THURSDAY, JULY 24, 2025
A poll from two different Americas: Presumably, there has never been any such thing as a perfectly accurate poll.
Also, if by some happenstance some poll was actually perfect in the moment, there would, of course, be no way to know that the poll was correct.
So it goes with the statistical artefact known as "margin of error." And just for the record, straight-up statistical margin of error is only one of the three million ways a poll can perhaps be wrong.
We offer this to soften the blow concerning the latest offering from Gallup. Gallup decided to take a poll. Headline included, its report on the poll starts like this:
Independents Drive Trump's Approval to 37% Second-Term Low
Six months into his second term, President Donald Trump’s job approval rating has dipped to 37%, the lowest of this term and just slightly higher than his all-time worst rating of 34% at the end of his first term. Trump’s rating has fallen 10 percentage points among U.S. adults since he began his second term in January, including a 17-point decline among independents...
For their part, Republicans’ ratings [of Trump] have remained generally steady near 90% and Democrats have been consistently in the low single digits.
These latest findings are from a July 7-21, 2025, Gallup poll, which began days after Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4. The law addresses many of Trump’s second-term priorities...
Trump’s ratings for handling each of eight separate foreign and domestic issues are also generally poor. He earns the highest marks for his handling of the situation with Iran (42%) and foreign affairs (41%). Approval is slightly lower for his job on immigration (38%), the economy (37%), the situation in the Middle East between the Israelis and Palestinians (36%), and foreign trade (36%). Americans’ ratings of Trump’s handling of the situation in Ukraine (33%) and the federal budget (29%) are even lower.
This poll was taken at a moment of triumph—shortly after the Republican Congress managed to pass Trump's megabill by the tiniest possible margins. Republican solons passed the bill—but American voters don't seem to like it all that much.
(Only 29 percent of respondents said they approve of Trump’s handling of the federal budget? Think how low that number might have been if Blue America's journalists knew how to report what is actually projected to happen to the national debt under terms of the One Big Bill!
(To see Stephane Ruhle under-describe that projected result, click here for our July 2 report. In fairness to Ruhle, she under-described the projected result in the typical, thoroughly standard, extremely lazy manner.)
In the rest of its report, Gallup outlines the staggering gaps which obtain between responses from three major groups—Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Here are the "job approval" numbers for President Trump, followed by his slightly better "favorables:"
President Trump, job approval
Republicans: 89 percent
Democrats: 2 percent
Independents: 29 percent
Overall: 37 percent
"Favorable view" of President Trump
Republicans: 93 percent
Democrats: 4 percent
Independents: 34 percent
Overall: 41 percent
Go figure! At least four percent of all respondents don't approve of the way the president is doing his job but have a favorable view of him anyway!
Numbers like these can always be wrong to greater or lesser degree. On the other hand, those numbers may reflect the numbers the Trump administration is getting in its own polling efforts.
If the numbers get even worse, that could trigger various types of reactions from the occasionally angry president. That said, also this:
As long as the Republican numbers stay high, President Trump can in theory keep Republican solons in line. He could continue to pass X, Y and Z through the Congress, no matter how much everyone else didn't like it.
We're living in two different countries now. Imaginably, some actual bombshell from the Epstein probe could bring the president all the way down—but then again, possibly not.
We're living in two different countries! We get our impressions from two different silos. So how should we deal with this mess?
Three out of eight approve of Trump.
ReplyDelete37% sounds about right. That's about the same number of people who would approve of Putin or Stalin or Hitler.
ReplyDeleteWhy “or”?
DeleteBecause people who liked Stalin perhaps didn't like Hitler? "And" could work as well.
DeleteI think they have added about ten percent to Repuke absolute bottom dweller votes from when carpet bagger Alan Keyes - he's black!!, he's Repuklican!!! garnered 27% of the IL US Senator vote.
DeleteFrom 24 August 1939 to 22 June 1941 Hitler and Stalin were friends.
DeleteBack in the 90's, I would occasionally bump into some Russian expats/emigrees -- on the older side, obviously -- who would bend my ear about how good things had been under Stalin. There was law'n order! This is very reminiscent of the narrative that David tends to push around here.
DeleteIlya, I think you mean Brezhnev or maybe Khrushchev. How old were your friends when Stalin died in 1953?
DeleteThose were not my friends, to be clear. One person that I recall was a nanny who worked for my cousin around '95, and she was in her 60's. I was a young man back then, so they were not my friends.
DeleteSo they were nostalgic for their childhood.
DeleteI reckon she would've been in her 20's when Stalin died. But, yeah, some form of that.
DeleteDems shouldn't take too much joy over Trump's low ratings. Dems are doing even worse. According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, the favorability ratings are
ReplyDeletePresident Trump 44.7%
Republican Party 42.7%
Democratic Party 37.1%
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/
Democrat voters disapprove of their party’s leaders and should replace them.
DeleteAnon@6:20 -- Correct. It's Dems' own constituency, myself included, who are luke warm on them.
