THE PRESIDENTIAL STANDING – AT 11:40 A.M. ET:  Tonight the president delivers the annual State of the Union message.  I guess I'll have to watch, as you'll expect me too, but I'd rather be watching a good story on Investigation Discovery. 

A few words about the State of the Union message:  No one actually cares.  News about the speech will probably disappear in a few days.  The news networks build up the SOTU because they'll be broadcasting it live, and the buildup is part of the show.  But few such presidential speeches are memorable.  Indeed, there was a time when the president simply sent the written speech up to Congress without actually delivering it.  We should go back to those days.

I do look forward to possible disruptions in the House gallery, where visitors sit.  Tickets are given out by members of Congress, and some mischievous members, probably most or all from the California delegation, manage to give tickets to certifiable nutjobs, just so we can have a moment of disruption.  We will then never be told, of course, who gave tickets to whom. 

Gallup is publishing, before the speech, a survey of where the president stands in the states.  We should note that Gallup generally has underpolled Mr. Trump, so I'm assuming the president's actual numbers are a bit higher.  But the comparison among states is interesting.  From Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's job approval rating averaged 38% throughout the U.S. in 2017, but at the state level it ranged from a high of 61% in West Virginia to a low of 26% in Vermont.

Trump averaged 50% or higher approval in 12 states in total, primarily in the states where he received the most votes in the 2016 election. In addition to West Virginia, the states where at least half the respondents approved of Trump included several western states (Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Alaska), several southern states (Oklahoma, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas) and two Midwestern states (North and South Dakota).

Trump earned between 40% and 49% approval -- above his national average -- in 20 states. These were predominantly in the Midwest and South, and included several of the key rustbelt states that were critical to his 2016 victory: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Fewer than 40% of respondents approved of Trump in the remaining 18 states, 14 of which are located in the East and West -- his worst performing regions in the election. In addition to Vermont, his ratings were particularly low -- below 30% -- in Massachusetts (27%), California (29%) and Hawaii (29%). Maryland, New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island round out the states where fewer than one-third of the respondents approved.

These results are based on 171,469 Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted nationally throughout 2017. Gallup interviewed more than 1,000 respondents in 39 states in 2017, and no fewer than 471 in any other state. Each state's sample is weighted to match U.S. Census Bureau demographic parameters for that state's adult population.

COMMENT:  Mr. Trump currently stands at 43% approval in the Rasmussen tracker, which has tended to be pretty accurate.  Please recall that on election day, 2016, he was well behind in the traditional polls.  He is not doing badly at all – Obama spent a good chunk of his presidency in the mid-forties – and Mr. Trump's strong economy will help him in 2018.

January 30,  2018