When I refreshed my presidential approval database in January, I wondered when Gallup would update their measure from December. They usually release approval in mid-month, but there wasn’t an update as of Jan. 20. I assumed it would come soon.
Now we learn that there won’t be any more Gallup presidential approval polls. As reported in the Washington Post and the New York Times on Feb. 11, Gallup has decided to discontinue their approval polling. Gallup made a similar decision in 2015 to discontinue their presidential horse race polls.
This is a loss to the public. The Gallup organization has the longest running, and most voluminous, time series of approval, dating back to 1937. While their methodology has evolved over time, they have always used what was “state of the art” methods for the time, and their question wording has been stable for decades, after evolving a bit in the early years. That means when we want to make the best apples-to-apples comparison across presidents and decades, Gallup is the indispensable source.
Here is what I now realize to be my final update of all the 2846 Gallup approval polls since Roosevelt in Aug. 1937 to Trump in Dec. 2025.
There are plenty of high quality national polls available now, so Gallup is hardly the only game in town. The polling averages from Silver Bulletin, FiftyPlusOne, New York Times, RealClearPolitics and others are now widely recognized as a better way to track the full measure of approval across dozens of pollsters rather than rely on a single pollster.
When George Gallup started the poll in the 1930s there was money to be made in public opinion polling. Newspapers across the country subscribed to his polls and distributed his results to a national audience. Gallup actually offered newspapers a money back guarantee that his 1936 presidential horse race poll would outperform the Literary Digest poll that year, which it did. The poll also survived embarrassing errors, most notably the 1948 presidential election.
These days, there isn’t such a financial interest in providing opinion data to the public. Private polling for interest groups, parties and candidates remains financially viable, but those polls serve private, not public, interests. News organizations either run their own polls, contracting the work through various pollsters, or report on polls they don’t produce themselves but also don’t pay for. Universities (like my Marquette Law School Poll) produce public polls in the public interest and for the publicity value. Gallup is reported to say they are refocusing their business away from approval polling, which is sad but understandable.
This moment of closure lets us make one final list of the lows and highs of Gallup approval results over the decades.
The all time lowest low goes to Harry Truman, at 22%. John F. Kennedy has the highest low, never falling below 56%. And as for highs, George W. Bush owns that record at 90%, eclipsing his father, George H.W. Bush by one point. As for the lowest high, that belongs to the current president, at 47% in his second term, two points lower than his high in the first term. No other president has failed to reach 50% on their best days.
That all time low for Truman was misreported for some decades as a point higher, 23%. I found the discrepancy in 2006, tracked down the evidence, and presented it to Gallup’s then Editor in Chief, Frank Newport, who was gracious enough to review my results and confirm the new low of 22%. I told that story in a post in July 2006. To my surprise, the post still lives at my first website, Political Arithmetik
Presidents can tie their highs or lows in multiple polls on different days. The next table shows all the lows and highs and the dates on which those polls were taken. Some of the dates are instructive. Trump’s second term high came 7 days after his inauguration. And his first term highs were all during the early months of the Covid pandemic. Biden’s low came about the time he dropped out of the presidential race in 2024. For George W. Bush and Franklin D. Roosevelt, their highest marks came after attacks on the United States, after Sept. 11, 2001 and after Dec. 7, 1941.
As for largest range from high to low, that honor is shared by George W. Bush and Harry S Truman, both with a 65 point range, Bush from 90-25 and Truman from 87-22. (Truman lacks a middle name, just an initial, hence no period after the S, a lesson I learned from my 12th grade government teacher, Dr. Austin F. Staples. The great Google AI tells me official documents include a period, but I trust Dr. Staples on this.)
So there you have it. An end of a polling era. “Official” highs and lows will no longer have a consistent standard to use. This means as a practical problem that the highs and lows going forward will come from outliers– the rare poll with an exceptionally high approval and the exceptionally low ones. That, I think, is a loss.
Trump’s approval is bad enough. No need to exaggerate.
It’s the one year mark of Trump’s second term and everyone is posting year in review pieces. Here is mine.
The chart shows how all presidents in the polling era have varied in approval over their entire terms, plus year 1 of Trump 2.0. The boxes cover the middle 50% of all polls, and the “whiskers” extend out to their all time highs and lows of approval in Gallup polls. The bar in the box is the median poll, the 50th percentile. I stick to Gallup for consistency over time and for their unmatched historical depth.
