Is Trump’s Approval Rating Soaring or Cratering? You’d Never Know From Headlines

Depending on where you look, President Donald Trump’s approval rating is either achieving ecstatic new heights, or falling like a Sumo cliff-diver. What’s really going on?

Most recently, there have been a lot of headlines trumpeting Trump’s approval in the latest Gallup poll, and not just from right-leaning sources. There was also a braggadocious tweet from Trump himself over the weekend. “96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you! Also, just out, highest ever Approval Rating overall in the new Gallup Poll, and shows ‘Trump beating Sleepy Joe Biden,’” he wrote.

(Fact-check: The Gallup poll in question did not include a matchup with former Vice President Joe Biden, and while Trump’s approval with Republicans was very high — at 93 percent — there’s no poll showing him at 96.)

But you’ll also find headlines about a precipitous drop in approval of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic — from the exact same poll. So what’s really going on here?

That depends

on your goal. If you’d like to point and laugh at Trump, there are plenty of ways to slice this loaf. Trump’s approval on the coronavirus has indeed crashed by ten points since the last time Gallup polled the question, but he was at a remarkable 60 percent then. And while Trump is correct that his overall approval of 49 percent ties for the highest of his presidency, his net approval has slipped three points since March.

And his rally back to 49 percent is only a rally because he dropped like a stone, to 43 percent, in a Gallup poll taken in the first half of April. And finally, as Gallup noted at the end of the most recent poll, “Trump’s average approval rating throughout his three-plus years in office remains at 40%.”

But if you’re looking for feel-good news for Trump, highest means highest, and a six-point gain in a matter of two weeks is impressive — especially considering that Trump is weathering unprecedented economic calamity, a mounting death toll, and an absurd low point during which he suggested the study of injectable disinfectant as a treatment for the coronavirus.

If you wanted to be skeptical of both positions, you’d probably point out that a poll taken over the course of two weeks is a poor instrument to divine a snapshot of anything in a fast-moving news environment like the current one, and

that polls showing net approval of Trump’s coronavirus response since the end of March are distinct outliers. Trump’s overall approval remains in a middle ground between his floor of 36 or so percent and the 48 percent that was enough to get him elected in the first place.

Perhaps the most valuable to be learned from the Gallup poll is that there is a malleable and forgiving middle of the electorate. Independent voters delivered Trump his highest approval rating to date among that group at 47 percent, an increase of four points from March. At the same time, their approval of his coronavirus response slid ten points from March that same March poll — to 50 percent.

As always, public opinion is a complicated issue that doesn’t get any simpler when the world seems to be on fire. But that’s when it becomes more important than ever to contextualize results like these, rather than sensationalize them.