There are, honestly, a bunch of political polling companies already out there, many of whom already do polls on “presidential approval,” and many of which regularly release the results of their polls. Some are likely more biased than others.
Gallup has name recognition, which may or may not translate to actual accuracy these days. And, frankly, knowing what I know about survey research and methodological issues, I have a hard time putting a lot of stock in any political polls today.
The distressing part about this news isn’t that Gallup is leaving an unfillable void (IMO, they aren’t), so much as it’s pretty effing evident to me that they are doing this because of political pressure.
IMO, at least part of this is that Gallup was really good at PR, and getting their name and poll results out there. Yes, they’re a household name, but that may or may not mean that their polling data is actually the gold standard.
I think you are all overrating Gallup. There are many other polling organizations out there. As I mentioned upthread, CNN reports a poll of polls which includes numerous organizations (including Fox News, whose numbers lean slightly in favor of Trump but not outrageously so). See list here:
Gallup has name recognition, much of which is from their polling-for-hire in market research. They haven’t been the sole arbiter for political polling for decades.
The only way you can judge a political polling operation is for them to poll the horse race shortly before elections. Then we can compare the poll to actual, and see how good they are. Gallup last did this in 2012. So we have no way to know how skillful of a pollster they are lately.
So loss of their approval numbers isn’t a serious blow to our abilities as amateur pundits.
I was reading the comments on the article in The Hill linked to in the OP, and saw a comment posted (quoted below). I can’t verify if this guy’s information is accurate, but it would surely help explain “why.”
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is how democracy dies. One pillar at a time is shot in the back of the head with a silenced pistol until the whole edifice collapses in a cloud of dust & dead bodies.
This is the same basic story as Bezos and WaPo. The only uncertainty in my book is whether Bezos did what he did to WaPo to avoid trumply retaliation or to curry trumply favor.
Growing up, I’d always heard conservatives talk about the “liberal media” as some big Goliath-like or video-game-boss nemesis. Turns out all the ‘liberal media’ needed was a weak threat or two and it folded like a lawn chair. WashPo, Gallup, CBS, CNN, etc.
Try foreign media. Canada’s CBC, Global, or CTV, the BBC, Australia’s ABC, and so on. There are others, of course, but these days, with the Internet, you need not be fed American media if you do not want it.
Compared to first year polling of Macron and Starmer, Trump’s decline in polling averages has been slow. It seems to me wishful thinking to cherry-pick one pollster that came closer than most to showing what we hope to be happening.
Gallup did not have, since 2016, the quality control of letting us compare pre-election horse race polls with actual election results.
I like to take an international perspective. As media freedom declines under a hybrid or dictatorial regime, one type of media that usually remains free the longest is polling. Consider:
Ever since el donald started, the polls have been off about the presidential election. IMHO, it’s because racists lie to pollsters. The first time we saw this was in the 1968 race for mayor of Los Angeles. Tom Bradley was the first African-American candidate for that position. He was ahead by a few percent in the polls but lost the election by a few percent. He lost that time but, won the next.
The concept of “shy Trump voters” has been discussed among pollsters for years, in fact.
It does seem likely that there are some people who support Trump’s policies – including racist policies – but are unwilling to admit it, or admit their intent to vote for him, to a third party. Even if that’s a fairly small minority of Trump’s support, it seems like it may be enough to throw off the polls.
OTOH, there are also a lot of people (including, no doubt, racists) who feel no such shame, as one can see from any polling result from the last decade, and the percentage of respondents who strongly approve of the guy and his policies. If anything, the openness which Trump and his acolytes have shown in being unrepentantly hateful and divisive has made those folks feel empowered to crawl out from under their rocks and let their freak flags fly.
To which I noted, “yes, evidence shows that there are likely some racists who lie to pollsters.” Trump’s general polling numbers for the last 11 years, and support for his specific policies in polls, shows that there is a distressingly large number of Americans who are unashamedly open about being hate-filled, racist people – and that number is apparently even larger than the covert racists.
True, although the national polling averages were never off by even half of that.
In November 2024, Nate Silver had Harris up in the national popular vote by 1.0%, while Trump lost by 1.5%. In November 2020, he (via FiveThirtyEight.com) had Biden up by 8.4% while Biden’s actual margin was 4.5%. And in November 2016, Silver/538 had Clinton up by 3.9% while her actual popular vote margin was 2.1%. These are fairly normal polling errors, albeit all three in the same direction.