What jumps out is the approval ratings of the last four presidents have varied considerably less than those of their predecessors. Trump 1.0 has the least variation (smallest standard deviation) of any of the other 14 presidents, with 2.0 the second smallest, so far. Both Obama and Biden varied a little more, but considerably less than either Bushes, Clinton, or Reagan. Trump’s median in 1.0 ties with Truman for the lowest median approval, 39%. So far, Trump 2.0 is the 3rd lowest, at 40.5%. (Truman, by the way, set the record for all time low at 22%. Trump hasn’t come close, with a low of 33%, so far.)
This shrinkage of variation in approval is one consequence of polarization, leading the out-party since George W. Bush’s 2nd term to consistently give approval ratings below 10%, while the in-party gives high approval, typically in the 80s, no matter what. The poor independents are left to shift the balance a bit between two largely unmovable partisan camps. V.O. Key famously said voters were “a rational god of vengeance and reward”, but that breaks down when one side will never reward good performance and the other will never condemn bad outcomes. Trump may never approach the lows of Truman, Nixon, Carter or both Bushes, all of whom had low points in the 20s. But he will never approach the highs of Obama, Clinton or Reagan either.
Here is a more conventional look at approval of each of the elected presidents from the polling era. The trends here are smoothed trend estimates. Gallup now polls approval only once a month, so Trump 2.0 is not smoothed, just the raw polls. Also, Gallup hasn’t released the January results, so December is the most recent reading.
Trump 2.0 has run a little better than 1.0 in Gallup’s data. The December point at 36% is a bit of an outlier. The major polling averages put Trump’s approval between 40% and 42% as of Jan. 20, 2026.
An alternate view breaks out each president for readability. Here I’m showing raw poll results with no smoothing.
Here is my polling average for all Trump polls in 2025. My trend estimate is 41.4% approval. For comparison, FiftyPlusOne.news has it at 40.0%, SilverBulletin is 42.0%, NYTimes is 42.0% and RealClearPolitics is 42.4%.
You will note dips below the general downward trend in April after the tariff announcement, then a little recovery after backing off those original “liberation day” tariffs. Then the downward trend returns, until another dip during and after the government shutdown in October and November. A bit of a rise in early December after which the general downtrend returns. This is steady, nearly linear, decline with a couple of short-term wiggles.
I have a beef with headlines that shout “Trump at all time low” or “Approval cratering.” Those either cherry pick particularly low polls, or exaggerate small departures from the general downward trend. Trump’s approval is bad enough. Historically low for other presidents at the end of one year. But the message I read in this trend is a steady decline in approval for an unpopular president, signaling a challenging midterm, and with no sustained upturn in the last 12 months. No need to exaggerate the problems this poses for the White House or Republicans generally.
Time for a look back at the news of 2025 and what the public paid attention to and what it largely ignored. The year has not lacked for news, especially political news as Donald Trump expanded his authority through executive orders, followed by litigation over those orders.
My Marquette Law School Poll asks how much people have heard or read about recent events in the news in each poll:
Here are some recent topics in the news. How much have you heard or read about each of these?
Polls are conducted every other month, six times a year. This is not a comprehensive review of news events but provides a look at how much attention the public gave to a wide variety of mostly political news. Topics are picked from recent events that have received significant coverage and raise important political issues, with more emphasis on news stories published within a few weeks of each poll’s field dates.
Figure 1 shows the 32 topics asked about over the year.
The top topic of the year, by a substantial margin, is tariffs. The May survey came a month after Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement of tariffs on April 2 and the subsequent changes made in rates and implementation dates. Fully 81% of U.S. adults said they had heard or read a lot about the tariffs.
The second most attention went to Trump’s plans for deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, with 70% hearing a lot about this in the first month of the administration. Subsequent items concerning immigration issues varied in visibility, with the mistaken deportation of a man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador in March ranking as the 7th most followed event, with 63% hearing a lot. When Garcia was returned to the U.S. in June, only 37% heard a lot about that, ranking 25th of 32 news items.
Cuts to the federal workforce ranked 3rd most followed story, with 67% hearing a lot as of May. Rounding out the top five news items were the war between Israel and Iran in June and the contentious meeting between Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28th in the Oval Office. U.S. airstrikes on nuclear facilities in Iran ranked 6th.
