Farewell, President Polls
On his last day, remembering Donald Trump's unique love-hate relationship with the polls.
We’ve made it: Happy Inauguration Day! Welcome to Margin of Error, a newsletter from me about the polls and the way they are covered.
If you’re new here, thanks for signing up! If you find it interesting, I’d be grateful if you would encourage others to sign up.
If someone sent this your way or you found this post through Twitter or other channels, make sure to subscribe below.
Now, a farewell of sorts.
Probably the first time I (inadvertently) caught the attention of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump was through my poll coverage of the 2016 Republican primary.
I was the politics editor at Business Insider, so it was a point in my life when I was especially attuned to Trump’s tweets, and it was kind of a surreal experience to see a presidential candidate tweeting out my story.
Of course, you can’t see the tweet now, because the president got banned from Twitter after the US Capitol insurrection and related events. But it was a fairly banal tweet that said something about how it was a “nice” story.
This had nothing to do with how it was written, but everything to do with how it was received—and how Trump has viewed polls. In this context, “nice” meant that it featured polls that were good for Donald Trump. Other, less nice stories or poll numbers have also caught the attention of this outgoing president the past five and a half years.
There perhaps has never been, nor will there ever again be, a president so obsessed with the polls and his standing in them. This is perhaps natural, given Trump’s egomaniacal tendencies.
In many ways, you can tell the story of the Trump presidency through the polls of the era. They foretold his rise in the Republican Party when the pundits thought his candidacy was a joke. Then then they missed his strengths in the two general elections in which he competed. They anticipated many of his most unpopular policy goals. As his tenure ends, they tell a clear story of the legacy he leaves.
The first time Trump tweeted about a poll was on May 3, 2011 (which, somehow, is just about a decade ago). “@oreillyfactor is having a poll, cast your vote for me,” he wrote.
This is a pretty good illustration of his overall view on polls. No matter their methods, if they were good for him, they were good. During the 2016 primary, he would often tweet out unscientific polls from The Drudge Report, Newsweek, and others, claiming he “won” debates in which pundits had panned his performance.
If they’re not good for him, as they weren’t in the 2020 campaign, he bizarrely claimed they were part of an “election interference” campaign. (He actually did tweet this!)
But at least at first, the polls generally were good for him. To Trump and his supporters, they were evidence he would emerge victorious from the primary season. It was a moment, at least early in the primary campaign, when the political world and political press largely chose to ignore the data. They have spent the last four-plus years trying mostly ill-conceived methods to rectify it.
The data foretold what was to come over the next five years and probably well beyond. There are two competing forces of Trump’s legacy as the 45th president. He is the most unpopular president ever measured in American history. Yet there is a segment of voters that will follow wherever he leads. And, so too, will the polls, unfortunately. If the postelection coverage—like this New York Times story on how Trump supporters are feeling about the US Capitol attack and Joe Biden’s inauguration—is any indication, that segment of voters will continue receiving outsized attention in a divided country.
Trump’s final “scorecard” is clear:
By a few different measures, he is the most unpopular president in US history. Gallup found his average approval rating over his four years as president to be 41%, the lowest in the company’s polling era dating back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
An ABC/Washington Post poll also pegged his average approval rating at 40%, the lowest on record, while his average disapproval rating stood at 56%, 10 points higher than any other president.
Trump is also, by far, the most polarizing president in history, helping usher in an era that will continue to be remembered for its polarization. On average, per Gallup, 88% of Republicans approved of his job performance, compared to 7% of Democrats (and, if you’re wondering, 37% of independents).
Trump is leaving office on a much darker note than when he used unscientific polls to claim he “won” GOP primary debates. For the past two months, he has used his megaphone, and polls of Republican voters that have cycled from it, to lie about fraud in an election he lost by a lot of votes.
Because of the events resulting from that campaign, there’s one more immediate issue of the Trump era for the polls to weigh in on: His second impeachment and potential conviction.
Trump leaves a legacy that is conveyed in the latest polls. Most Americans think he should be convicted and never again allowed to hold office. Yet three-quarters or more of the Republican base support him and think the election was stolen from him.
As he leaves office, the danger reflected in that discrepancy remains. Even as we reach the seeming end of one chapter, we might yet bring some baggage with us into the next one.
Will the polls foreshadow more division, or will the new Biden administration turn those numbers around? We can all hope it’s the latter.
Thanks for reading Margin of Error. If you have any tips, comments, or insights about polling, email me at bplogiurato@gmail.com, or find me on Twitter @BrettLoGiurato.
If you liked what you read, share it with a friend and make sure to subscribe.