CNN's "100% MAGA Trump approval" segment omits key nuance for virality
Plus, voters overwhelmingly oppose putting boots on the ground in Iran. Your weekly political data roundup for March 22, 2026.
This is my weekly Sunday roundup of new political data published over the last seven days.
Leading off: CNN ran a viral segment this week in which a very energetic Harry Enten, the network’s “Chief Data Analyst,” claimed that 100% of MAGA Republicans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. The White House loved it, with Trump repeating the number to the press on Friday. But the whole analysis is unfortunately a misleading tautology, and it hides the real erosion happening in Trump’s coalition.
On deck this week: As usual in poll release weeks, Tuesday’s Deep Dive will be replaced with an article highlighting findings from our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll.
Thank you for reading Strength In Numbers for another week! On with the data.
1. A viral CNN segment poll obscures the real weakness in Trump’s coalition
What happened
On Wednesday, CNN brought on Harry Enten to answer a simple question: Is the war in Iran fracturing MAGA?
Enten said no: “Tucker Carlson be darned,” he said, referring to the former Fox News host who has been criticizing Trump’s war in Iran. According to Enten, a new NBC News poll shows that 100% of self-identified MAGA Republicans approve of Trump. Zero disapprove. Enten called it one of those moments where the numbers “jump off the screen.” Here’s the main quote from the segment.
Just take a look here. MAGA, GOP, view of Trump: approve, 100 percent. If you are a member of MAGA and the GOP, you approve of Donald John Trump. Zero percent say that they disapprove. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to know you can’t go higher than 100 percent. He is the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Now, there are some Republicans who disapprove of Donald John Trump, but they are not members of the Make America Great Again movement.
Trump world loved the segment. Standing on the White House lawn Thursday, the president told reporters: “CNN came out with a poll that I’m at 100%. They said they have never seen a poll like that.” Eric Trump posted the segment on Instagram. Karoline Leavitt shared it on X.
But as I argued last Sunday, that is the wrong place to look for movement. It is also the most misleading version of the story, and shows the downsides of poll journalism that is monetized based on attention instead of accuracy.
Why the number means so little
There are a couple of glaring issues with Enten’s segment. The big one, as we covered in the podcast on Wednesday, is that “MAGA Republican” is a self-identification. When a pollster asks whether someone considers themselves part of the MAGA movement, the people who say yes are, by definition, among Trump’s most committed supporters. They are selecting into the group. Asking whether they approve of Trump is like polling Cubs fans on whether they like the Cubs, and then reporting that the Cubs are popular.
And this minimizes opposition to Trump among the Tucker Carlson-Steve Bannon-Megyn Kelly wing of the party. Anyone disillusioned enough with Trump to stop calling themselves MAGA would drop out of the MAGA self-identifier cohort entirely, and then not show up in those numbers. So the 100% figure doesn’t mean nobody is leaving. It means the people who leave stop being counted.
That’s why it’s important to highlight erosion in support for Trump and his actions among what I’ve been calling “soft partisans“ — or non-MAGA Republicans. According to the latest Economist/YouGov polling data, 59% of Republicans identify as MAGA supporters. But the other 40% of the party is where the slippage is: YouGov reported last May that net approval of Trump among non-MAGA Republicans was down 40 points since inauguration day, and that figure is probably even larger now. About 27% of non-MAGA Republicans now hold a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Trump. So if there is a “MAGA civil war,” this is where it is happening — not among the 100% who selected into the label, but among the rest of the party beyond the MAGA core.
It’s worth noting still that even on its own terms, the 100% figure is an outlier. The Economist/YouGov poll asks the same MAGA self-identification question with a larger sample, roughly 1,500 adults per wave, yielding 300+ MAGA supporters. YouGov has consistently found MAGA approval of Trump around 97%, not 100%. With roughly 200 MAGA Republicans in the NBC poll, even three or four dissenters can disappear in the rounding if they have low individual survey weights. But 100% goes much more viral.
Approval is not the same as agreement
The other big problem with the 100% number is the suggestion that because MAGA voters approve of Trump overall, they must approve of everything he is doing. That’s what the White House, currently prosecuting a historically unpopular war in Iran, wants people to infer.
The issue polling says otherwise. In the March 13-16 Economist/YouGov poll, 87% of MAGA supporters approved of Trump’s handling of Iran and 78% supported the war. Those are high numbers, yes — but not 100%. Only 35% favored sending ground troops. Only 30% said the U.S. should try to end the war quickly, while 58% said to keep fighting until all objectives are achieved.
And a March Navigator Research poll found that while 84% of MAGA Republicans support the operation in Iran, non-MAGA Republicans are split: 48% support, 40% oppose. On the question of $50 billion in additional war funding, non-MAGA Republicans went 43-42. Remember, according to YouGov, non-MAGA Republicans make up a little less than half the party, so this level of defection is notable.
A March 18 Quincy Institute/American Conservative poll found that 79% of Trump voters would support him declaring victory and ending the war quickly. Among Trump voters ages 18 to 29, support for the war was just +8 points, compared with +53 overall. That’s a real generational crack.
And in our own Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll, 68% of Republicans called the Iran war a good use of taxpayer dollars, but only 35% said “very good.” Nearly half of Republican supporters are only at “somewhat.” When we asked whether they would still support the war if gas prices rose by $1 per gallon, GOP support dropped from 68% to 61%.
