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Trump's net popularity in his first year in office wobbled around between about -15 and -20. In his second year it rose a bit, to the -10 to -15 range. Remarkably consistent overall, but the upward shift seems to have been real.
A month ago, Trump's net popularity was around -9, about as high as its ever been (except for the first few weeks after inauguration). He's lost about five points since then.
So he's still within his 2018 range, though at the low end of it. And he's got a bit more to lose before he starts hitting his 2017 troughs. As of today, in other words, his polls still look pretty ordinary.
(Ordinary for him, that is. No first-term president since Bush I has ever had polling as bad as Trump "ordinary," at any point in his term.)
But with the shutdown continuing, and the shutdown-specific polling looking really ugly for him, I suspect that a lot of people around him—and a lot of people in the congressional GOP—are beginning to check polling data a lot more closely than they have in a while.
So far Trump's polling has been absurdly consistent: People who hate him hate him, people who love him love him, there are more of the former than the latter, and there aren't many people outside those two categories. That's the story of every poll of his presidency.
If you have to bet, bet on that staying the same. But if it changes, things could get real weird real quick.
Sorry, meant for this to go on the thread, not as a stand-alone: "And because his polling has been so consistent, even a net loss of, say, another five points in the next few weeks would take on an outsized significance to a lot of people."
