As a mildly color-blind person, this chart is hard to read! I've been hoping you'd fix up the Donald Trump tracker, because it has similar problems. Several times a week someone new likes my comment over there asking for improvements. Please get some help from an expert to fix these two charts!
We just updated the colors on the Trump approval average to make them easier to read for people who are color-blind! Would you mind saying a bit more about why the Musk chart is hard to read? On our end, it looks like these colors should be fairly easy to differentiate for people who are color-blind.
The Trump chart looks much better! Thanks. The distinction between the Disapprove and Approve line colors is a bit subtle, but I'm quite happy overall.
On the Musk chart, the Favorable line is almost impossible for me to see in the middle of the chart where it's inside the Unfavorable range. The two lines are clearly differentiated from each other, it's the ranges that make the problem. On the right end, where they split, it's just fine.
It's funny, because when I first read your comment I thought, "I'll just take a picture so he can see what I see." LOL
To me it looks like, particularly with the green-weak, the "Favorable" line disappears into the confidence interval in right around July, whereas in "normal" it still pops.
This is obviously not your obligation, Keith, but if you are feeling indulgent, I am very curious and I'm getting stuck on trying to think it through.
If you were to:
- take a screenshot of the Elon chart above
- save it like in Paint or something
- then drag and drop the file into the little simulator in the link
Then do all the different options look the same to you?
Or are there one or two charts where to you, that chart and the "Normal" chart look very similar to you.
If all the chart options look the same to you, then it's not a useful tool for you to use to explain to us.
If there are only one or a few charts that look very similar to the "Normal" for you, then what that suggests is that the non-"Normal" options that we see will look close to what YOU see.
I'll tell you what I note. I'm not sure what to make of it, since the tool seems designed to help non-colorblind people understand colorblindness, and I'm really interested in the inverse view! Also, I don't remember my particular variant of colorblindness, but I think it's relatively mild.
With Normal, as you correctly noted, the Favorable line is hard to see inside the Unfavorable confidence interval.
All three of the Anomalous Trichromacy types are as bad or worse, with Blue-Weak almost completely invisible.
Same for Dichromatic, with Blue-Blind being almost invisible.
The Monochromacy view is maybe the least problematic. I can see both lines reasonably well.
Let me do some puzzling around with your responses. I'll be back once I've got a better idea.
It's definitely a tool for non-colorblind people, but this might give me enough information to let you use it to point out for a non-colorblind person.
This is intrinsically a hard problem, and I bet you get plenty of frustration with this and well-meaning but clueless people, but thank you again for engaging and giving me some feedback to puzzle over.
The viridis color map in R (I know you guys use Stata, but their vignette lays it out pretty well) has some good examples of palettes and how different color schemes look under different color blindness:
Thanks for the suggestion! I used the Datawrapper color blindness checking feature when making these charts. And based on that tool, these colors work well https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/colorblindness-part1
Is it really that crazy? The sitting president was historically know for a reality show, a multitude of bankruptcies, and his inability to keep it in his pants. And that was before his first term, where his capstone moment was an attempt by his followers to storm the capitol building and subvert democratic action. A business 'leader' running a significant department with disastrous results seems almost normal in contrast.
It's been really interesting to see how many Democrats no longer have a mental model for what Cabinet governance looks like. They are so used to the imperial presidency that they can only understand the older form of cabinet governance as an imperial failure mode. Obama ruled as an autocrat who dominated his cabinet. Biden couldn't run a cabinet because he was too senile. And so now Trump governing as a CEO, happy to let his board do what they do best while he provides direction and leadership, is totally alien to the Democrat mind.
This is an odd take considering that Trump picked historically unqualified candidates. The qualities they've been screened for are loyalty to Trump, zeal for his grudges, and unlikeliness to offer any pushback to his directives. He wants people who will do what he says and not much else.
Musk is the only person in his cabinet who enjoys any real autonomy despite not actually being in his cabinet.
