I've given up hope that MAGA voters will ever turn on Trump. He literally could shoot someone in broad daylight and they would just assume he had good reason or that it was fake, if they even heard about it.
Before I even read this article, I have to ask you a very direct and simple question Nate.
Have we seen any evidence ever, throughout the entire history of both Trump's first and second term, that suggests it's possible for Trump's base to split with him?
I used to follow your approval rating tracker on 538 religiously. I continued to follow approval ratings for the beginning of this term as well and I came to a very simple conclusion. I've never seen trump's approval fall below 37% among all voters, or 80% among republicans, even at his lowest points. It has been one of the most persistent and sticky bases of support among any politician I've looked at.
I'm so exhausted by these "will this destroy Trump's approval among his base?" Tell me, at this point, why you assume this is possible and why does this situation meaningfully warrant asking this question yet again? Is it just for clicks?
This piece was written by Eli, not by Nate. I think the purpose of the piece was not to assign this as a causal event for Trump's support eroding, but to answer the question of whether there is data to support that it's having an effect, which Eli seems to think it mostly has not. I don't disagree that the headline could cause you to feel frustrated, but I think the piece actually explains quite well what you're saying. If that means you'd rather not take the time to read it, that is your purview.
It's entirely possible that super-AIDS get's unleashed tomorrow and 90% of the population is at risk of dying. And yet, if this blog posted an article every day asking "has super-AIDS been released yet?" I would stop reading.
The space of possible things that could happen is many orders of magnitude larger than the space of things we should be considering and thinking about. Repeatedly asking the same question when the meta-information has not changed enough for the probability of the answer itself to change is a waste of time.
But I do not doubt that a blog that posts provocative headlines repeatedly will get clicks in the short term. I'm just trying to determine if this blog is doing that so I can decide if it's worth my time to read.
This blog has a wide variety of content, and I find a lot of it entertaining or useful, especially the models which I can pretend are magic oracles. However, it does use a lot of provocative headlines. I think Nate has even mentioned that a bit in a past article. As a professional gambler, he's very focused on data-driven optimization, and he definitely chooses headlines with clicks in mind.
We haven't dealt with a true "cult of personality" figure, in this country's politics maybe ever. Or at least when it comes to the President; I wouldn't mind if someone pointed one out I'm missing. I think what comes after these leaders is often "balkenization" -- the rifts in the coalition supporting Trump are certainly there already and as Eli's data points out it's Trump holding them together. The real problem Republican's may have in 2026 and 28, is that the coalition that Trump built can really only be operated by himself. That would fit with the man's pathology pretty cleanly and what I've already observed: most everyone aping Trump *cough*DeSantis*cough* seems to fail at it miserably.
Yup. I'm not sure he can hold it together through '28 though. If the midterms are a disaster for the GOP (like a losing the Senate disaster), I think the coalition will crack rather quickly.
In this scenario almost every swing district republican loses, so what's left in the House are the hardest-core MAGA in the safest districts. They'll be in full opposition mode continuing to spout nonsense and obstruct wherever possible, while every other GOP pol is trying to recalibrate for what they think will be the winning lane in '28 post-Trump.
If Vance has any brain cells, he has to break with Trump a little (unless Harris' big failing only applies to Dems /s), which will cause friction too. No Senate means no SCOTUS seats in play, though presumably they'd try to replace Thomas and/or Alito during the lame-duck but with Collins, Tillis, Sullivan, and your pick of TX/OH/IA losing, it's not a given how interested they'd be in playing ball.
Trump has also shown a tendency to sulk after a loss (not campaigning in the '21 GA Senate runoffs being exhibit A). If he's disengaged or just constantly battling investigations, that's two years of gridlock, negative headlines, and having to still defend an extremely unpopular lame-duck POTUS.
I think the non-interventionist stuff wasn't for MAGA, but for the moderates. It made Trump look less neocon/neolib, which normies saw as preferable to starting wars everywhere.
I'd frame this differently. MAGA has to break--that is fracture--without Trump to hold it together. Even if Trump tries to run in 2028, that would facture the movement. Far more likely, different contenders for Republican leadership will choose specific issues to break with Trump, while supporting most of his policies. Whatever the outcome of that struggle, some current MAGA supporters will be on the winning side, and some won't. I can't imagine any individual other than Trump holding MAGA together in its current form.
