Measuring Trump’s Approval Rating

In the runup to last year’s presidential election, various sites appeared that combined the results of numerous public opinion polls with the aim of getting a better picture of which candidate was ahead and which behind. In many cases the poll aggregators also weighted each poll to reflect pollsters’ historical accuracy, giving more weight to the more accurate ones.

Following the election, most of these sites shut down, presumably to reappear in the countdown to the next nation-wide election. One aggregation site that has continued is called Silver Bulletin, named for its founder, Nate Silver.

The chart below shows the output from the Silver Bulletin. The red line shows the percentage of people who say they approve of Donald Trump, using Silver’s model to combine the results of many polls. The black line shows the percentage who disapproved of Trump.

The chart shows that following Trump’s inauguration, his approval line was substantially above his disapproval line, at about 52% compared to 40%. The two lines eventually cross by March 10 or so, and now there are slightly more approvals than disapprovals.

A second active aggregator is a site called Real Clear Politics. The next figure comes from a screenshot of that site between February 16 and March 16. Although it differs from the Silver pattern, it follows the same overall pattern, with a decreasing approval line and an increasing disapproval line that eventually cross.

A poll taken by the Marquette Law School between March sixth and ninth is the only assessment of sentiments among Wisconsin voters, as opposed to national voters, taken since Trump’s inauguration. It shows Wisconsin voters may have begun turning against Trump slightly sooner than national voters as measured by Silver’s aggregation results, with more Wisconsin voters disapproving than approved of Trump, as shown in the graph below.

The Marquette poll results confirm that we are living in very polarized times. The graph below shows how Trump approval varies by party choice. Ninety-three percent of self-described Republicans said they approved of Trump, compared to only 2% of Democrats. The effect was even stronger with voters who disapproved of Trump: 97% of Democrats disapproved of Trump compared to 6% of Republicans.

Comparing the graph above with the next graph suggests that there is some, but very small evidence that the overwhelming support for Trump among Republicans has not completely translated into support for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As is well known by now, DOGE has been busy firing federal employees in order to save funds to pay for lowering taxes on people with the highest incomes.

In the chart above, 93% of Republicans approved of Trump, but in the chart below 88% agreed that Doge is “properly carrying out Trump’s agenda by taking control of government agencies and shutting down programs.” The 6% of Republicans who disapproved of Trump in the first chart were joined by another 5% of Republicans who believed DOGE was “disrupting required programs.”

This suggests that DOGE’s excesses and meanness are starting to resonate with some Republicans. Even if so, this effect is a small one.

One pattern that appears time and again throughout the Marquette poll results is the difference in results due to gender. Generally women prefer the anti-Trump side of an issue by about ten percentage points. As the next graph shows, a majority of men approve of Trump, yet a majority of women disapprove.

Over the years, multiple polls have found that immigration and the economy are the two issues that do the most for Trump. A recent survey (taken March 6-9), and sponsored by CNN asked respondents, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling” several issues. The next graph shows the responses. In this case the only issue that helps Trump is immigration. On the economy, which was considered Trump’s second best issue after immigration, Trump’s management is rejected 44% to 56%. The worst for Trump is tariffs.

The polls show President Trump slipping in popularity in part because of the meanness of the mass firings of government employees, many of whom were veterans. If this polling trend continues, will Trump back off? Or will he react by accelerating his violations of the U.S. Constitution to grab more power?