Trump's Approval Ratings - How Can We Tell, What Do They Mean?

President Trump and his team have done a brilliant job of discrediting the media, even when the very thing they are discrediting is not accurate. For instance, take the polls. President Trump has mentioned many times how "off" the polls were when, in fact, they were more accurate than they were in 2012's Presidential Election. But, since they were just off enough in a handful of critical states, President Trump can bring this up again and again and his supporters will tend to agree blindly.

That pivots, nicely, into a discussion of the President's approval rating. We've already established that Donald Trump is the least popular President upon first term inauguration; President Trump now has another marker in this regard, as he has the lowest approval rating after one month in history, nearly 13 points lower than the prior record holder, Bill Clinton. The question, however, is are these polls "accurate?". Put another way, as Politico does in this article, "Donald Trump might be more popular than you think." Politico breaks down different ways in which Trump might be more popular than traditional metrics measure, and they use the polling error in the general election as one example of how this can happen. 

Nate Silver's crew at 538 offer a different perspective, centered on what Trump's approval ratings mean for the GOP at large in the 2018 Midterm Elections. To get to that discussion the article doesn't dispute that the polls are saying different things, ranging from "approve of his job performance more than disapprove" to "underwater by anywhere from 7 percentage points ... to 15 points." The article then quiets all the noise by rightly pointing out that regardless of where on this spectrum Trump's approval actually lies doesn't matter: he is historically unpopular for a president within his first month. 

As to what that means moving forward for President Trump, his Administration, or the GOP, it is really anyone's guess. It is possible that Trump's approval jumps up very high; look at George W Bush's approval post 9/11/01, or his father's post Desert Storm for one way that could happen. But the chaos inside the White House seems, at this point, to make that jump unlikely at best. Furthermore, almost all Presidents during the modern age have gotten more unpopular as their first term progresses. The exception to that rule? George W Bush, who got a net of 2 points more popular. If President Trump doesn't manage to buck that trend, things could get really ugly, really fast, for the GOP. 

At any rate, this bears much more watching than usual, for two reasons. The first is that it is evident that the pollsters will be working hard to try to prove that they not only have an important role, but are accurate. The second is how much attention Trump pays to the polls. We know already that if a poll comes out that looks good for him he will trumpet it; if a poll comes out he doesn't like he will slam it. But one thing that is certain is that the general public's opinion of the President is a historically important factor in Midterm Elections. Will 2018 be any different?