Had enough Trump? Poll of WA finds we’re once again obsessed

Seattle pollster Stuart Elway kept hearing that people had grown weary of it all. After the third election in a row with Donald Trump, the story was that folks had begun tuning out the political news.

So he set out to test it.

“Man did that ever turn out to be a myth,” Elway told me.

For the period roughly three months into a new presidential term — which a long time ago in a lost political universe was called a “honeymoon” — Elway found Washington state voters are not only engaged, but intensely, even obsessively so. Especially the Democrats.

“The Democrats are ready to grab the pitchforks,” he said.

The poll, which Elway did with Cascade PBS, is unusual because of how emphatic it is. Typically in polling conducted more than a year away from the next national election, you get a lot of indecisive answers and “no opinion” or “don’t know” responses, he said.

But when asked their gut reactions to the new Trump administration, voters were anything but nuanced.

Elway’s sample couldn’t find a single Democratic voter who had “no opinion,” and also not a one with much good to say. Their answers ranged from “horrified,” to “disaster,” “terrified,” and “disgusted,” along with “fascist,” “crazy,” “authoritarian,” and “sick.”

“In polling you almost never get a unanimous result, about anything,” Elway said. “There’s nothing that brings Democrats all together quite like Trump.”

Elway said Republican respondents were broadly supportive of the new administration, as expected, but “they’re not as unanimous as the Democrats.”

Eighty-six percent gave Trump positive reviews, using words like “great,” “good,” “good start,” and “getting things done.” Some were ecstatic; one GOPer said that having Trump back in the White House is like “Christmas every day.”

But 7% of Republicans were negative about Trump, 6% were neutral and 3% offered no opinion.

“The Republican response is more what you typically see with a partisan group of voters,” he said. The vast majority are pleased, but a slice are underwhelmed.

The Democrats, though, have gone off the charts.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a response as unanimous, and unanimously negative, as the Democrats,” he said. “They’re ready to fight, and there’s no wiggle room about it.”

We’re a blue state, so the numbers overall were dim for Trump, as self-described independents also are tilting against him.

But the news in the poll is how our society is back to having a case of Trump obsession — where Trump is everything, everywhere, all at once.

The first question Elway asked, before the 400 respondents knew what the poll was about, was whether they’d had a conversation recently about government or politics, and what it was about.

An incredible 87% said yes — that they had talked about politics, most within the past day or two. And about two-thirds said, unguided, that the topic was Trump or his actions. Only 10% said it had to do with state or local government.

“Again this is not that normal in polling,” Elway said. “When you ask an open-ended question, you normally get back dozens of topics along with lots of ‘I don’t knows.’ Here it was: ‘Yes I’m talking about politics. And what is that conversation about? One thing: Trump.’”

The survey found only 9% are “avoiding political news.” To which I say: Bless the 91%!

But seriously, Elway found people are checking in with 3.5 political information sources on average, and that 67% say they do this “at least once a day.”

“So we’re back to doomscrolling,” he summed up. “Whatever lull there was right after the election is officially over.”

One takeaway is that politics is so hyper-polarized right now, that if “only” 86% of Republicans had positive thoughts about Trump, that’s maybe the beginnings of a crack in the MAGA wall.

“It could be there’s some movement there, but it also could be an anomaly of the poll,” Elway said. “You have to see if it persists for multiple polls.”

Another is that having Trump once again striding like a colossus across our attention spans is probably not the healthiest. Currently there’s a high-stakes state Legislative session heading into its final 10 days in Olympia, and apparently barely anyone is paying any heed to that. It’d be good for everybody to be able to dial away from the all-Trump channel, to be able to watch something else for a spell.

But a third is that this is democracy. Ultimately this is the way it’s supposed to work, with reactions to the political actions. It’s not the public’s fault that Trump has been instigating chaos and crisis on a daily basis, sometimes on a global scale. So as exhausting as the Trump show may be, it would be more alarming if people weren’t starting to freak out about it.

Elway has described a Washington electorate that’s suddenly more “hair on fire” than it is distracted or numb. Trump derangement syndrome? No, I’d call it a vital development, one that’s arrived not a moment too soon.