DeleteI'd be interesting in knowing why you're only lukewarm on the Dems, Ilya and @6:20.
DeleteIt's a long laundry list. I will tell you what I do like: Bernie and AOC going into deep red places and speaking to the people. Dems need to do more of that. Some of it is that they have written off all of Trump voters. Many of them are cultists; many are beyond reach. Some, however, can be brought back into the fold of normalcy.
DeleteSome are deplorable. We need to earn the support of the non-deplorables.
DeleteHillary was right.
Hillary was right, but should've flipped her narrative; i.e., most Trump supporters who are not deplorables and we need to speak to their concerns.
DeleteIlya, I fear you're speaking with the benefit of hindsight.
DeleteBack in 2016, Trump had emboldened a lot of folks to come out of the shadows and reveal their racism, sexism, xenophobia, and far-right extremism. Today, a decade later, we're inured to their presence in American politics, but back then it was new and shocking and worthy of being called out.
Clinton, like so many of the rest of us, naively thought that the majority of the American public would find Trump's supporters, well, deplorable.
I am mostly concerned about Dem leaders who do not remind people hourly that Don hates the troops, and used money to avoid Vietnam. That he blew thru $500M of dad's money destroying investors in his failed businesses. That he rapes children. That he cheated contractors daily. That he constantly broke the law on his asset declarations to maximize investment and minimize taxes. That he rapes adult woman too. And all this before his disastrous first term where he mismanaged everything he touched, conflated official duties with shaking the rubes for money, that he tried to shake Zelensky to get him to lie about Biden, that he led a fucking autogolpe and freed his treasonous bastard followers when reelected. That is just a few of the things I am passed about Dem leadership not talking about, and that is just for starters. What bugs you about your fucking Nazi leadership you fascist prig?
DeleteNot prig. Prick.
DeleteNo, A fucking prig. "One who offends or irritates by observance of proprieties (as of speech or manners) in a pointed manner or to an obnoxious degree." Richard Cranium to a "t".
Deletemost Trump supporters who are not deplorables and we need to speak to their concerns.
DeleteIlya, she did. In the very next sentence that nobody heard.
She said the other half of Trump’s supporters “feel that the government has let them down” and are “desperate for change.”
“Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well,” she said.
Hillary made the same mistake democrats make every time, they assume the majority of voters are smart enough to see thru the bullshit the repubs spew
Hillary's comment was fine to a private audience, but it hurt her with all Reps when it was made public. The reason is that a given Trump supporter doesn't know which half she put him/her in, so 100% of Trump supporters feel insulted.
DeleteThere's a contrast between the type of comments made by the two sides. Trump's enemies focus on ad hominems: racist, sexist, xenophobic, extremist, deplorable, cheater, lawbreaker, etc. Conservatives focus on policies AND their actual effect: closing the southern border, encouraging a million voluntary self-deportations, reducing waste, reducing the deficit, reducing reverse racism, reducing antisemitism in universities, etc.
DeleteYou're delusional, David.
Delete...and have no conception of what 'public policy' is all about.
DeleteI agree, Ilya. I know nothing about the field of "public policy." What I do understand is results. If a policy results in fewer murders, I understand that. Furthermore, the result is less ambiguous. People may disagree a priori over which policy would be more effective, but the number of murders is an objective fact. Similarly I understand the price of gasoline and food, etc.
DeleteQiB -- Trump's support will never exceed 30% of adult population. This is it. He will never get beyond that. Yes, he has given a voice to some of the worst impulses in our society, but they are a fairly small minority. Furthermore, we tend to underestimate how common economic interests can bring voters together, regardless of their ingrained prejudices.
DeleteAnon@8:40 -- That is unfortunate. I didn't hear that sentence either. All the same, that's the tack: keep on talking to people. It bears repeating again and again: Trump's hardcore support will never exceed 20% of the population. Perhaps not even that.
Murders had trended done since 1990 or so, spiked under Trump, down again under Biden. You a dipshit.
DeleteMurders had trended done since 1990 or so, spiked under Trump, down again under Biden. You a dipshit.
DeleteDemocrats must focus on policies and results that people care about like crime and the border. And they must be careful not to come across as smug and dismissive. As difficult and almost impossible as the latter may be, even more difficult but equally crucial, is that they make voters believe that they understand and agree with their distrust of institutions. They have to figure out how to pull that off before even beginning to think about regaining any kind of significant national prominence.
DeleteEmpathy, cultural respect and authenticity will be the keys to winning the next presidential election. A Democrat will have to come along that understands this and can convey it to voters while at the same time not alienating corporate backers who primarily fund them and to whom they have allegiance over voters and citizens.
Delete"Empathy, cultural respect and authenticity" whatever the fuck that is, is not gonna work no more. Bill Clinton and Obama overused and overproduced all that bullshit; no one is buying no more.