At the bottom of the chart are Trump’s attempts to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board and the firing of the director of the Centers for Disease Control, followed closely by 30% and 29% respectively.
If you follow politics enough to be reading this post you will probably to shocked that attention to the November elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia ranks 31st of 32 events, with only 28% hearing a lot about this. For us political junkies, it is a reminder that much of the public doesn’t follow politics closely, and especially not elections in states other than their own.
The honor of being the least followed of the 32 stories is Trump’s extended diplomatic trip to Asia in late October, during the shutdown of the federal government, with only 24% who paid a lot of attention to that trip.
Attention to news by party
Figure 2 shows attention to these news topics by party. A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans say they have read or heard a lot about most of the news events covered during 2025. By comparison to either party, independents are considerably less likely to have followed news across every item.
Highly visible events receive more attention across all partisan lines while more obscure events are also followed less by each party group. The correlation of attention for Democrats and Republicans is .78. Independent attention correlates with Democratic attention at .91, and with Republican attention at .85. In short, news tends to penetrate each partisan group in similar ways though with generally lower attention from Republicans and especially independents.
Republican vs Democratic attention to news
Figure 3 shows the attention gap between Republicans and Democrats across the 32 topics, arranged by size of the difference between Republican and Democratic attention. For the news items we asked about, Democrats say they have heard or read more than do Republicans for 24 items, Republicans more for 5 items and the parties are tied for 3 items.
It is notable that the items with greater attention from Republicans are closely tied to Trump. Attention to his inaugural address shows the largest Republican advantage over Democrats in attention, 27-percentage points, followed by Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress (don’t call it a State of the Union address) with an 11-point GOP lead in attention. Other topics with a Republican advantage closely concern Trump–the cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas and the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
At the opposite end of the partisan attention gap, Democrats paid much more attention to the “No Kings” protests in October, by 23-points, and to a measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico in the winter by 20-points. Democrats also paid substantially more attention than Republicans to the firing of the CDC director and reductions in the federal workforce.
Perhaps surprisingly, Democrats paid considerably more attention in September to the potential release of the Jeffrey Epstein files than did Republicans, by 16-points. (This does not cover the actual release of the files in December, after our final poll of 2025 in November.) Coverage of this issue has emphasized pressure from Republicans and MAGA activists for the release, though Democrats also supported the law to require the files to be made public.
This invites the question of whether Democrats simply pay more attention to politics than do Republicans.
In fact, attention to politics is virtually identical for Republicans and Democrats, while independents are much less attentive in general. We ask
Some people seem to follow what’s going on in politics most of the time, whether there’s an election going on or not. Others aren’t that interested. How often do you follow what’s going on in politics…?
Forty-nine percent of Democrats say they follow politics most of the time, as do 48% of Republicans, a trivial difference. In contrast, only 26% of independents say they follow politics most of the time. The lower attention from independents is reflected in their notably lower levels of attention to news events, but this can’t account for Republican and Democratic differences across news items. Table 1 shows attention to politics by partisanship in 2025 surveys.
One plausible explanation is that partisans follow different news sources, and those sources give different emphasis to specific news events. I don’t have data on the actual content of various news sources, but in my data there are only small (typically 3-4 point differences) in awareness of news events between Republicans who follow only conservative news sources and those who follow a mix of conservative and liberal sources, and a similarly small difference for Democrats who follow only liberal sources versus a mix of liberal and conservative sources. This casts some doubt on the idea that it is differences in content that drives differential awareness, and suggests that partisanship has more to do with what news people pay attention to, and remember. More on this in a future post.
The data tables
For those who want to see the numbers in detail here you go. Table 2 shows those who heard or read a lot, a little and nothing at all for each news event. While there is some variation, the most prominent news items have high “heard a lot” and low “nothing at all”, and the less prominent items reverse this.
Table 3 shows high attention to news by party identification.
A federal judge in Florida has dismissed the case charging Trump with illegally retaining classified documents and obstructing government efforts to recover the documents. The judge ruled that the appointment of the special counsel violated the Constitution. Do you favor or oppose this ruling?
