We see the results of Trump's toxicity in every special election where Dems are outperforming by 10%. We'll see more of it November when we win VA and NJ, and again in 2026 when we take back the House.
MAGA can only win Presidential elections when news-avoiding voters turn out.
$1.6 million a day!!! Of YOUR MONEY!!! When 3.8 mn Americans ( we know of) are outta work TODAY because of trump!!!
THAT is how he is gonna recruit millions of Americans- u lost your job? Work for ICE and NHS …. South Park did whole scene on this. Teachers and counselors all losing their jobs so they become ICE agents just to earn money…
Perhaps a better way to say it would be: It's not a question of if being unpopular will hurt Trump and the GOP. The historical relationship between presidential approval and election results ... suggests it's a question of whether that will happen in time to save our democracy.
What if strongly approve and sttongly disapprove are counted as votes for and against, and all others are counted as unlikely to vote - all on a state by state basis? What does this predict for 2026, 2028 elctoral outcomes?
If you count the "somewhats" as entirely non-voting, then...
Democrats would get 65% of the two-party vote. (As points of reference, Reagan got 59% in 1984. FDR got 61% in 1936.) Obv really unlikely, but the coming Trumpression could have strange effects.
If I'm using PVI correctly, then 2026 Senate races like TN, KY, AL, AR, and SD become competitive. Those states have R+15, but I might be double-counting it.
Thanks for the comparison of strong disapproval between the administrations of Obama to Trump 2. Two things are notable. The first is that Trump clearly had a honeymoon of relatively low disapproval in January and that’s gone. Second is how Biden had virtually identical strong disapproval ratings as Trump 1 and Obama had far lower strong disapproval ratings despite being a controversial figure. The democrats need to learn a lesson here and question the viability of an elderly incumbent early in the election cycle!
The Fall won't wait till September 21. It is already here.
When you look at the packaging of these numbers what you see are the % of GOP that are live and die MAGA (Strongly Approve & 24%) vs. Conservatives and Independents who are drifting away (Trump January numbers). The cartoonist in me will project "How Low Trump Can Go" in a drawing next week that will credit Elliott's Post here... Nicely done.
I suspect House Republican leaders sent out a memo about the rebrand last month. In late August, IA-02 Rep. Ashley Hinson (now the front-runner for the U.S. Senate nomination in Iowa) was calling it the "working families tax cut bill" at her town halls. More on that here (it's a ways down):
I doubt there’s much they can do. Call it “un sac du merde” if you want, it’s still a bag of shit, and people have already decided that’s the case. Too late.
This is all very interesting, but I have some questions. I don't understand why the numbers across each row in the 2nd table (with the colored bars) don't add up to 100. And since they don't, by up to 11 percentage points, and they are all different, I don't understand how you can compare the different rows with the kind of precision you present, at least without quantifying and noting the imprecision.
And this para doesn't match with the numbers in the table: "As you can see, the proportion of all Trump approvers who only "somewhat" approve of the way he's handling his job as president (41%) is indeed higher than in January (30%), but it's not an earth-shattering difference. For further comparison, in his first week in office in 2017, 38% of people who approved of Trump's presidency were soft approvers."
According to the table, "somewhat" approve now is 17% and in Jan it waas 15%; not the 41% and 30%... etc.
Good questions. The columns don’t add up to 100 because I’ve omitted respondents who answered “don’t know.”
The 30% and 41% numbers come from dividing the “somewhat approve” numbers by the share of Americans who approve of Trump overall. So eg, for January, it’s 15 / (15+34).
I went "Huh??" at that headline. It seemed to say that the "strongly disapprove" numbers were bad when they're actually encouraging -- to us, at least. Not to Trump et al.
My sentiment exactly. If someone does a poor job or does something bad, strong disapproval should be the result. A better headline would be, "Record Number of Americans Strongly Disapprove of Trump 2.0"
I support the analysis, but please never use the phrase “nearly a majority”. Weasel words.
Think of how silly it would be to describe 54% as “nearly a minority”.
“Nearly half” or “a growing number” or “a significant increase” would all be more honest.
I hope the objectivity of your words can better match the objectivity of your numbers. That is where the strength is, after all.
We see the results of Trump's toxicity in every special election where Dems are outperforming by 10%. We'll see more of it November when we win VA and NJ, and again in 2026 when we take back the House.
