"It’s always possible that pollsters are missing Trump voters,
but if they don’t show up to vote, that won’t matter for Republicans next year."
The key takeaway for why polls should be very careful trying to 'adjust' for the 2026 election without being acutely aware of why their results were off, and why accepting that Trump outperformed his polling by about 2% of the vote shouldn't be taken into account when Trump is not on the ballot.
But enthusiasm should be watched very carefully by both sides going forward. Trump's methodology involves stirring the pot and whipping up his national audience, so weak enthusiasm for Trump could lead to supporters more likely to be burned out by such tactics.
Democratic enthusiasm is weak, but they don't have a singular leader who incites the base, making them less likely to be burned out by similar tactics. Hell, imagine a FDR type walking up to a microphone, grabbing it, and saying 'No More Fundraising Emails.' The Democrats would lose their minds, and the resulting 'celebration' would be like Philadelphia after an eagles game, and there wouldn't be a DNC official safe from being tossed in the river.
Another possible presentation of the weak/strong support graph: show it as a filled line graph. That way, we can visually add together different groups. (e.g., adding together weak and strong support, all but strongly oppose, etc.)
Here's the main omission in these "Trump Popularity" polls - and the one that could cause another complete miss on predicting the 2026 Midterms:
You need to show the current "Democrat Popularity" polls along side those of Trump.
Because the country, writ large, doesn't like EITHER Trump OR the Democrats. So the 2026 Midterms will be decided by which side is less hated, because neither side is liked.
The problem with an approval/disapproval rating taken from a selection of all voters is Trump is always going to lose because he's so polarizing. If you don't like Trump you won't approve of anything he does. What matters most is how Republicans voters feel. If you don't like him and didn't vote for him in the first place hating him more now doesn’t matter.
From the recent Emerson College poll cited in the dashboard:
“Trump’s base of Republican voters consider his second term to be more of a success, 86% to 14%, whereas Democrats consider it a failure, 88% to 12%,” Kimball added.
Plus from the same poll when asked if they would vote the same way now as in 2024 94% of Republicans said yes vs 93% of Democrats giving Trump a 48%-47% advantage.
It would be nice to see approval rating broken down by party affiliation.
It's rather comical watching Republican partisans grab the goalposts and sprint away with them for the the last 100+ days to create some way of labeling a failure of historical proportions as anything else.
Trumps approval among Republicans as president vs. Harris's approval among Democrats as (checks notes) not the president, is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
“What matters most is how Republicans voters feel.”
What matters most is how voters feel. Even general sentiment is important. If he won 2024 at (and I’m making up numbers here) 49-44 approve/disapprove and we know the breakdown of strongly disapprove is say 38%, if the shift today is more substantial this has implications on if he’s above water with a majority of folks today, and how they like how he’s implementing his policies. Republicans aren’t the only voters and they aren’t the only ones who sway public opinion (although too many folks get their cues from right wing media).
Trump won 49.8% vs 48.3%. So if his support is holding in that base as we go toward the midterms but the Democrat support is softening it's going to make a difference. The Democrats have no "spiritual" leader right now and we know that Trump is excellent at rallying the troops.
Trump is terrible at rallying the troops, except for himself. He cost the runoffs in GA in 2020, has been abysmal at midterms his entire political career. He clearly turns out his voters, but we’ll need to see more evidence that he’s turning out voters for republicans. He outperformed the House and Senate and Governors in the swing states and Harris underperformed. Plus Dems did better in 2018 without a spiritual leader. All that’s to say, when is a choice between a regular Democrat policy and Republican policy, Dems do better. Plus the party in the whitehouse performs poorly in midterms (except 2002 and 2022). One of those was war time and the other was MAGA time.
You need to understand: you can't compare a percentage of a percentage and get anything useful without knowing Anything about the actual numbers involved. That math don't math, as they say.
You're also assuming his voters are the base, which isn't correct the swing voters may very well have moved away from him in entirety, making them "the most important voters". Not his base.
This is why there needs to be a split in approval. We need to know what share of Republicans and Independents approve or disapprove.
I'm not assuming that the 49.8% of voters are his base, that's the base number that we have to start with.