In January the Supreme Court upheld a law requiring the social media app TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, to be sold or banned in the U.S. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
In January the Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s request to halt his criminal sentencing in New York where he was convicted in May on 34 felony counts, allowing sentencing to proceed. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
In January the Supreme Court heard arguments concerning a Texas law meant to prevent minors from accessing sexual materials on the internet, through a requirement that adults prove they are 18 or over by submitting government-issued IDs in order to access sexually oriented websites. Do you think the court should uphold this law or strike it down for infringing on the rights of adults?
[In March, the Supreme Court rejected President Trump’s request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid, sending the case back to a lower court for further proceedings.] How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
[In March, the Supreme Court ruled that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was entitled to impose specific requirements on permit holders to prevent pollution but not to make the permit holders responsible simply because water quality has fallen below the agency’s standards.] How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
[In April, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case asking whether a state that generally funds charter schools as alternatives to traditional public schools may refuse to fund a charter school simply because it is explicitly religious.] How do you think the Court should rule?
Poll dates
The state may refuse to fund the religious charter school
The state is required to fund a religious charter school
3/17-27/25
57
43
Party ID
Poll dates
The state may refuse to fund the religious charter school
The state is required to fund a religious charter school
[In December, the Supreme Court heard arguments challenging a Tennessee law that prohibits medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication or performing gender transition surgery for youth under 18.] How do you think the Court should rule?
Poll dates
Uphold the Tennessee law
Overturn the law
3/17-27/25
72
27
5/5-15/25
70
30
Party ID
Poll dates
Uphold the Tennessee law
Overturn the law
Republican
3/17-27/25
90
10
Republican
5/5-15/25
92
8
Independent
3/17-27/25
79
21
Independent
5/5-15/25
73
27
Democrat
3/17-27/25
52
48
Democrat
5/5-15/25
44
56
Trump administration must facilitate return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia
In April, the Supreme Court ruled that federal law requires the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a man erroneously deported to El Salvador. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
In April, the Supreme Court said that those the administration is seeking to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must receive notice that they are subject to deportation within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek court review before such deportation occurs. How much do you favor or oppose this decision?
In April, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case asking whether parents of elementary school students should be able to opt their children out of reading classes concerning stories about LGBTQ+ characters, if those stories conflict with the families’ religious beliefs. How do you think the Court should rule?
Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s “background circumstances” rule — which requires members of a majority group to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard to prevail on a Title VII discrimination claim — cannot be squared with either the text of Title VII or the Supreme Court’s precedents.
Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Jackson on June 5, 2025. Justice Thomas filed a concurring opinion, in which Justice Gorsuch joined.
Holding: Because Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act bars the lawsuit.
Judgment: Reversed, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on June 5, 2025. Justices Thomas and Jackson filed concurring opinions.
Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit’s moment-of-threat rule — a framework for evaluating police shootings which requires a court to look only to the circumstances existing at the precise time an officer perceived the threat inducing him to shoot — improperly narrows the Fourth Amendment analysis of police use of force.
Judgment: Vacated and Remanded , 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on May 15, 2025. Justice Kavanaugh filed a concurring opinion, in which Justices Thomas, Alito, and Barrett joined.
Holding: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit erred in setting aside as arbitrary and capricious the FDA’s orders denying respondents’ applications for authorization to market new e-cigarette products pursuant to The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009; the 5th Circuit also relied on an incorrect standard to reject the FDA’s claim of harmless error regarding the agency’s failure to consider marketing plans submitted by respondents.
Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 9-0, in an opinion by Justice Alito on April 2, 2025. Justice Sotomayor filed a concurring opinion.
Emergency application for stay is granted on Aug. 8, 2023. Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh would deny the application for stay.
Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should stay the judgment of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas baring the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives from enforcing a 2022 rule regulating “ghost guns” as firearms.
Issue: Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.
Issue: (1) Whether the majority of the three-judge district court in this case erred in finding that race predominated in the Louisiana legislature”s enactment of S.B. 8; (2) whether the majority erred in finding that S.B. 8 fails strict scrutiny; (3) whether the majority erred in subjecting S.B. 8 to the preconditions specified in Thornburg v. Gingles; and (4) whether this action is non-justiciable.
In my previous post I argued that the indictments of former president Donald Trump did not in fact boost his standing with voters, despite the often repeated claim that they did.