MAGA can only win Presidential elections when news-avoiding voters turn out.
$1.6 million a day!!! Of YOUR MONEY!!! When 3.8 mn Americans ( we know of) are outta work TODAY because of trump!!!
THAT is how he is gonna recruit millions of Americans- u lost your job? Work for ICE and NHS …. South Park did whole scene on this. Teachers and counselors all losing their jobs so they become ICE agents just to earn money…
https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdogs/2025/09/05/national-guard-deployment-trump-chicago-taxpayers-analysis
Perhaps a better way to say it would be: It's not a question of if being unpopular will hurt Trump and the GOP. The historical relationship between presidential approval and election results ... suggests it's a question of whether that will happen in time to save our democracy.
What if strongly approve and sttongly disapprove are counted as votes for and against, and all others are counted as unlikely to vote - all on a state by state basis? What does this predict for 2026, 2028 elctoral outcomes?
If you count the "somewhats" as entirely non-voting, then...
Democrats would get 65% of the two-party vote. (As points of reference, Reagan got 59% in 1984. FDR got 61% in 1936.) Obv really unlikely, but the coming Trumpression could have strange effects.
If I'm using PVI correctly, then 2026 Senate races like TN, KY, AL, AR, and SD become competitive. Those states have R+15, but I might be double-counting it.
Thank you. I appreciate your analysis. I do understand that Trump repression make all prediction very uncertain.
Thanks for the comparison of strong disapproval between the administrations of Obama to Trump 2. Two things are notable. The first is that Trump clearly had a honeymoon of relatively low disapproval in January and that’s gone. Second is how Biden had virtually identical strong disapproval ratings as Trump 1 and Obama had far lower strong disapproval ratings despite being a controversial figure. The democrats need to learn a lesson here and question the viability of an elderly incumbent early in the election cycle!
The Fall won't wait till September 21. It is already here.
When you look at the packaging of these numbers what you see are the % of GOP that are live and die MAGA (Strongly Approve & 24%) vs. Conservatives and Independents who are drifting away (Trump January numbers). The cartoonist in me will project "How Low Trump Can Go" in a drawing next week that will credit Elliott's Post here... Nicely done.
I suspect House Republican leaders sent out a memo about the rebrand last month. In late August, IA-02 Rep. Ashley Hinson (now the front-runner for the U.S. Senate nomination in Iowa) was calling it the "working families tax cut bill" at her town halls. More on that here (it's a ways down):
https://laurabelin.substack.com/p/ernst-retirement-watch-sioux-city
When Trump pushes to rebrand the ugly bill, what would even the most brilliant propagandist do to move supporters back into the strongly approve camp?
I doubt there’s much they can do. Call it “un sac du merde” if you want, it’s still a bag of shit, and people have already decided that’s the case. Too late.
#OneBigBrutalBill
This is all very interesting, but I have some questions. I don't understand why the numbers across each row in the 2nd table (with the colored bars) don't add up to 100. And since they don't, by up to 11 percentage points, and they are all different, I don't understand how you can compare the different rows with the kind of precision you present, at least without quantifying and noting the imprecision.
And this para doesn't match with the numbers in the table: "As you can see, the proportion of all Trump approvers who only "somewhat" approve of the way he's handling his job as president (41%) is indeed higher than in January (30%), but it's not an earth-shattering difference. For further comparison, in his first week in office in 2017, 38% of people who approved of Trump's presidency were soft approvers."
According to the table, "somewhat" approve now is 17% and in Jan it waas 15%; not the 41% and 30%... etc.
Good questions. The columns don’t add up to 100 because I’ve omitted respondents who answered “don’t know.”
The 30% and 41% numbers come from dividing the “somewhat approve” numbers by the share of Americans who approve of Trump overall. So eg, for January, it’s 15 / (15+34).
Thank you, that makes sense now.
"Trump's "strongly disapprove" numbers are record-setting (not in a good way)"
Sounds good to me.
I went "Huh??" at that headline. It seemed to say that the "strongly disapprove" numbers were bad when they're actually encouraging -- to us, at least. Not to Trump et al.
My sentiment exactly. If someone does a poor job or does something bad, strong disapproval should be the result. A better headline would be, "Record Number of Americans Strongly Disapprove of Trump 2.0"
The SEO gods running the Headline A/B test have decided on an alternative version