I have noticed on fivethirtyeight that Trump’s approval ratings (which have been remarkably steady through fiasco after fiasco), seem to be dropping a bit (and disapproval rising). It looks like it started about 40ish days ago.
Any thoughts why?
My best guess: People have been talking about a recession more recently. Maybe his popularity falls with the economy?
Or maybe it is just noise and/or small trends that don’t really reflect much of anything.
It’s happened before – there was a pretty consistent 60 day drop at about day 700 (~Jan 2019). But it’s only gone down a point or two in the last 40 days or so – this doesn’t look that unusual compared to the overall course of the chart.
That would be my first guess. His trend line is drooping slightly at the moment, but it has done that many times before. I’d have to see a sustained drop over several months and one reaching down below previous lows to around 35% before I’d get mildly interested in it. Let alone excited.
Yeah while economic nervousness may play a part (and the economy is what supports his numbers above that 35ish floor) it is completely consistent with Brownian motion. Under 12 plus minus two is his norm.
One of my side projects is a Python script that pulls data from the 538 publicly available dataset everyday at 8:55am MT and computes the difference between Rasmussen and non-Rasmussen pollsters on Trump approval. It then plots the last 90 days of that data and Tweets out an image of that plot.
Here’s the one form 5 minutes ago… link.
Almost all of the variation in the last 90 days or so has been due to Rasmussen.
Yeah I think Brownian motion pretty well sums it up. There are people that love him, they aren’t going to change. There are people that hate him, we aren’t going to change. Some minor fluctuation in the tiny group of people that have no set opinion of him is to be expected.
Wow. That’s remarkable.
But the January 2019 slump had a clear cause, the government shutdown. While it could be Brownian motion, it does appear to be a bit more consistent than drop than we usually see. I think the its likely the rumors about the weakening economy and the trade war. Since I don’t think the economy will slide into recession in the next month or so, I expect that his numbers will probably come back to their previous level relatively soon.
Thanks and thanks for following.
This robot has been running pretty much all through 2019, and this kind of thing happens a lot. Rasmussen swings hard enough to move the needle. If you’re interested in a particular date just search my timeline.
e.g. March 21 - May 21, 2019… almost all variation due to Rasmussen.
What’s this Rasmussen stuff you’re talking about?
Yeah, I don’t get it. Yes, the Rasmussen numbers have a lot more variation than the average of all the other pollsters, but I don’t see why that proves that Rasmussen is responsible for all variations. Have you tried this with other pollsters who have a Dem lean, like Survey Monkey or something?
Rasmussen Reports is a pollster that does a rolling three day presidential approval poll of likely voters. They are notable for their republican lean. When Trump Tweets about a poll it’s a better than even money bet that it’s a Rasmussen poll.
Perhaps Trump’s recent feuding with Fox is having an effect among the people Rasmussen polls with.
I showed you why. Did you click the link(s)?
All other pollsters combined are pretty steady over the last 90 days while Rasmussen shows a large decline. The 538 average that includes Rasmussen shows a small decline. That decline disappears if you exclude Rasmussen.
I’ve been tracking this for a year. It happens a lot.
Of course I clicked on the links. It shows that the average of all pollsters is more steady than the numbers of one pollster.
Eta: if you want your graph to show what you want it to show, you should be plotting the combined average, not the difference between Rasmussen and the non-Rasmuseen pollsters. Then we could see how much effect Rasmussen is having.
A more interesting question would be about those who disapprove: how many disapprove with a shrug, and how many totally hate his guts. Trouble being, how you could ask the question with a reasonable expectation of accurate results?
That is true, but Rasmussen puts out data at the rate of all other pollsters combined as well so the data sets can be compared apples to apples.
Rasmussen puts out a data point every single day except for a handful of holidays. That’s comparable to the rate of all other pollsters in the 538 data set.
Compared to say CNN or Fox which polls around once every 3 or 4 weeks. That would not make a great comparison.
Missed this edit in my first reply.
My graph shows what I want it to show. I want it tho show the difference between Rasmussen and the average of all other pollsters. If I wanted it to show something else I would have made a different graph.
It is not intended to show how much effect Rasmussen has on the overall average. However, when the average of all other pollsters is flat as a pancake a useful side effect is that the difference I’m showing reflects the effect of Rasmussen on the average.
You are claiming it shows that Rasmussen is responsible for almost all variation in the average but you don’t plot the average. It’s reasonable to assume that there’s plenty of pollsters whose variation is also not flat as a pancake like the average, so for me to see your point I need to see how much weight Rasmussen is actual throwing around in the combined average.
Here’s what I took from the graph – without Rasmussen, there would be no polling decline for Trump over the last ~40 days. It’s only because of Rasmussen that 538 is tracking a polling decline, which has been consistent for ~40 days. And Rasmussen is not a well-regarded poll by Nate Silver.
That seems interesting to me, assuming I’m correctly interpreting the data.