You use the word 'historically' but what you mean is "relative to recent history". It wasn't always the case that cabinet officers were bloodless bureaucrats, court eunuchs who would embed themselves silently within the deep state.
I have to ask, are you genuinely surprised? I tend to listen to what the opposition party says, they’ll downplay their faults but are usually right about certain things. The party in power ignores at their peril.
Were Cabinet secretaries during Trump's first term particularly empowered to autonomously decide what their departments should do, without being overruled from above? I did not get that impression at all. For that matter, did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton govern this way?
I'm not disputing that this is worth doing, just noting how absurd the "business leader has to be tracked because he's been handed extraordinary power through a quasi-governmental role" dynamic is.
D.O.G.E is not a popularity contest. Musk is taking personal risk to uncover and correct years of government corruption, ineptitude, and waste. I wouldn't care if all the Marxists and Democrats in the world hated his guts. What he and his team are doing is essential to preserve our Republic.
DOGE has only increased spending (6% year to date), has found no corruption other than committing fraud themselves by(DOGE firing NHTSA employees) , have demonstrated their own ineptitude (repeatedly breaking services), and creating waste (by fraudulently terminating so many people that will easily win future lawsuits).
If you think DOGE is more than tinkering around the edges, you're misinformed. The only real levers to change government spending are Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. Trump just announced the largest defense budget in the history of the world, dwarfing any reductions made elsewhere.
The problem with MAGA-land participating in these discussions is their entire world view is mostly based on taking the talking points spewed by Trump & Co. at face value. So when they come into a data focused space like this comment section, where you actually are expected to provide some independent receipts backing up arguments, they’re a total fish out of water.
Then bring this to congress and have spending properly mapped out line by line. Get it approved. Have a debate. Just gutting things without thought to consequences is wildly irresponsible and unconstitutional.
It also allows the next administration to repurpose money as they see fit: how about every organization that receives federal money must allow trans women into the female bathroom and have specific DEI criteria or it’s cancelled? Don’t like it? Tough. El Salvador for you.
Thanks for this metric , Nate. Heuristic empiricism would have come up with an analogous trend. Still nice to see a more robust finding . I think you’re missing a key point- the greater is his unpopularity the more likely Trump will want him to stay for two reasons: 1 his negativity deflects off Trump like a shield but 2. Narcissists love badly performing peers.
Nate’s just aggregating polling data that’s already widely available, some of which has been available at least as far back as the beginning of last year. If Musk were going to sue over something, he should’ve started suing all the firms polling his popularity a long time ago.
Given the fact that he is so unpopular that Tesla sales have declined sharply and it has been reported by the Wall Street Journal that Tesla's board is looking to replace him as CEO, I have been wondering if he still is the richest. Probably so, but less and less. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
As a mildly color-blind person, this chart is hard to read! I've been hoping you'd fix up the Donald Trump tracker, because it has similar problems. Several times a week someone new likes my comment over there asking for improvements. Please get some help from an expert to fix these two charts!
We just updated the colors on the Trump approval average to make them easier to read for people who are color-blind! Would you mind saying a bit more about why the Musk chart is hard to read? On our end, it looks like these colors should be fairly easy to differentiate for people who are color-blind.
The Trump chart looks much better! Thanks. The distinction between the Disapprove and Approve line colors is a bit subtle, but I'm quite happy overall.
On the Musk chart, the Favorable line is almost impossible for me to see in the middle of the chart where it's inside the Unfavorable range. The two lines are clearly differentiated from each other, it's the ranges that make the problem. On the right end, where they split, it's just fine.
It's funny, because when I first read your comment I thought, "I'll just take a picture so he can see what I see." LOL
Okay so I threw this chart into this: https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/
To me it looks like, particularly with the green-weak, the "Favorable" line disappears into the confidence interval in right around July, whereas in "normal" it still pops.
This is obviously not your obligation, Keith, but if you are feeling indulgent, I am very curious and I'm getting stuck on trying to think it through.
