Two new polls show learning about Trump's policies moves public opinion toward Democrats

Your weekly political data roundup for November 23, 2025

Dear readers,

This is my weekly roundup of new political data published over the last week.

One of the big mysteries in public opinion research is the problem of non-attitudes. Because pollsters just get responses to survey questions and have to take them (mostly) at face value, we usually don’t know whether the answers people give to us represent real, well-thought-out attitudes, or are simply answers quickly conjured from the front of the mind for the purpose of answering a survey.

The difference between the two is important because if the thing pollsters are measuring is attitudes — formed through an informed model of the world and stable for each individual over time — then they are predictive of both other thoughts and behaviors in the real world (see: the 2026 midterms). But if polls are measuring non-attitudes, then our analysis about what people think now (and how they might act in the future) is thrown into question.

The lead story slot this week is about two new public polls th…