But beyond that, there’s a lot of seeming disagreement in the polls about exactly how unpopular Trump is — and even whether his disapproval rating exceeds his approval rating at all. Moreover, the differences between Trump’s best surveys and his worst ones span a critical range. Take one group of polls, and the country looks about evenly divided — a lot like it did during the 2016 election, when Trump narrowly lost the popular vote but nonetheless won the Electoral College. Take another group, and his electoral fortunes look much bleaker, with Trump already unpopular enough that the House of Representatives could be in play despite Republicans’ advantages from gerrymandering and the geographic distribution of their voters. [...]
Trump has a fairly poor 43 percent approval rating — and a 51 percent disapproval rating — among polls of all American adults, but he improves to a 47 percent approval rating and a 49 percent disapproval rating among polls that survey registered voters or the narrower group of likely voters. That’s a reasonably big difference. So which polls should you use? [...]
One theory about this is that the online and automated polls reveal “shy” or “hidden” Trump support, with people more willing to reveal their true feelings about the “politically incorrect” Trump in online or automated polls where they have greater anonymity. It’s a plausible theory, but I’m not sure it’s really supported by the evidence. Trump didn’t overperform his polls overall during the Republican primaries, and while he did so in the general election, the overperformance was concentrated among white voters without college degrees, not the group you’d expect if the “shy Trump” theory is right.
No comments:
Post a Comment