# Reason why Trump's approval ratings are falling? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 3, 2019, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623 "2019-09-03T13:48:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/21 "2019-09-03T16:27:50Z")
Ok, so I should be combining this Turbo graph with the 538 graph to “get it”? I just don’t see how the graph linked shows anything other than the average of all pollsters is more stable than one pollster. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/22 "2019-09-03T16:30:35Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Ok, so I should be combining this Turbo graph with the 538 graph to “get it”? I just don’t see how the graph linked shows anything other than the average of all pollsters is more stable than one pollster. I think it shows that Rasmussen may be an outlier (i.e. they’re the only one showing a consistent decline over the last ~40 days or so). To test this, we might have to see similar graphs for _all_ pollsters with multiple polls over that period – i.e. graphs for Harris vs all-non-Harris-polls, Monmouth vs all-non-Monmouth-polls, etc., which is likely too much to ask for right now. But if it does indeed show that Rasmussen is the only outfit showing a decline right now, then that’s interesting and potentially useful information for evaluating whether there is indeed an actual polling decline going on. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/23 "2019-09-03T16:40:15Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > 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. I’m not claiming anything. I’m showing you what’s in the data. My point is that this is what it looks like when you plot the difference between Rasmussen and the average of all other pollsters. Here’s code to grab the 538 data set and pull it into a dataframe. Feel free to copy it and adapt to answer the questions that you feel are important. ```auto import pandas as pd import datetime url = 'https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-data/approval_polllist.csv' df_raw = pd.read_csv(filepath_or_buffer = url, parse_dates = ['startdate', 'enddate']) # Drop columns we don't need df = df_raw.loc[:,['pollster', 'startdate', 'enddate', 'approve', 'disapprove']] ``` ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/24 "2019-09-03T16:48:27Z")
Looking at [RealClear approval poll tracker](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html#polls) Reuters has Trump at -14 on 8/26 down from -12 on 8/19. Politico has him at -15 on 8/23 down from -13 on 8/16. So Rasmussen is certainly not the only pollster showing dip at the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/25 "2019-09-03T16:52:36Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Looking at [RealClear approval poll tracker](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html#polls) Reuters has Trump at -14 on 8/26 down from -12 on 8/19. Politico has him at -15 on 8/23 down from -13 on 8/16. So Rasmussen is certainly not the only pollster showing dip at the moment. Of course Rasmussen is not the only pollster showing dip at the moment. Nobody claimed that. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/26 "2019-09-03T17:51:06Z")
**Lance Turbo** , interesting chart and I appreciate the effort, and what it says about Rasmussen. But I would say, this alone does not show that “Almost all of the variation in the last 90 days or so has been due to Rasmussen.” That _may indeed_ be the case, but should you not also show each individual poll other than Rasmussen in a similar plot? If by chance other poll(s) are close to Rasmussen, then your conclusion isn’t valid. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/27 "2019-09-03T18:12:42Z")
> [@Fiddle\_Peghead](#): > > **Lance Turbo** , interesting chart and I appreciate the effort, and what it says about Rasmussen. But I would say, this alone does not show that “Almost all of the variation in the last 90 days or so has been due to Rasmussen.” That _may indeed_ be the case, but should you not also show each individual poll other than Rasmussen in a similar plot? If by chance other poll(s) are close to Rasmussen, then your conclusion isn’t valid. I think I’ve found where folks are getting hung up. When I said, “Almost all of the variation in the last 90 days or so has been due to Rasmussen,” I meant in my chart, not in the 538 chart. In my chart, there is a mostly flat line, a line with big swings, a line that is the difference between the two. Almost all the variation in the difference line is due to the wiggly line, not the flat line. I was accurately describing my graph. It seemed relevant to the topic of the thread but was not meant as the final answer to the question posed in the thread title. I wasn’t making a scientific statement. I was describing a picture. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/28 "2019-09-03T18:24:05Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > 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. But wouldn’t _any_ given poll show a greater variation than the average of all other polls? ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/29 "2019-09-03T18:31:24Z")
