I’ve made this point before, but it’s interesting enough to make it again. Despite all of Trump’s endless controversies, idiotic feuds, assorted ups and downs, and even taking into account his convention bounce and recent meltdown, his overall trajectory has been surprisingly stable over the past year: down. His support in a matchup with Hillary Clinton has declined steadily by about a point every few months, and the fact that it’s down to about 40 percent right now is roughly what you could have predicted back in May.
Trump may have won over the Republican base—helped along by the fact that the rest of the Republican field couldn’t really criticize him wholeheartedly—but among non-true-believers, the more they see of Trump the less they like him. His current descent into madness may hurt him even more than usual, or it may blow over and do him no more than the usual damage. But that’s enough. At this rate, he’ll be lucky to break 43 percent in the popular vote in November once you give him a share of the currently undecided voters.
