The trouble for the president and his party may be that, although his base has indeed stuck with him, it appears neither big enough to secure electoral victories, nor strong enough to resist the constant barrage of negative news without eroding.

A Wall Street Journal / NBC poll recently found that 24 percent of respondents strongly approved of Trump’s performance in office, and another 17 percent somewhat approved; 56 percent strongly or somewhat disapproved. (Those numbers are roughly in line with the average of other recent polls.) Ratings that tilt so far negative usually presage electoral setbacks for the president’s party—and indeed, the past year has seen Republican candidates underperform at the polls, on average, by wide margins.

But the more worrisome finding in that same poll may be the question that Trump himself most cares about: Would respondents vote for Trump if he runs for reelection? Fifty-two percent indicated they’d support a generic Democrat; just 36 percent backed Trump, and only 18 percent said they’d definitely vote for him.

Those findings, taken together, suggest that at least a quarter of those who tell pollsters they strongly approve of his performance aren’t certain they’ll vote for him next time around; at least one in eight of those with positive views aren’t even willing to affirm that they will probably vote for him.

On the other side of the political spectrum, voters appear to have been radicalized by Trump’s tenure in office, much as Obama’s presidency galvanized Republican opposition. In contrast to the 18 percent who will definitely vote for Trump, 38 percent said they would definitely vote for his Democratic opponent; if 24 percent of voters strongly approve of Trump, fully 48 percent strongly disapprove. The polling suggests that the media’s primary failure hasn’t been a refusal to report on Trump’s base of support—it’s hard to open a newspaper without turning to a profile of a Trump supporter—but rather, its relatively scant coverage of the strength and size of the base of opposition Trump has aroused.

But with Fox News switched off, the mood at Mar-a-Lago quickly shifted. Ten minutes after sending the last of his tweets, the president sat down behind his desk at Mar-a-Lago for a videoconference with active-duty military personnel around the world. “I just want to wish everybody a very, very merry Christmas,” he said, according to the pool report. “We say Merry Christmas, again, very, very proudly.”

(In 2016, as in every year of his presidency, President Obama addressed Americans from the White House. “Tomorrow, for the final time as the First Family, we will join our fellow Christians around the world to rejoice in the birth of our Savior,” he said. “And as we retell His story from that Holy Night, we’ll also remember His eternal message, one of boundless love, compassion and hope.” He closed that message, “Merry Christmas, everybody.”)