If you were to:
- take a screenshot of the Elon chart above
- save it like in Paint or something
- then drag and drop the file into the little simulator in the link
Then do all the different options look the same to you?
Or are there one or two charts where to you, that chart and the "Normal" chart look very similar to you.
If all the chart options look the same to you, then it's not a useful tool for you to use to explain to us.
If there are only one or a few charts that look very similar to the "Normal" for you, then what that suggests is that the non-"Normal" options that we see will look close to what YOU see.
I'll tell you what I note. I'm not sure what to make of it, since the tool seems designed to help non-colorblind people understand colorblindness, and I'm really interested in the inverse view! Also, I don't remember my particular variant of colorblindness, but I think it's relatively mild.
With Normal, as you correctly noted, the Favorable line is hard to see inside the Unfavorable confidence interval.
All three of the Anomalous Trichromacy types are as bad or worse, with Blue-Weak almost completely invisible.
Same for Dichromatic, with Blue-Blind being almost invisible.
The Monochromacy view is maybe the least problematic. I can see both lines reasonably well.
Thanks so much for doing this, Keith!
Let me do some puzzling around with your responses. I'll be back once I've got a better idea.
It's definitely a tool for non-colorblind people, but this might give me enough information to let you use it to point out for a non-colorblind person.
This is intrinsically a hard problem, and I bet you get plenty of frustration with this and well-meaning but clueless people, but thank you again for engaging and giving me some feedback to puzzle over.
The viridis color map in R (I know you guys use Stata, but their vignette lays it out pretty well) has some good examples of palettes and how different color schemes look under different color blindness:
https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/viridis/vignettes/intro-to-viridis.html
Thanks for the suggestion! I used the Datawrapper color blindness checking feature when making these charts. And based on that tool, these colors work well https://www.datawrapper.de/blog/colorblindness-part1
Crazy that we live in a world where where tracking the favorability of a businessperson as if he/she were a politician is a real thing.
Is it really that crazy? The sitting president was historically know for a reality show, a multitude of bankruptcies, and his inability to keep it in his pants. And that was before his first term, where his capstone moment was an attempt by his followers to storm the capitol building and subvert democratic action. A business 'leader' running a significant department with disastrous results seems almost normal in contrast.
He's the actual president who runs the cabinet meetings, Trump just tweets about tariffs and golfs.
It's been really interesting to see how many Democrats no longer have a mental model for what Cabinet governance looks like. They are so used to the imperial presidency that they can only understand the older form of cabinet governance as an imperial failure mode. Obama ruled as an autocrat who dominated his cabinet. Biden couldn't run a cabinet because he was too senile. And so now Trump governing as a CEO, happy to let his board do what they do best while he provides direction and leadership, is totally alien to the Democrat mind.
This is an odd take considering that Trump picked historically unqualified candidates. The qualities they've been screened for are loyalty to Trump, zeal for his grudges, and unlikeliness to offer any pushback to his directives. He wants people who will do what he says and not much else.
Musk is the only person in his cabinet who enjoys any real autonomy despite not actually being in his cabinet.
You use the word 'historically' but what you mean is "relative to recent history". It wasn't always the case that cabinet officers were bloodless bureaucrats, court eunuchs who would embed themselves silently within the deep state.
Musk is also the only individual who's not wildly incompetent, besides like Scott Bessent
It's like you live in a universe entirely invented in your own mind. It's pretty fascinating.
I have to ask, are you genuinely surprised? I tend to listen to what the opposition party says, they’ll downplay their faults but are usually right about certain things. The party in power ignores at their peril.
Were Cabinet secretaries during Trump's first term particularly empowered to autonomously decide what their departments should do, without being overruled from above? I did not get that impression at all. For that matter, did George W. Bush and Bill Clinton govern this way?