To be clear, I think the big swing in Rasmussen is at least partially responsible for what we’re seeing in 538’s tracker, but since we don’t have the full details of 538’s algo we can’t tell for sure. But mousing over 538 we see a recent peak on 7/22 at 43.0% and a fairly steady decline to now on 9/3 at 41.4%. A decline of 1.6% or roughly a net approval decline of around 3.2% (-3.2 net net). Now when I look at the Rasmussen and non-Rasmussen 14 day centered rolling averages for that period. Rasmussen net 7/22: -1.6 Rasmussen net 9/3: -5.8 Net net: -3.2 non-Ras net 7/22: -10.1 non-Ras net 9/3: -9.1 Net net: +1.0 I don’t calculate my averages the same way 538 does, and we don’t know exactly how 538 does what it does, but I strongly suspect that in the alternate universe where Nate didn’t include Rasmussen polls, **Hermitian** would not have had a reason to start this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/30 "2019-09-03T18:45:00Z")
> [@scr4](#): > > But wouldn’t _any_ given poll show a greater variation than the average of all other polls? Maybe. Probably. Almost certainly. However, Rasmussen is special here because it adds a data point every single day. In the last 14 days we have 14 Rasmussen data points compared to 49 for all other pollsters. So the added uncertainty of smaller sample size is still there for Rasmussen but not as big as for others (e.g. Morning Consult with 2 polls in the last 14 days, or Emerson with 1). Rasmussen always has a data point less than 24 hours old while most other pollsters do not. I’m not just talking about noise though. There is basically no trend one way or the other with all non-Rasmussen polls, and there is enough data to show a large downward trend in Rasmussen polls. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/31 "2019-09-03T20:01:57Z")
> [@Hermitian](#): > > I have noticed on [fivethirtyeight](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/) 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. He’s been erratic, such as the time when he looked to the heavens and claimed he was “the chosen one” to deal with China. I also think that he has pretty much lost center-right independents who switched between Obama and Trump, but that’s not really eating into his base. I think what might be hurting him even more is that more and more members of the billionaires club are nervous that he’s going to fuck it all up. I don’t care if a politician has a base: erratic rhetoric and behavior makes a leader look weak. And I think the Wall St Republicans are increasingly out of explanations and defenses for his ‘deal making acumen’. Now having said that, he could realize tomorrow that he’s going to lose the trade war and strike a “deal” with China. The reason why I’m not sure he’ll do that anymore is that he’s going to have a recession no matter what, and he’ll look even weaker if he gives in. So in a sense, he’s screwed if he goes to the mat, and he’s screwed if he doesn’t. President Xi may be beginning to sense this, and if his own economy weren’t in the dumps right now, I wouldn’t put it past him to block Trump’s off-ramp - but Xi needs a deal, too, so there will be some space for negotiation on his part. It’s Trump who is now confronted with an increasingly complex set of circumstances that are of his own making. ---
**Author:** ![Fiddle\_Peghead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddle_peghead/32/3506_2.png) [@Fiddle\_Peghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiddle_Peghead)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/32 "2019-09-03T20:34:09Z")
> [@](#): > > I think what might be hurting him even more is that more and more members of the billionaires club are nervous that he’s going to fuck it all up. I would bet good money on this. Not my money, of course. But yours. I’d bet all of your good money on it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2019, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/33 "2019-09-03T21:35:38Z")
Only kind of money I know about is “gone”. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/34 "2019-09-04T01:29:14Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > … It seemed relevant to the topic of the thread but was not meant as the final answer to the question posed in the thread title. > > I wasn’t making a scientific statement. I was describing a picture. I’m sorry if this seems obtuse, and maybe I am missing something, but what relevance do you think it has? A single pollster has much noisier data than the aggregation of all the others. Okay. Pretty much something everyone knows. But I’m looking at your graph and seeing both Rasmussen and non-Rasmussen dropping from 7/8 to 7/29, and Rasmussen _rising_ fairly steeply while non-Rasmussen _dropped_ from 8/12 to 8/22. During that ten day time of net approval dropping on the non-Rasmussen