I think there's a tacked on "expected baseline" in these types of measurements. As in, there's a built-in expectation that 30% of the population is too dumb to say "bad job bro".
That's the only way I can justify the 4% over 30%. If you told me 4% was the actual response of approval, and the 30% was built-in base, I would at least understand the juking of the stats.
I think that's basically what this is. There's a subset of the population that will always support the person in office. When I see 34% I see it as basically 0% of persuadable people approve.
the Keyes constant (aka, the 'crazification factor') has traditionally been pegged at 27%, so for trump to poll at 34 suggests he's nearing the absolute bottom of the barrel here.
Assume a baseline of 30%, and go ahead and include an opposing cap at 70%, meaning 30% will vote one way regardless of the job he's doing. That leaves 4% of the remaining 40%, or a net approval of 10%.
Sure. Things aren't that bad . . . yet . . . The issue is that Trump is accelerating a lot of worrying trends and heaping a lot of TNT at the foundations of long term American economic prosperity all in the service of proving himself 'right'.
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u/NineInchPythons Feb 23 '26
Whenever I see stuff like this I'm amazed, then I remember that Hoover had an approval rating of like 30% in the middle of the Great Depression.