Will Iran and military adventurism be the key issue? Probably not if the war either ends favorably or badly. But if there's some kind of intermediate outcome, I'd say it's likely. I could see J. D. Vance running on "Trump was great except his advisors steered him wrong on Iran and I tried to stop it," while others claim secret plans to get us out of Iran or pledge to continue the fight.
But there are plenty of other possibilities for decisive fractures. I think Iran is too much in play to be confident about what voters will think about it in 2028. In 2026 I suspect it will give a push to less-MAGA Republican candidates and the effect on Republican versus Democrats will depend on how things develop.
As for who is MAGA? Last week Trump answered that question. MAGA is Trump and it is whatever Trump says that it is. So no surprise that it is a cult of personality. If you look at other cult leaders it's clear that being a mental case is a plus.
If you uncritically believe what Trump says, you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
As for the fake MAGA leaders, those who oppose Trump's policies, the isolationist America Firsters, let's call them what they. are and not sidestep around it. They are white supremacists, Nazi sympathizers, antisemites and/or self pitying whiners, developmentally deficient, who need to blame everyone else for their own life choices.
In some way, shape, or form, MAGA leadership consists of opportunists and grifters, with the grifter-in-chief at the top.
MAGA was broken long before Iran came into the picture
Today, Trump repeatedly referred to the war as an "excursion." It's pretty clear that he meant to call it an "incursion," but as often happens these days, Trump suffered a brain fart.
I don’t see myself as MAGA, but I’m a Trump voter. My guess is that many of his voters feel similar to me: confused why we’re getting into foreign entanglements, but willing to let him cook.
Venezuela made sense given proximity (spheres of influence) and geography (top of SA). I figured in his second term we’d pivot entirely away from the Middle East. The best I can figure is there’s a more strategic goal; Kharg Island is an interesting theory, worth reading if you didn’t see the X post. But it’s also possible he’s just had enough of Iran and while I abhor foreign entanglement, it’s hard to not feel some sense of general good about the removal of the mullahs.
Dispassionately, I don’t see how any military intervention can be successful long term in Iran if we’re not willing to dictate a secular system of government. I’m not an expert but from what I’ve read, support for Islam there has been dropping for decades and now it’s minority status. Either lean into that and force the issue or it seems inevitable the hard liners will hold onto power. Put another way, name the enemy and dictate terms or wind up dancing around it and losing like W.
One area this polling does not treat is religion. Christian nationalists are a major, if not a majority, source of support for Trump. The war against Iran, in concert with Israel, feeds into their beliefs that it will hasten the Second Coming. As far as thinking about who might succeed Trump, almost none of the current contenders look likely to gain the lock on Christian Nationalist support that Trump has. The exception might be Pete Hegseth who has invoked evangelical language to defend the attacks on Iran. If you think that is preposterous, consider a twice-divorced man who boasted grabbing women’s private parts winning the White House—twice.
Nice piece, Eli. Trump has always been a cult of personality, and policy would get awkwardly assigned to him. MAGA-coded policy is fluid because Trump's convictions are fluid. This is why it hasn't caused the atrophy in party support, but the tepid Republican or swing voter for whom interventionism was a key policy position might be shaken. Silver Bulletin (and 538) has always been hesitant to assign much weight to policy polling due to how poor the data ends up being, but I believe a lot of the data routinely finds foreign policy concerns tend to rank toward the bottom. So while it may be a negative for a lot of MAGA voters, the weight they're assigning to it is minimal. If Trump came out tomorrow with a robust immigration policy that would increase the number of immigrants eligible for citizenship, I think there would be a different level of MAGA erosion.
Nate - not a comment on this column, but WSJ had an article today about Aaru -- a company doing market research with bots designed to have specific demographics to represent "synthetic" humans -- with results more accurate than *some* polling. Would like your reaction to this. Viable?
I've given up hope that MAGA voters will ever turn on Trump. He literally could shoot someone in broad daylight and they would just assume he had good reason or that it was fake, if they even heard about it.
Before I even read this article, I have to ask you a very direct and simple question Nate.
Have we seen any evidence ever, throughout the entire history of both Trump's first and second term, that suggests it's possible for Trump's base to split with him?
I used to follow your approval rating tracker on 538 religiously. I continued to follow approval ratings for the beginning of this term as well and I came to a very simple conclusion. I've never seen trump's approval fall below 37% among all voters, or 80% among republicans, even at his lowest points. It has been one of the most persistent and sticky bases of support among any politician I've looked at.
I'm so exhausted by these "will this destroy Trump's approval among his base?" Tell me, at this point, why you assume this is possible and why does this situation meaningfully warrant asking this question yet again? Is it just for clicks?