I doubt that any of the voters who voted for Harris have switched over to approving of Trump. So you start with almost half of the entire voter base being negative. But if his approval rating is only single digits most of the voters who voted for him are not deserting.
An election polls 150 million people. But an opinion poll only captures 1,000 or 2. All you have to work with is percentages and extrapolation.
Seems like the trends are clear. The attempt at a positive vision on tariffs has largely flopped - Trump should have focused his trade fire on China not our allies - and the Democrats / business community have succeeded in linking tariffs to inflation, which isn’t hard to do. The administration in its chaotic way seems to be responding to the polls. But some of the damage is done especially if we don’t see meaningful trade breakthroughs with Europe, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. By meaningful I mean reflecting a choice to ride with the US over the CCP on trade. Whether or not one agrees with disentanglement from China, and I have doubts as to whether Cold War 2 makes sense for the US medium term, its a coherent strategy American voters and our allies abroad surely expected and understand.
Here I disagree. The most salient aspect of tariffs in terms of domestic politics is how certain influential subpopulations--union workers--views protectionism as compared to the overall public.
Sure, a global tariff policy could be sustained by strong support from swing constituencies, if the broader disapproval were mild. But “Trump’s tariffs”, like “Biden’s spending bills”, now seem linked in the public imagination to prices. To be clear, tariffs have not to date meaningfully impacted actual prices. No matter. If / when inflation is perceived to have returned, Republicans will suffer, perhaps even among the constituency that is glad we’re finally taking on the real red menace, Canada.
Biden did not retract Trump's tariffs after assuming office. He did not attempt to resurrect TPP either. And of course Biden's administration suffered from the worst inflation since the 1970's.
Why did Biden continue Trump's policies? Because it was obvious to everyone that Democrats were hemorrhaging blue collar voters, a critical component of any successful electoral coalition. I suspect that it doesn't matter who gets elected in 2028--Democrat or Republican--because whoever the winner is domestic political considerations will trump everything else in terms of protectionist measures for American manufacturing.
"It’s always possible that pollsters are missing Trump voters,
but if they don’t show up to vote, that won’t matter for Republicans next year."
The key takeaway for why polls should be very careful trying to 'adjust' for the 2026 election without being acutely aware of why their results were off, and why accepting that Trump outperformed his polling by about 2% of the vote shouldn't be taken into account when Trump is not on the ballot.
But enthusiasm should be watched very carefully by both sides going forward. Trump's methodology involves stirring the pot and whipping up his national audience, so weak enthusiasm for Trump could lead to supporters more likely to be burned out by such tactics.
Democratic enthusiasm is weak, but they don't have a singular leader who incites the base, making them less likely to be burned out by similar tactics. Hell, imagine a FDR type walking up to a microphone, grabbing it, and saying 'No More Fundraising Emails.' The Democrats would lose their minds, and the resulting 'celebration' would be like Philadelphia after an eagles game, and there wouldn't be a DNC official safe from being tossed in the river.
Another possible presentation of the weak/strong support graph: show it as a filled line graph. That way, we can visually add together different groups. (e.g., adding together weak and strong support, all but strongly oppose, etc.)
Here's the main omission in these "Trump Popularity" polls - and the one that could cause another complete miss on predicting the 2026 Midterms:
You need to show the current "Democrat Popularity" polls along side those of Trump.
Because the country, writ large, doesn't like EITHER Trump OR the Democrats. So the 2026 Midterms will be decided by which side is less hated, because neither side is liked.
The problem with an approval/disapproval rating taken from a selection of all voters is Trump is always going to lose because he's so polarizing. If you don't like Trump you won't approve of anything he does. What matters most is how Republicans voters feel. If you don't like him and didn't vote for him in the first place hating him more now doesn’t matter.
From the recent Emerson College poll cited in the dashboard:
“Trump’s base of Republican voters consider his second term to be more of a success, 86% to 14%, whereas Democrats consider it a failure, 88% to 12%,” Kimball added.
Plus from the same poll when asked if they would vote the same way now as in 2024 94% of Republicans said yes vs 93% of Democrats giving Trump a 48%-47% advantage.
It would be nice to see approval rating broken down by party affiliation.
It's rather comical watching Republican partisans grab the goalposts and sprint away with them for the the last 100+ days to create some way of labeling a failure of historical proportions as anything else.
