hopes he would step up to become more presidential. But I don't see that happening. My thoughts on him have gotten worse."

Popinga straddles the Republican and Democratic parties as someone who, for example, supports gun rights and abortion rights. His last ballot was more blue than red, he said, but included candidates from both parties.

He gives Trump credit for cutting taxes, to a degree, but he can't say his tax bill is substantially different because of it. Instead, tax relief seems to have been directed at the wealthiest Americans, Popinga said. He also sees Trump degrading the country's usual alliances with other countries. It strikes a particular nerve for Popinga, who saw the benefits of strong allies when he was in the U.S. Army.

"He tries to take a lot of credit when the country was in good shape when he got it," Popinga said. "I don't see anything that he's done to help the common man … his rhetoric, if anything, has gotten worse. That was probably the one thing I didn't like about him when he got elected. I hoped he would grow into it, but he sure didn't."

On the last day that interviewers contacted Iowans for this poll, 205 cases of novel coronavirus had been confirmed in the United States; none were in Iowa. The Trump administration's response since then hasn't shifted Jorgensen's or Popinga's opinions of the president.

Jorgensen said he's not too concerned about the virus, at least for now, and he didn't see any issue with Trump's response to it.

"They're doing the best they can, and all they can," he said. "You can't control the public's movement across the country."

Popinga felt his views about Trump — as a man eager to blame others — were reinforced by the president's response in recent days.

"As just an average person, I can look and see it's not the Democrats making the economy tank, it's the virus," Popinga said. "The people are afraid, so they're not going and spending money like they usually do. Just to push the blame like that is typical Trump, and it doesn't surprise me at all."

About this poll

The Iowa Poll, conducted March 2-5, 2020, for the Des Moines Register and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 800 Iowans ages 18 or older. Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted households with randomly selected landline and cellphone numbers supplied by Dynata. Interviews were administered in English. Responses were adjusted by age, sex, and congressional district to reflect the general population based on recent census data.

Questions based on the sample of 800 Iowa adults have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, and questions based on the sample of 667 likely voters in the 2020 general election have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the true population value by more than plus or minus 3.5 or 3.8 percentage points, respectively. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to the Des Moines Register and Mediacom is prohibited.

Nick Coltrain is a politics and data reporter for the Register. Reach him at ncoltrain@registermedia.com or at 515-284-8361.