DeleteA problem for Democrats is that a lot of their most vocal supporters are not empathetic and are full of hatred towards the very people their party needs in order to form a strong coalition. It's a strange situation for them to have a vocal constituency of core supporters that are most interested in politics and advancing their cause be, as a whole, as politically ignorant and counterproductive as can be imagined
DeleteEg. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were their most successful politicians in memory and these people now mock them and the electoral tactics that led them to victory as bullshit.
DeleteNational opponents could not dream of a greater gift.
I didn't mock them. I said that their bullshit "electoral tactics that led them to victory" is well past the expiration date. Learn to read, Democrat.
DeleteTheir bullshit used to work, but that's in the past. Right now Trump's bullshit works better, much better: drain the swamp, squash the deep state, deport the illegals. Be angry. Nobody wants their lip-biting fake empathy and their high taxes.
It's the same thing. You're still describing empathy. What changed is people's trust towards institutions. So the vinegar in which you describe is empathy towards people's shared anger against institutions, a political calculus Obama and Clinton didn't have at the time. Asshole.
DeleteClinton's "I feel your pain" bullshit is "empathy", asshole. Sending (or pretending to send, because I don't think they get there) 10 million condoms to Gaza province of Mozambique bullshit is "empathy". Liberal white-guilt-mongering bullshit is "empathy".
DeleteTrump's "drain the swamp" bullshit is the opposite of "empathy".
It's the same. Identifying and addressing people's feelings. It's not my problem if you're too stupid not to recognize it.
DeleteIt's the opposite. If Obama's DACA project is the same as Trump's mass deportation project to you, then obviously you're the too-stupid-one here.
DeleteThe fact that some people identify more with liberal bullshit and some with conservative bullshit is trivial. It's neither here nor there. It doesn't make "I empathize with you" and "fuck your feelings" the same thing.
Thank you for your interesting analysis.
DeleteHow could anyone tell the difference between a deplorable Trump supporter and a non-deplorable Trump supporter?
DeleteAs it is, it's impossible to tell the difference between Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the "fine people" on the Right.
If Mommy and Daddy stop fighting for just a minute, they'll realize the Republican Party is THE political party for child rape.
DeleteDavid in Cal,
DeleteTrump's HUGE tax break for woke Disney and businesses which hire illegal immigrants instead of white people, is what we voted for.
Trump's enemies don't want to admit that fact.
David in Cal,
DeleteReduce government spending by having the government get out of the enforcing contracts business.
The number of people who need the Epstein files to confirm Donald Trump is a child rapist, is zero.
DeleteI miss the days of Cronkite, when the media presented "news".
I've often wondered what exactly do the "favorable/unfavorable" and "approve/disapprove" questions measure? Happy/sad? Like/don't like? Yes/no? What's being judged? Image, rhetoric, actions, vibes? The one true measure I'm aware of is how pollsters point to how their polls gradually converge on the actual votes cast in an election. I assume it measures how people "make up their mind" at the end of a campaign season.
ReplyDeleteGallup polls of "U.S. adults" mean nothing. About 10% of "U.S. adults" aren't citizens (no one even knows how many exactly), who cares about their opinions. A large number of "U.S. adults" are illegal invaders; the less they approve the better.
ReplyDeleteOnly polls of registered voters and likely voters make sense.
Illegal invaders doing the job your fat privileged ass can't or won't do for low wages. Just another clueless moron.
DeleteNew - Trump job approval
ReplyDelete🟢 Approve 50%
🟤 Disasaprove 48%
Insider advantage #A - RV - 7/23
Pew Research - Party Affiliation trends (with indie leaners)
ReplyDelete🔵 2008: Dem 51-39%
🔵 2012: Dem 48-44%
🔵 2016: Dem 48-44%
🔵 2018: Dem 50-42%
🔵 2020: Dem 49-43%
🔵 2022: Dem 47-45%
🔴 2024: GOP 47-46%
🔴 2025: GOP 46-45%
Old news.
DeleteThose who know Trump is a rapist:
DeleteRepublicans: 98%
Democrats: 100%
Independents: 100%
Those who admit Trump is a rapist:
Republicans: 0%
Democrats: 100%
Independents: 100%
Democrats: 0%
Independents:
It is all connected, isn't it? Epstein, the Russians, Trump and underage girls.
ReplyDeleteTrump is trying to distract us from the Epstein Files, by giving huge tax breaks to the businesses which hire illegal immigrants, instead of white people.
ReplyDeleteLet's show Trump we can focus on both things at once.
White House imbecilic reporters are already asking the orange chickenshit felon if he is going to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.
ReplyDeleteAnd so once again the country has to stand by and witness blatant in our face corruption. For what fucking reason would orange chickenshit have to pardon this woman?
What fucking reason? To get her to lie for him.
DeleteYes, assholes like DiC have enabled the orange chickenshit multi-felon traitor to have the power to give that child sex trafficker her freedom in exchange for her lying for him. Shades of his infamous call to Zelensky that got him impeached the first time. David and the maggots couldn't give two shits for the victims here.
Delete