The results are similar on other issue areas. In the March 13-16 Economist/YouGov poll, just 18% of MAGA Republicans said the economy was getting worse. Among non-MAGA Republicans, the number was 41%. And on most other policy questions, too, the non-MAGA vs MAGA divide is huge.
Why this matters
CNN asked the right question on Wednesday. Is the war in Iran fracturing MAGA? But the answer it delivered was the most shareable version of the data, not the most informative one.
A responsible segment would have led with the 52% of registered voters who oppose the war. Or with the MAGA/non-MAGA gap on Iran inside the Republican Party. Or with the fact that MAGA identification has dropped six points in a year. Those are all more revealing than “100% approval.” They are just less clip-friendly.
And the framing matters because it points people toward the wrong electoral story. The “MAGA holds” narrative misleads viewers about what actually matters for 2026. The groups that will decide November are independents (at -39 on Trump’s Iran handling) and non-MAGA Republicans (splitting 48-40 on the war).
Spinning the numbers in this way just gives the White House ammo to keep fighting its public relations battle against what the broader public wants on the war. Not to mention Trump in particular — in this segment, CNN feeds him the most optimistic possible number among the only group of voters he cares about. Is this really “news” coverage?
This isn’t the first time Trump and the White House have shared a segment from Enten where he over-reads good news for the president. And in a media environment where attention is the only currency, unfortunately, we can expect this to continue. The cycle for CNN is very profitable: Enten produces a shareable, bias-confirming number; the White House shares it; Conservative media amplifies it; Viewers come to CNN, even if they come angry.
In this feedback loop, Enten has few incentives to dwell on the nuances and caveats in the data he’s presenting. Enten used to work for FiveThirtyEight, so he no doubt knows the perils of relying on the self-identified MAGA voter pool to talk about all “MAGA” Republicans.
As I wrote last week, the war in Iran doesn’t need to fracture MAGA to hurt Republicans in November, and there’s lots of data showing the war is borderline unpopular with “non-MAGA” Republicans. That’s the real story here. The 100% number hides this takeaway — which is, of course, exactly why Trump and the White House cannot stop repeating it.
2. What Strength In Numbers published last week
Last Sunday’s roundup argued that the real story on Iran isn’t a “MAGA split,” it’s the independents and soft partisans turning against the war:
On Tuesday, I looked at new data showing Trump has lost the working-class white voters who powered his 2024 coalition:
On Wednesday, I wrote about why a young, very progressive primary candidate in Illinois this week exceeded expectations — and why people who spend too much time on social media (specifically Twitter/X) seem to be getting this wrong:
On Thursday, David Nir and I published a new episode of the Strength In Numbers podcast. We talked about why Trump is in trouble with his base, and what the “X-Factor” is doing to political coverage:
And Friday’s Chart of the Week featured a sneak peek at our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll: 58% of voters say the war in Iran is a bad use of taxpayer dollars, and 61% — including a third of Republicans — say they’d oppose the war if it raises gas prices. (It has.)
If you’re a frequent reader of Strength In Numbers, I’m confident you will get a lot of value out of a paid subscription. Paid subscribers get access to Tuesday’s premium Deep Dives, our monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll data, and the full archive.
3. Even more numbers!
Ipsos: Trump’s wartime approval has been remarkably stable — but the stability is masking a deep divide between his most loyal supporters and everyone else. President Trump’s so-far-stable wartime approval rating
65% of Americans believe Trump will send ground troops into Iran. Just 7% support that idea. Americans think Trump will send ground troops to Iran and don’t support it, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds
Searchlight Institute: 56% of Americans oppose supplemental funding for the Iran war, including a majority of independents. Even after reading pro-funding arguments about national security, opinion barely moved. A Majority of Americans Oppose Supplemental Funding for Iran War
Navigator Research finds that support for the SAVE Act drops by double digits once people learn what’s actually in it. The most effective opposing messages focus on misplaced priorities and barriers to voting. The More Americans Learn About the SAVE Act, the Less They Like It
David Wallace-Wells asks whether Democrats really want to become populists — and whether all populisms are created equal. Opinion | Do the Democrats Really Want to Become Populists?
Wild stat buried in here: 31% of Trump voters earning under $15,000 a year are wavering on voting Republican in 2028, compared with just 13% of those earning over $200,000. That’s similar to what I wrote on Tuesday. Source: The Democratic Strategist
Oil analyst Rory Johnston argues the worst effects of the Strait of Hormuz closure are delayed — the last ships that made it through won’t make landfall for over a month. The Oil Shock Is Here. And We’re Just Beginning to Feel It.
Gallup: The U.S. ranks just 23rd in the World Happiness Report — down from 17th in 2013 — driven largely by declining wellbeing among young adults. Finland is No. 1 for the ninth straight year. Happiness Rankings Show Stability and Change
And that’s it for this week! Thanks for reading. The Sunday roundups have been going out a little later recently because I have started writing them Sunday morning instead of Saturday, that way I can have one day a week off from writing. Let me know what you think about this.
Strength In Numbers will be back in your inbox on Tuesday!
Elliott
I minored in stats. What I remember most was a professor's quote from a favourite author, Mark Twain... “Figures don’t lie, but liars do figure.”
It's bad enough the Enten clip gives the WH a talking point. It's all to easy to conclude that Trump BELIEVES the 100% number is some true measure. Really shameful that Enten is enabling that.