This piece was written by Eli, not by Nate. I think the purpose of the piece was not to assign this as a causal event for Trump's support eroding, but to answer the question of whether there is data to support that it's having an effect, which Eli seems to think it mostly has not. I don't disagree that the headline could cause you to feel frustrated, but I think the piece actually explains quite well what you're saying. If that means you'd rather not take the time to read it, that is your purview.
There's a first time for everything. We shouldn't just assume something won't happen because it hasn't happened yet.
It's entirely possible that super-AIDS get's unleashed tomorrow and 90% of the population is at risk of dying. And yet, if this blog posted an article every day asking "has super-AIDS been released yet?" I would stop reading.
The space of possible things that could happen is many orders of magnitude larger than the space of things we should be considering and thinking about. Repeatedly asking the same question when the meta-information has not changed enough for the probability of the answer itself to change is a waste of time.
But I do not doubt that a blog that posts provocative headlines repeatedly will get clicks in the short term. I'm just trying to determine if this blog is doing that so I can decide if it's worth my time to read.
This blog has a wide variety of content, and I find a lot of it entertaining or useful, especially the models which I can pretend are magic oracles. However, it does use a lot of provocative headlines. I think Nate has even mentioned that a bit in a past article. As a professional gambler, he's very focused on data-driven optimization, and he definitely chooses headlines with clicks in mind.
We haven't dealt with a true "cult of personality" figure, in this country's politics maybe ever. Or at least when it comes to the President; I wouldn't mind if someone pointed one out I'm missing. I think what comes after these leaders is often "balkenization" -- the rifts in the coalition supporting Trump are certainly there already and as Eli's data points out it's Trump holding them together. The real problem Republican's may have in 2026 and 28, is that the coalition that Trump built can really only be operated by himself. That would fit with the man's pathology pretty cleanly and what I've already observed: most everyone aping Trump *cough*DeSantis*cough* seems to fail at it miserably.
George Washington had a serious cult of personality, but he had no desire to be king, or even president for life.
Yup. I'm not sure he can hold it together through '28 though. If the midterms are a disaster for the GOP (like a losing the Senate disaster), I think the coalition will crack rather quickly.
In this scenario almost every swing district republican loses, so what's left in the House are the hardest-core MAGA in the safest districts. They'll be in full opposition mode continuing to spout nonsense and obstruct wherever possible, while every other GOP pol is trying to recalibrate for what they think will be the winning lane in '28 post-Trump.
If Vance has any brain cells, he has to break with Trump a little (unless Harris' big failing only applies to Dems /s), which will cause friction too. No Senate means no SCOTUS seats in play, though presumably they'd try to replace Thomas and/or Alito during the lame-duck but with Collins, Tillis, Sullivan, and your pick of TX/OH/IA losing, it's not a given how interested they'd be in playing ball.
Trump has also shown a tendency to sulk after a loss (not campaigning in the '21 GA Senate runoffs being exhibit A). If he's disengaged or just constantly battling investigations, that's two years of gridlock, negative headlines, and having to still defend an extremely unpopular lame-duck POTUS.
Could get real ugly real fast for the GOP.
I think the non-interventionist stuff wasn't for MAGA, but for the moderates. It made Trump look less neocon/neolib, which normies saw as preferable to starting wars everywhere.
I'd frame this differently. MAGA has to break--that is fracture--without Trump to hold it together. Even if Trump tries to run in 2028, that would facture the movement. Far more likely, different contenders for Republican leadership will choose specific issues to break with Trump, while supporting most of his policies. Whatever the outcome of that struggle, some current MAGA supporters will be on the winning side, and some won't. I can't imagine any individual other than Trump holding MAGA together in its current form.
Will Iran and military adventurism be the key issue? Probably not if the war either ends favorably or badly. But if there's some kind of intermediate outcome, I'd say it's likely. I could see J. D. Vance running on "Trump was great except his advisors steered him wrong on Iran and I tried to stop it," while others claim secret plans to get us out of Iran or pledge to continue the fight.
But there are plenty of other possibilities for decisive fractures. I think Iran is too much in play to be confident about what voters will think about it in 2028. In 2026 I suspect it will give a push to less-MAGA Republican candidates and the effect on Republican versus Democrats will depend on how things develop.
