More Americans, 45 percent, are most bothered by the alleged contacts between President Donald Trump’s orbit and Russia than the 32 percent who cited the leaks. | Getty 5 numbers that mattered this week

Continuing our POLITICO feature, where we dig into the latest polls and loop in other data streams to tell the story of how Americans are reacting to President Donald Trump and the upheaval he is bringing to Washington. Here are five numbers that mattered this week:





In a press conference full of extraordinary and norm-busting moments, President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested the media are suppressing poll results that show a majority approves of his job performance.

“A new Rasmussen poll, in fact — because the people get it — much of the media doesn’t get it. They actually get it, but they don’t write it. Let’s put it that way,” Trump rambled. “But a new Rasmussen poll just came out just a very short while ago, and it has our approval rating at 55 percent and going up.”

So let’s write it.

The president is correct. The Rasmussen Reports daily presidential-approval tracking poll — which updates on weekday mornings — does show Trump at 55-percent approval. It also shows 45 percent disapprove of Trump’s performance. By totaling 100 percent, the results suggest the pollster doesn’t include respondents who don’t have an opinion about the president thus far.

But Rasmussen is, thus far, an outlier when it comes to ratings of Trump’s job performance. According to HuffPost Pollster, Trump’s average job-approval rating is 45 percent, with a slight, 51-percent majority disapproving.

And of the 13 individual pollsters that have produced a Trump approval rating thus far, Rasmussen is the only one ever to show Trump cracking the 50-percent approval mark. Some pollsters, like Gallup (38 percent approval in the latest daily tracking poll) and Pew Research Center (39 percent), show far more negative views of Trump as president.

A number of factors could be at play here: There’s Rasmussen’s persistent Republican lean, flagged by observers for nearly a decade. Rasmussen also conducts its surveys using automated technology — and, generally, polls without a live interviewer have been more favorable toward the president.

There’s another possible factor: the universe of people Rasmussen is surveying. Rasmussen’s polls are conducted among likely voters — even though the next presidential election is more than three-and-a-half years away. By comparison, Gallup and Pew polls are conducted among all adults, and polls from POLITICO/Morning Consult and Fox News are among all self-identified registered voters.

As a group, registered voters are whiter and older than the overall populace — and likely voters are even whiter and older than the overall pool of registered voters. That doesn’t explain the entire disparity between the latest approval ratings from Gallup (38 percent approve/56 percent disapprove) and Rasmussen (55 percent approve/45 percent disapprove), but the basic context — what is each poll trying to measure — is essential.





Trump’s first four weeks in the White House have more Americans lining up along their partisan barricades than any new president in modern history.

Despite his short tenure, fully three-in-four Americans either “strongly” approves or disapproves of Trump’s job performance, according to a new Pew Research Center poll out this week.

That intensity tilts against Trump: 46 percent of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while only 29 percent strongly approve.

The Pew survey, like Gallup’s daily tracking poll, is more negative toward Trump than some other polls. But even in the polls that show voters more evenly divided on Trump, those who strongly disapprove of his job performance outnumber those who approve with equal strength. A Fox News poll out earlier this week showed roughly equal percentages of voters who approve (48 percent) and disapprove (47 percent) of Trump’s job performance — but the 41-percent share that strongly disapproves is larger than the 35 percent who strongly approve.

Both the Pew and Fox surveys show the same divides that existed during the campaign: race and educational attainment. In the Pew poll, 46-percent of whites without a college degree strongly approve of Trump’s job performance, greater than the 32 percent who strongly disapprove. But 55 percent of whites with a college degree strongly disapprove.

The Fox poll is similar, though more positive toward Trump: 51 percent of non-college whites strongly approve of Trump, but 44 percent of whites with a college degree strongly disapprove.





Despite that polarization, a quarter of Americans are in the middle, including some who supported Trump in last year’s election. That includes a slice of the public Democratic pollster Margie Omero is calling “Trump Regretters” — a roughly 11-percent share of the general population.

This group doesn’t only consist of Trump voters who now say they wouldn’t support him again — it also includes formerly unenthusiastic Clinton voters and those who didn’t cast ballots last fall but would now vote against Trump.

These “Trump Regretters” are down on the early weeks Trump’s presidency, according to a PSB Research survey and memo prepared by Omero. Fifty-eight percent of them think Trump is “going too far” — that is, farther than they expected — and 49 percent believe he’s causing more “serious harm” to the country than they expected. Six-in-10 think he’s unifying the U.S. less than they expected, and 54 percent think he’s surrounding himself with fewer of the “best people” he promised would comprise his team.

Democrats will be looking to recruit these “Trump Regretters” to join their ranks in federal, state and local elections over the next two years. The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter highlighted results from other surveys earlier this week pointing to voters who see both good and bad in Trump — and how the president can either keep them in the fold or lose them in the coming months.





A SurveyMonkey poll released Friday posed the question: “What bothers you more: alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence officials, or news media leaks from U.S. intelligence agencies about contacts by the Trump campaign?”

The verdict? More Americans, 45 percent, are most bothered by the alleged contacts between Trump’s orbit and Russia than the 32 percent who cited the leaks. Another 21 percent say they aren’t bothered by either, however.

The results break sharply along partisan lines: 79 percent of Democrats are more bothered by the alleged Russian contacts, but only 12 percent of Republicans are.

Other results from the survey follow a similar pattern but tilt toward skepticism of Trump’s position. Eighty-four percent of Democrats favor a congressional investigation into claims that Russia attempted to disrupt the U.S. elections last year, as do 41 percent of Republicans. And even 48 percent of Republicans favor a congressional investigation into the events leading to National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s resignation this week.





Former Rep. Tom Perriello’s entry into the Virginia gubernatorial race was viewed as a shot at the commonwealth’s Democratic establishment, which had lined up behind Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam as its standard-bearer.

But Perriello doesn’t entirely fit the profile of an insurgent candidate, and Northam doesn't entirely fit the profile of an establishment candidate. Despite being elected statewide in 2013, Northam had little name-identification among the party’s voters and little built-in support in the June 13 primary.

A Quinnipiac University poll out this week shows Northam and Perriello deadlocked at 19 percent, with 61 percent undecided. Neither is well-known, but Perriello, out of office after his one term in the House concluded six years ago, has higher name-ID than Northam. Fifty-six percent of Democratic voters haven’t heard enough about Perriello to form an opinion, fewer than the 64 percent who don’t know enough about Northam.

Virginia’s Democratic establishment may yet rally around Northam and help him win a primary once viewed as a walkover, but first they’ll need to introduce him to voters.