A majority of Americans believe Bob Woodward's book and the anonymous NYT op-ed — both of which warned of internal resistance to President Trump — but there's no evidence that they've changed Americans' opinions of him, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.
Why it matters: Everything is partisan. If two major news bombshells warning of White House chaos don't change things, it's further evidence that Americans' opinions of Trump are set in stone, whether they like him or not.
Between the lines: Although 51% think the Trump administration is not competent at managing the federal government, and only 46% believe it is competent, that's actually slightly better than similar SurveyMonkey polling in October and November 2017 — when 41% said the administration said the Trump administration is competent and 57% said it's not.
- The voter subgroups Axios is tracking are split on this. White suburban women and #NeverHillary independents are narrowly divided on the administration's competence, rural voters are solidly behind the administration, and millennials and African American women are convinced it's incompetent.
Americans' views are significantly swayed by their opinions of Trump: 81% of those who already disapprove of Trump believe the reports of "significant resistance" within the White House, but 73% of those who approve of him disbelieve those claims.
- Their views on impeachment are virtually identical to those in an Axios/SurveyMonkey poll last month: 45% say Congress should begin the impeachment process, 52% say it shouldn't.
- There was a marginal decline in Trump's overall approval compared to SurveyMonkey's weekly tracking poll. (It's down to 42%, compared to the 44-46% range between April and August.)
The bottom line: There's very little that can change people's opinions of Trump at this point, and it's going to take more than a book and an op-ed to change that.
Methodology: This analysis is based on SurveyMonkey online surveys conducted Sept. 12-13, 2018 among 2,173 adults in the United States. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Sample sizes and modeled error estimates for the subgroups are as follows:
African-American Women (n=172 +/- 8.5), Millennials Age 18 - 34 (n=409, +/- 6), White Suburban Women (n=366 , +/- 7), NeverHillary/Independent voters (n= 121, +/- 12), Rural (n= 525, +/- 6). Respondents for this survey were selected from the more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day. More information about our methodology here. Crosstabs available here.