Two folks I respect pushed back on the NY indictment, though agreeing the others had no effect. Here I respond, and agree in part. In any case, I think this shows a positive discussion is possible over such matters! My bottom line is Trump may have gained support in the GOP primary following the NY indictment. But I don’t find evidence of any gain in overall favorability with all registered voters. My new analysis (thanks to Philip and Sam) finds some evidence that the Florida indictment lowered his support and favorability, something I did not mention in my original post..
Since my original post, Philip Bump at The Washington Post published a nice story looking at my claim, and concluding there was in fact a boost from the first indictment in New York but agreeing there were no boosts from the subsequent indictments. See his piece here. (Link should not be paywalled.)
Sam Wang posted a similar point on Bluesky (sorry, don’t know how to copy a link to that)
Let’s start with the strong case, a rise in Trump GOP primary support following the NY indictment. Here is Trump’s percentage i.n GOP primary polls before and after each indictment. (I’ve updated the most recent polls since my original post, which affects only the post-GA data.)
We all agree the post-New York support is higher than pre-indictment. The only disagreement is that there was a trend of rising Trump primary support before the indictment and that rise continued for over a month after the indictment. My original post claimed the post-NY increase was primary due to the pre-existing trend, rather than an indictment effect. Bump and Wang disagree and see an indictment effect. Here is the chart with the full trend.
The red line shows the overall trend across all polls, the dots are individual polls. The high-frequency polls from YouGov (85 in all) make up the dense set of dots mostly above the red trend line. Those dense dots DO show a bump up immediately after the NY indictment. In my original post I discounted that, thinking the red line was increasing before and after and I gave more weight to that. But I discounted the dense set of polls that do rise. Wang raises the point but Bump dives into this and does more substantial analysis that I now think supports a NY indictment effect.
Here are my finding on this, in response to their points, and finding myself now agreeing there was an independent effect of the NY indictment even considering the trend before and after.
I fit several models, but here are the two that make me conclude NY had an effect. The dependent variable is Trump percent in primary polls. You do NOT want to use his margin over DeSantis because the latter has been declining steadily, so the margin confounds Trump support with DeSantis’ weakening. As you can see in the chart, Trump has been pretty flat since mid-May.
The models I fit are a polynomial in time, which allows for the curve of the support trend, which rises, then flattens. Obviously not a constant linear trend. I fit one quadratic and one cubic fit (the latter probably overfitting the trend but our focus in on the coefficients for the indictments.)
The first model is the quadratic trend.
The NY coefficient is a 4.12 percentage point increase in Trump support after the indictment, and is a statistically significant effect. So this agrees with Bump and Wang, and shows I dismissed this effect too quickly.
The model also suggests that the Florida indictment may have lowered Trump’s support by 2.8 points, a marginally statistically significant result. There is no evidence that DC or GA indictments changed his support. Both have negative but non-significant estimates.
An issue is whether the quadratic trend is sufficient to capture the trend over time, independent of the indictments. As a check I reestimate the model with a cubic in time. That model is shown next.
The NY effect here is a 4.8 point increase, which remains statistically significant. The Florida effect remains negative but falls short of statistical significance. So either way, the NY indictment seems to have boosted Trump with GOP primary voters over and above the trend leading up to the indictment.
On the other hand, Trump’s favorability ratings with all registered voters don’t seem to have gone up with NY, but may have declined slightly with the FL indictment.
Here the trend is nearly flat since January, so I estimate one model that is linear in time, and one that is quadratic as a robustness check. The linear time model is
The time trend is virtually flat, with no evidence of a NY indictment effect. However, the Florida indictment seems to have lowered favorability by 3.6 points.
Using a quadratic in time is similar:
The Florida estimate is a 3.8 point decrease in favorability, and marginally significant, with no evidence for a more complicated time trend. As a final check I ran a cubic time trend with the FL coefficient of -3.5, but p=.056 so not as convincing an effect.
Bottom line is the NY indictment didn’t show any evidence of boosting Trump’s favorability among all registered voters, but it does seem to have improved his standing in the GOP primary by 4.1 to 4.8 points depending on the model.
My thanks to Philip and Sam for pushing this point and adding to the analysis.
To cut to the chase, the indictments of Donald Trump have not boosted him in the polls, either for favorability or for his support in the GOP primary. This claim keeps being repeated as if the data support it. It does not.
