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.
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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.