President Donald Trump’s favorability rating in Arizona takes big hit
Jul 25, 2018, 11:08 AM | Updated: 3:18 pm
PHOENIX – President Donald Trump’s favorability rating in Arizona took a big hit over the last month, according to a Phoenix research firm that tracks political trends.
New polling by Data Orbital showed that 47.8 percent of the state’s likely voters have an unfavorable view of the president, with 42.8 percent favorable.
That was a large swing from the previous month’s polling, when more Arizonans had a favorable view (46.5 percent) of Trump than an unfavorable one (44.8 percent).
The recent polling was conducted July 19-21, several days after Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.
Data Orbital President George Khalaf told KTAR News 92.3 FM on Wednesday that some of Trump’s favorability decline can be attributed to a shift in his own party’s views after the meeting.
“We actually for the first time in a while have seen some movement with Republican voters that are likely to vote in the general elections,” Khalaf said. “They went from about 80 percent favorability in our June survey to 74 percent or so favorability in this survey here at the third week of July.
“So there has been a little bit of movement because of Russia and because of the current news of the day amongst Republicans, and then definite movement with independents, with Democrats essentially being identical to where they have been.”
While the month-to-month dip was large, Trump’s favorability rating is higher now than it was over the first part of the year.
“We actually had him worse the first handful of months of 2018,” Khalaf said.
The poll was conducted before the latest White House controversy – the release of pre-election recordings of Trump and former personal attorney Michael Cohen discussing potential hush money payments to a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump.
“I highly doubt the Cohen tapes will have an effect on favorability,” Khalaf said. “I think Russia is much more likely to do so.”
The live telephone survey of 600 likely Arizona general election voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent and a 95 percent confidence interval.
KTAR News 92.3 FM’s Jim Cross contributed to this report.