Net favorability nationally
Trump’s net favorability (percent favorable minus percent unfavorable) inched up 1.5-2 points following the first indictment in New York on March 30, 2023, from a median of -14.0 to -12.5, and mean of -14.2 to -12.2. This is the only period of a (slight) improvement compared to the pre-indictment period (Jan. 1 to Mar. 29), Following the Florida indictment the median fell to -18, then -19 after the DC indictment and rose -17.5 after Georgia. (Table of full results below.)
The net favorability is for the national population, so perhaps Trump gained substantially among Republican voters, but not the full population. His support in the GOP primary vote gives us that test.
Trump GOP Primary support
Compared to pre-indictment, Trump did have higher support among Republicans in the primary vote following the New York indictment, a median of 49% prior to the NY indictment and 57% after NY but before Florida. There was no further change after Florida (still 57%), or after DC (still 57%.) After the Georgia indictment the median is 58%. If there was in indictment effect boost at all (see below for why you should doubt that) it was over by the Florida documents case indictment.
The remaining doubt about indictment effects is provided by the trend chart below. Trump’s support for the nomination had been rising steadily since Jan. 1 through the spring. It rose at the same rate following the New York indictment as it had been rising prior to the indictment. The trend levels off in early May, a month after the NY indictment and about a month before the Florida indictment. Since mid-may there has been very little trend in Trump’s primary vote. (Each point in the chart is a national poll and the red line is a local regression trend estimate.) Trump’s margin over DeSantis has continued to climb but that is due entirely to DeSantis’ collapse in the polls, not to any gains by Trump since May. Trump’s current 58% support is more than enough to win the nomination. But it hasn’t been increasing for four months.
There are reports of surges in donations following the indictments. But if so, that hasn’t been reflected in the polling for either favorability or for GOP primary support.
The table below shows the median, mean and number of national polls used in the charts above. Note there are only 4 favorability polls completed between the DC and GA indictments, though there were 16 primary polls in the same interval.
“Indictments help Trump” is folklore that needs to be corrected. There is no polling evidence the indictments help, or hurt, Trump. Any effect of criminal trials remains to be seen.
It is “big decisions” week at the U.S. Supreme Court. While most people have an opinion about how the Court is handling its job, the details are often obscure to a substantial share of the public. This week’s decisions will come as surprises to many who don’t follow the Court’s docket.
The Court has suffered a substantial decline in approval since 2020, when fully 66% approved of the job the Court was doing. As of May, 2023, approval stands at 41%. All the data reported here is from the Marquette Law School Poll national surveys of adults.
Approval of the Court differs sharply by party identification, with Republicans maintaining a high approval rating around 60% but independents dropping into the 30s and Democrats into the 20s.
There has been considerable stability in views of the Dobbs decision, which struck down Roe v Wade in June 2022, at least among those who have an opinion on the case (more on those without an opinion below.) About 2/3rds oppose overturning Roe, while 1/3rd support the Dobbs decision.
Approval has changed in “sensible” directions, following party and shifting as the Court has issued major decisions. Disagreement with outcomes drives approval down, agreement with outcomes increases approval. Few of the public are aware of the details of legal reasoning in decision, though elite discourse may emphasize textualism or originalism or “history, text, and tradition” based arguments.
The limits of public attention to the Court is vividly illustrated by awareness of the balance of justices nominated by Republican and by Democratic presidents. Nominations have been intensely contested for over a decade (arguably longer) and the three Trump appointments followed in the wake of Obama’s nominee being denied hearings or a vote in 2016 following Justice Scalia’s death. If a lot of politics has been “all about the judges”, much of the public hasn’t followed the story.
Despite a long standing Republican-appointed majority on the Court, and the current 6-3 majority, 30% of the public believes a majority of the justices were appointed by Democratic presidents. About 40% say a majority was “probably” appointed by Republican presidents, and just 30% say a majority was “definitely” appointed by Republican presidents.
In the wake of the Dobbs decision there was a 10 point rise in the percent saying “definitely” Republican appointed majority, and a drop of 10 points in the percent incorrectly believing Democrats had appointed a majority. But this increased information has declined over the year since Dobbs, giving up all those gains to return to where it was, with 30% saying definitely Republican majority and 30% thinking Democratic appointees are the majority.
