NBC data analyst Steve Kornacki runs down a new poll on President Trump’s approval rating, overall and on specific issues, general party numbers, and opinions on gerrymandering.

STEVE KORNACKI: Our Decision Desk poll, and again, we’re looking at all adults here, this is voters and potential voters. Casting a wide net, we asked about President Trump’s job performance, a 43% approval rating. That’s what we find in this poll. And of course that number, that’s about the level we’ve seen Trump at in this second term, and it’s about the level we saw Trump at too, back during his first term. So it’s sort of a bit low historically. But this is very much par for the course as far as President Trump is concerned. On some specific issues, he continues to get his lowest marks right here: this is inflation, the cost of living, just 39% approve of Trump’s job performance there. We’ve seen that throughout his second term as well. He does better when it comes to the border. Border security and immigration, 47% job approval. We did something interesting here, though. We also asked about a different facet of this topic. Not just the border, but deportations. When we ask about deportations it falls a little bit, 43% approval right there. So small but potentially significant. And we say again, numbers we saw during Trump’s first term as well. One of the things we saw in Trump’s first term, Republicans had a bad midterm. They lost control of the House in 2018. They’re trying to avoid that next year. One of the things they’re hoping will be different this time, and our poll confirms it continues to be the case right here: The Democratic Party is less popular than the Republican Party. Neither is doing great, but the Democrats more unpopular. We did not see that during Trump’s first term. We are seeing that during Trump’s second term. And we asked about some other specific areas here. How about vaccine use in the news this week – Florida relaxing that mandate. What do you think about the use of vaccines? You see broad support here, though it is notable in our poll under 50% now identify themselves as strongly supporting the use of vaccines. And we asked about this topic of gerrymandering, the redrawing of congressional districts, partisan advantage. 82% in this survey said they would rather have a nonpartisan commission than the party in power in a state draw the lines. Now, we don’t know how deep this sentiment actually is, but one thing worth keeping in mind as this is played out, Republicans just did this in Texas.They didn’t need voter approval in Texas. They could just do it in the legislature. California Democrats trying to counter Texas, they’re going to need voter approval this November. This is sort of the baseline sentiment that they’re up against out there. It doesn’t mean the polling looks like this on that topic in California, but this is something to keep an eye on maybe affecting that race.

RealClearPolitics Videos