Trumps approval among Republicans as president vs. Harris's approval among Democrats as (checks notes) not the president, is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Don't get me wrong. I'm definitely in the Disapproval column. I think he's doing a lousy job on the economy especially.
“What matters most is how Republicans voters feel.”
What matters most is how voters feel. Even general sentiment is important. If he won 2024 at (and I’m making up numbers here) 49-44 approve/disapprove and we know the breakdown of strongly disapprove is say 38%, if the shift today is more substantial this has implications on if he’s above water with a majority of folks today, and how they like how he’s implementing his policies. Republicans aren’t the only voters and they aren’t the only ones who sway public opinion (although too many folks get their cues from right wing media).
Trump won 49.8% vs 48.3%. So if his support is holding in that base as we go toward the midterms but the Democrat support is softening it's going to make a difference. The Democrats have no "spiritual" leader right now and we know that Trump is excellent at rallying the troops.
Trump is terrible at rallying the troops, except for himself. He cost the runoffs in GA in 2020, has been abysmal at midterms his entire political career. He clearly turns out his voters, but we’ll need to see more evidence that he’s turning out voters for republicans. He outperformed the House and Senate and Governors in the swing states and Harris underperformed. Plus Dems did better in 2018 without a spiritual leader. All that’s to say, when is a choice between a regular Democrat policy and Republican policy, Dems do better. Plus the party in the whitehouse performs poorly in midterms (except 2002 and 2022). One of those was war time and the other was MAGA time.
You need to understand: you can't compare a percentage of a percentage and get anything useful without knowing Anything about the actual numbers involved. That math don't math, as they say.
You're also assuming his voters are the base, which isn't correct the swing voters may very well have moved away from him in entirety, making them "the most important voters". Not his base.
This is why there needs to be a split in approval. We need to know what share of Republicans and Independents approve or disapprove.
I'm not assuming that the 49.8% of voters are his base, that's the base number that we have to start with.
I doubt that any of the voters who voted for Harris have switched over to approving of Trump. So you start with almost half of the entire voter base being negative. But if his approval rating is only single digits most of the voters who voted for him are not deserting.
An election polls 150 million people. But an opinion poll only captures 1,000 or 2. All you have to work with is percentages and extrapolation.
Great analysis, Nate. Like the new approval trackers and the discussion on poll accuracy.
Seems like the trends are clear. The attempt at a positive vision on tariffs has largely flopped - Trump should have focused his trade fire on China not our allies - and the Democrats / business community have succeeded in linking tariffs to inflation, which isn’t hard to do. The administration in its chaotic way seems to be responding to the polls. But some of the damage is done especially if we don’t see meaningful trade breakthroughs with Europe, Japan, Canada, and Mexico. By meaningful I mean reflecting a choice to ride with the US over the CCP on trade. Whether or not one agrees with disentanglement from China, and I have doubts as to whether Cold War 2 makes sense for the US medium term, its a coherent strategy American voters and our allies abroad surely expected and understand.
Here I disagree. The most salient aspect of tariffs in terms of domestic politics is how certain influential subpopulations--union workers--views protectionism as compared to the overall public.
Sure, a global tariff policy could be sustained by strong support from swing constituencies, if the broader disapproval were mild. But “Trump’s tariffs”, like “Biden’s spending bills”, now seem linked in the public imagination to prices. To be clear, tariffs have not to date meaningfully impacted actual prices. No matter. If / when inflation is perceived to have returned, Republicans will suffer, perhaps even among the constituency that is glad we’re finally taking on the real red menace, Canada.
Biden did not retract Trump's tariffs after assuming office. He did not attempt to resurrect TPP either. And of course Biden's administration suffered from the worst inflation since the 1970's.
Why did Biden continue Trump's policies? Because it was obvious to everyone that Democrats were hemorrhaging blue collar voters, a critical component of any successful electoral coalition. I suspect that it doesn't matter who gets elected in 2028--Democrat or Republican--because whoever the winner is domestic political considerations will trump everything else in terms of protectionist measures for American manufacturing.
Not to toot my own horn, but
https://slaw.substack.com/p/the-most-important-interview-on-tariffs