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Adjusting across polls, Trump's approval rating is probably under 40% [1] which is very unusual for a first-term President [2]. Not sure where you got the idea

• TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  'RealClearPolitics' keeps a decent aggregation of poll numbers. You can see them here [1]. His average approval for their rolling period is 41.7%. You'll scarcely find any poll that drops below 40%. Their table copy pastes nicely and you can easily drop it into a calc table to run whatever analysis you want. For instance of the past 50 polls (going back to july) there have been only 5 pollsters report anything below 40% - they were 39/38/38/38/36. The average is 42.98% approval. Obama's rating for this quarter, at least according to Gallup was 45. That 2% is going to fall within their margin of error which is why I think it's safe to call them basically the same, at this time. Obama was unusually popular early on in his presidency as he was hugely charismatic, Bush received a huge popularity boost following 9/11, so aggregate values can are not necessarily indicative of how presidents were viewed throughout their terms or at any given moment. But in any case getting below 40% would indeed require substantial "adjusting." [1] - https://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html https://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_j...
  • dnomad 8y ago
    I included links to past popularity ratings. That article makes it clear that Trump has been unusually unpopular from his inaguration. > The average is 42.98% approval. I don't think your polling model actually means anything. As the RCP data makes clear there's an enormous spread to those polls. What do you think that average represents? > Obama's rating for this quarter, at least according to Gallup was 45. Why do you only consider Gallup's poll for Obama at this time. Why not consider averages? Isn't that your model? You seem to be trying very hard to suggest that Trump and Obama have "basically the same" popularity at this time but it doesn't make any sense. Trump's approval rating never rises above 45% for his second term but Obama's approval rating almost never falls below 45%. It's quite a stretch to suggest their popularity is comparable. [1] https://qz.com/889644/obamas-approval-rating-from-his-first-day-to-his-last-in-charts/ https://qz.com/889644/obamas-approval-rating-from-his-first-...
    • TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      That's definitely a fair point. The reason I was using Gallup is because they tend to be a high quality pollster and I'd assumed the aggregate data for Obama would be a bit more difficult to find. It's not. Here [1] are the aggregate data for Obama's presidency. At this point in time during his presidency he was rolling at an aggregate 44.3% approval, so we have a total aggregate popularity difference of 2.6%. And once again, as I've constantly stressed, I'm speaking about this moment in time as that is generally what people are referring to when comparing presidents at any given moment in time. E.g. you would not say Bush was a popular president, yet he had an average approval rating of 49.4%, which was even higher than Obama. The thing that confounds it is averages -- his popularity shot to near 100% after 9/11 from which it started a long slow downward slide as the 'rally around the flag' effect waned. And similar for Obama. He is an absolutely phenomenal and charismatic speaker and he seemed to be living up to his promises at first, which made him tremendously popular. But as it became clear that his early actions belied his actual character, his popularity waned -- leaving him, moment for moment, pretty comparable to Trump at this point in time. Yet if you polled people on these issues I think there's no doubt that perception vs reality would be incredibly skewed. And for this I think both the social media and the media have played major roles. And this distortion of reality is not productive for a healthy democracy.