To start, let's stop trying to normalize Trump. Trump is a walking Petri dish of malignant pathologies. Think I'm exaggerating? Check this out:
https://www.amazon.com/Much-More-Dangerous-Donald-Trump/dp/B0FB479JJW/ref=sr_1_2?crid=7RLURGOF6I5M&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._HXKIJh6Wu_9RZgXSZv-v76_6e6xVKGbWkKE2t4OZWHavn4g0tc3bciskDLU_W-GgZgvgJBad1cy8BWOy_u8LoaonfEMnRHTN5naqBVliiywxwN9cWYl6TsfkdxFlGzsBnMWpg8zSZadNxA3u-AXAZMxl2tvuZWDFbOQy-8qICoJaDFqaEYqItvPDTLiNT5NmimB7UJILM_Na0-ThdIUtvfuwA7ZaaFKomlESRIPVaU.DswjSPLpRToMkSPtmNz24I5rFZ7O5DJgIfDmYt9sDk8&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+dangerous+case+of+donald+trump+book&qid=1773260524&sprefix=the+dangerous+case%2Caps%2C273&sr=8-2
As for who is MAGA? Last week Trump answered that question. MAGA is Trump and it is whatever Trump says that it is. So no surprise that it is a cult of personality. If you look at other cult leaders it's clear that being a mental case is a plus.
If you uncritically believe what Trump says, you suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome.
As for the fake MAGA leaders, those who oppose Trump's policies, the isolationist America Firsters, let's call them what they. are and not sidestep around it. They are white supremacists, Nazi sympathizers, antisemites and/or self pitying whiners, developmentally deficient, who need to blame everyone else for their own life choices.
In some way, shape, or form, MAGA leadership consists of opportunists and grifters, with the grifter-in-chief at the top.
MAGA was broken long before Iran came into the picture
Today, Trump repeatedly referred to the war as an "excursion." It's pretty clear that he meant to call it an "incursion," but as often happens these days, Trump suffered a brain fart.
I don’t see myself as MAGA, but I’m a Trump voter. My guess is that many of his voters feel similar to me: confused why we’re getting into foreign entanglements, but willing to let him cook.
Venezuela made sense given proximity (spheres of influence) and geography (top of SA). I figured in his second term we’d pivot entirely away from the Middle East. The best I can figure is there’s a more strategic goal; Kharg Island is an interesting theory, worth reading if you didn’t see the X post. But it’s also possible he’s just had enough of Iran and while I abhor foreign entanglement, it’s hard to not feel some sense of general good about the removal of the mullahs.
Dispassionately, I don’t see how any military intervention can be successful long term in Iran if we’re not willing to dictate a secular system of government. I’m not an expert but from what I’ve read, support for Islam there has been dropping for decades and now it’s minority status. Either lean into that and force the issue or it seems inevitable the hard liners will hold onto power. Put another way, name the enemy and dictate terms or wind up dancing around it and losing like W.
>Venezuela made sense given proximity (spheres of influence)
I'm not sure exactly how proximity excuses violating another nation's sovereignty.
I don't see the war souring MAGA voters on Trump. I see the possibility of downstream
economic effects souring some MAGA voters on Trump, mostly by causing them to tune out/become less energetic about voting.
One area this polling does not treat is religion. Christian nationalists are a major, if not a majority, source of support for Trump. The war against Iran, in concert with Israel, feeds into their beliefs that it will hasten the Second Coming. As far as thinking about who might succeed Trump, almost none of the current contenders look likely to gain the lock on Christian Nationalist support that Trump has. The exception might be Pete Hegseth who has invoked evangelical language to defend the attacks on Iran. If you think that is preposterous, consider a twice-divorced man who boasted grabbing women’s private parts winning the White House—twice.
Nice piece, Eli. Trump has always been a cult of personality, and policy would get awkwardly assigned to him. MAGA-coded policy is fluid because Trump's convictions are fluid. This is why it hasn't caused the atrophy in party support, but the tepid Republican or swing voter for whom interventionism was a key policy position might be shaken. Silver Bulletin (and 538) has always been hesitant to assign much weight to policy polling due to how poor the data ends up being, but I believe a lot of the data routinely finds foreign policy concerns tend to rank toward the bottom. So while it may be a negative for a lot of MAGA voters, the weight they're assigning to it is minimal. If Trump came out tomorrow with a robust immigration policy that would increase the number of immigrants eligible for citizenship, I think there would be a different level of MAGA erosion.
Nate - not a comment on this column, but WSJ had an article today about Aaru -- a company doing market research with bots designed to have specific demographics to represent "synthetic" humans -- with results more accurate than *some* polling. Would like your reaction to this. Viable?