For over a decade now, convicted felon President Trump’s approval ratings as president and candidate were always stuck in a band often described as “low ceiling, high floor” by the same class of tiresome and mediocre political pundits that would also throw around “take Trump literally but not seriously” and then not do anything to explain what the fuck that was supposed to mean. That that it might in fact actually be “seriously but not literally” says about everything you need to know.
But the first of those cliches of the highly overrated and deeply uninteresting in the opinion class was, on top of being more accessible, largely pretty true with very few exceptions during Trump’s ignominious reign atop the Republican Party and the most powerful office in the world. Trump’s approval very rarely stayed above or below the low 40s in most mainstream polls, which itself was a sticky layer on top of that low-30s range of overall respondents that would always agree with the most maximalist MAGA positions, like 32 percent who last July told the same pollster he was never involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes to 40 percent approve. The 30 percent overall respondents last September – also an Economist/YouGov survey – who called Trump honest vs the 39 percent who approved. The 36 percent (slightly above the range) who in 2024 told ABC/Ipsos the fat fuck won his sole debate against Kamala Harris vs 46 percent who said they were going to vote for him.
Could continue with plenty more examples but you got the gist and more important is the reality that decade-old delta appears to be closing as this week’s Economist/YouGov national survey finds Donald at his lowest approval rating ever in their history: 34 percent to to 62 percent disapprove.