Matt Yglesias argued years ago that the influence of Cabinet secretaries in particular is highly overrated: https://www.slowboring.com/p/joe-bidens-cabinet-isnt-what-matters
Real business people care about the perception of their prospective customers.
And even now Tesla's market cap is bigger than the next 9 manufacturers.
Which has never made sense to me, when you actually compare their revenue and profit to those other manufacturers.
If a meme stock made sense, it wouldn't be a meme stock.
https://electrek.co/2025/04/01/tesla-is-sitting-on-200-million-worth-of-cybertruck-inventory/
A $0 trade-in value has to mean something eventually. Perhaps PG&E will start buying them to use as battery backup.
I'm not disputing that this is worth doing, just noting how absurd the "business leader has to be tracked because he's been handed extraordinary power through a quasi-governmental role" dynamic is.
Of course public figure trackers have been followed for a very long time - that is what Q ratings are about.
Publicly released polls about Musk go back earlier than Nate covers here :
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-americans-really-feel-about-elon-musk/
https://today.yougov.com/topics/economy/trackers/fame-and-popularity-elon-musk
The creation of the Silver Bulletin tracker probably says more about Nate and his audience.
D.O.G.E is not a popularity contest. Musk is taking personal risk to uncover and correct years of government corruption, ineptitude, and waste. I wouldn't care if all the Marxists and Democrats in the world hated his guts. What he and his team are doing is essential to preserve our Republic.
DOGE has only increased spending (6% year to date), has found no corruption other than committing fraud themselves by(DOGE firing NHTSA employees) , have demonstrated their own ineptitude (repeatedly breaking services), and creating waste (by fraudulently terminating so many people that will easily win future lawsuits).
It would help were he not so ignorant and incompetent at the DOGE work.
Your use of the term Marxist shows that you're not a serious person
If you think DOGE is more than tinkering around the edges, you're misinformed. The only real levers to change government spending are Medicare, Social Security, and Defense. Trump just announced the largest defense budget in the history of the world, dwarfing any reductions made elsewhere.
The problem with MAGA-land participating in these discussions is their entire world view is mostly based on taking the talking points spewed by Trump & Co. at face value. So when they come into a data focused space like this comment section, where you actually are expected to provide some independent receipts backing up arguments, they’re a total fish out of water.
Then bring this to congress and have spending properly mapped out line by line. Get it approved. Have a debate. Just gutting things without thought to consequences is wildly irresponsible and unconstitutional.
It also allows the next administration to repurpose money as they see fit: how about every organization that receives federal money must allow trans women into the female bathroom and have specific DEI criteria or it’s cancelled? Don’t like it? Tough. El Salvador for you.
I have never wished for a laugh react so hard in my life
Care to tell us what you are smoking?
It'd be interesting to see a “How Popular is Nate Silver?” tracker
I liked him when he put effort into the posts I pay him to write. Now...not so much.
I wish I could like this a hundred times
In October 2024, Nate was pretty popular. But by late November, not so much.
Thanks for this metric , Nate. Heuristic empiricism would have come up with an analogous trend. Still nice to see a more robust finding . I think you’re missing a key point- the greater is his unpopularity the more likely Trump will want him to stay for two reasons: 1 his negativity deflects off Trump like a shield but 2. Narcissists love badly performing peers.
You think he'll sue you? This is potentially more damaging than that private jet tracker.
Nate’s just aggregating polling data that’s already widely available, some of which has been available at least as far back as the beginning of last year. If Musk were going to sue over something, he should’ve started suing all the firms polling his popularity a long time ago.
Musk seems like he sues based on impact & PR, not logic.
Maybe he’s not as unpopular as he thought
Given the fact that he is so unpopular that Tesla sales have declined sharply and it has been reported by the Wall Street Journal that Tesla's board is looking to replace him as CEO, I have been wondering if he still is the richest. Probably so, but less and less. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
The Musk numbers are interesting. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Tesla board is looking at replacing him as CEO of Tesla.
Curious how this tracks with the favorability of Tesla.