aggregate while rising on the Rasmussen one 538’s tracker DROPPED, from -11.3 to -13.5. This is very inconsistent with any hypothesis that any changes in the 538 tracker are due to Rasmussen results. It looks like instead Rasmussen has little impact on 538’s tracker. And expecting C+ rated Rasmussen to have an outsized impact on 538’s tracker is inconsistent with what [we do know of their algorithm.](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-were-tracking-donald-trumps-approval-ratings/) Not full details but enough. > [@538](#): > > … we use almost all polls but weight them based on their methodological standards and historical accuracy. … [C+ rated Rasmussen is thus weighted to have small impact] > > … We adjust polls for house effects if they consistently show different results from the polling consensus. … [Rasmussen has a known house effect that gets adjusted] > > … The weights also account for how often a pollster measures Trump’s approval ratings. If it does so more often than about once per 20 days, each instance of the poll is discounted so that the pollster doesn’t dominate the average just because it’s so prolific. Daily tracking polls also receive special handling from the formula so that interviews are not double-counted … [Preventing the “special” impact of Rasmussen adding a “data point every single day.”] Silver knows data analysis better than to have a tracker system that would result in a C+ rated house with a known house effect have outsized impact because they report every day. I won’t state with confidence that the tracker moving away from the highest numbers of his range (-9.7) in July (everyone going on about how high they were for him), to the portions more in the middle of his range now (-12.7), is not more than background farts … it could be the start of a real collapse and in retrospect be real and not just noise. But I doubt it as much as I doubted the significance of those July numbers in the other direction. These are quantum froth stochastic variations. Happy to see the random walk to this direction but way too small to read any meaning into it. Get that net to a consistent under -15 (not just a few days) and you have real change to talk about. I hope we have that conversation! ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/35 "2019-09-04T01:40:12Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > 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? [Like how YouGov does?](https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/ocp3l2d7nm/tabs_Trump_Tweets_20190831.pdf) This 8/31 to 9/1 polling. 38% strongly disapprove 12% somewhat disapprove 19% somewhat approve 25% strongly approve 6% not sure So roughly 3/4s of those who disapprove pretty much hate his guts. And fewer, but still a majority, about 57%, of those who approve pretty much love him to bits. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/36 "2019-09-04T01:43:52Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > …These are quantum froth stochastic variations… That was my first thought as well, of course. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/37 "2019-09-04T02:37:38Z")
> [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > 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… > [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > I think I’ve found where folks are getting hung up. When I said, “Almost all of the variation in the last 90 days or so has been due to Rasmussen,” I meant in my chart, not in the 538 chart. > [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > To be clear, I think the big swing in Rasmussen is at least partially responsible for what we’re seeing in 538’s tracker, but since we don’t have the full details of 538’s algo we can’t tell for sure. > [@Lance\_Turbo](#): > > I’m not just talking about noise though. There is basically no trend one way or the other with all non-Rasmussen polls, and there is enough data to show a large downward trend in Rasmussen polls. Sorry, that sure looks like a lot of tap dancing to be on every side of the argument. ---
**Author:** ![Lance\_Turbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lance_turbo/32/6156_2.png) [@Lance\_Turbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lance_Turbo)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/38 "2019-09-04T02:43:27Z")
> [@CarnalK](#): > > Sorry, that sure looks like a lot of tap dancing to be on every side of the argument. I accept your apology. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/39 "2019-09-04T02:48:40Z")
Well, I am somewhat sorry I wasted time on this but that wouldn’t generally be considered an apology. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623/40 "2019-09-04T15:13:45Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > These are quantum froth stochastic variations. I ordered one of those at Starbucks. Tasty, but a bit overpriced. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reason-why-trumps-approval-ratings-are-falling/839623.md?page=3)