For those following, or reporting on, the Court, the share of the public unaware of the makeup of the majority is striking. Discussion of the Court generally assumes some facts are universally known, but this is not the case.
The Dobbs decision has shifted the policy landscape after 50 years of settled law, and has made abortion a central issue in many campaigns as state legislatures have adopted sharply differing laws, replacing the basic national standards for abortion rights under Roe and Casey that had prevailed.
The Dobbs case was clearly on the horizon for months before it was decided. Yet when we (the Marquette Law School Poll) asked about it in Sept. 2021, 30% said they “haven’t heard enough to have an opinion.”
Pre-decision Do you favor or oppose the following possible future Supreme Court decisions, or haven’t you heard enough about this to have an opinion?
Overturn Roe versus Wade, thus strike down the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states.
Post-decision Do you favor or oppose the following recent Supreme Court decisions, or haven’t you heard enough about this to have an opinion?
Overturned Roe versus Wade, thus striking down the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in all 50 states.
The leak of the Dobbs opinion raised awareness about 8 points while the actual decision increased awareness another 10 points. By the fall of 2022, about 10% said they hadn’t heard of the Dobbs decision. This is an example of how an extraordinarily salient decision can reach almost all of the public, certainly more than the typical case or of the Court majority above.
This week, we expect a decision on the use of race as a factor in college admissions. This issue has been with us at least since the Bakke case in 1978, and has been revisited since, notably in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003).
As of May, just over half of our national sample say they haven’t heard about the case or not enough to have an opinion.
Do you favor or oppose the following possible future Supreme Court decisions, or haven’t you heard enough about this to have an opinion?
Rule that colleges cannot use race as one of several factors in deciding which applicants to admit.
Whatever decision the Court reaches, it will come as something of a surprise to half the public. When we poll in July, it will be interesting to see how many remain unaware of this decision. Will that fall sharply, as in Dobbs, or will a substantial minority remain unaware of the decision?
A similar lack of familiarity is clear in another much talked about case (among Court watchers), 303 Creative, which concerns a business owner’s right, based on 1st Amendment speech or religious liberty grounds, to deny services to LGBTQ customers. Here too, about 45% lack awareness of the pending decision.
While a plurality favor banning the use of race in admissions, a plurality oppose allowing businesses to deny services. But in both cases the largest group is those not familiar with the case.
Views of the justices
Despite recent coverage of the justices, most of the public says they either haven’t heard of each justice, or haven’t heard enough to have a favorable or unfavorable opinion. Here we encourage respondents to say if they lack an opinion. Our question reads:
Some justices of the Supreme Court are better known than others. For each of these names have you never heard of them, heard of them but don’t know enough to have an opinion of them, have a favorable opinion or have an unfavorable opinion?
In other surveys (including ours for different questions) “haven’t heard enough” or “don’t know” may not be an explicit option. Many respondents will offer an opinion in this case. Those responses may also contain valuable information, encouraging reluctant respondents to still venture an opinion. In light of our finding on awareness of the majority on the Court, and on specific cases, we choose to frame the question in a way that explicitly acknowledges the possibility that not every justice is well known.
As the chart makes clear, many people lack opinions of each justice. There is variation, with some better known than others, but the share of “haven’t heard enough” is higher than either favorable or unfavorable for all, if only slightly so for Justice Thomas.
More than 60% say they don’t have an opinion of Justice Alito. In November 2022 we asked respondents for their best guess as to which justice authored the Dobbs decision. A quarter correctly picked Alito, with another quarter picking Thomas, and a scattering among the other justices. This is a very difficult question for the general public, who do not as a rule rush to read opinions by their favorite justices. Perhaps it is impressive that as many as 1/4 got Alito right, and Thomas is not a bad guess, given his concurrence. Still, the point is most people don’t have specific information about individual justices even in the most visible decisions.
The May 2023 survey was conducted after a series of news stories concerning Justice Thomas’ financial disclosure statements, which did not report a real estate sale or certain travel expenses paid by others. Thirty-three percent said they had heard a lot about this, while 32% had heard a little and 35% had heard nothing at all. This was a prominent story in “Washington circles” but while 1/3rd heard a lot about it, just over 1/3rd heard nothing at all.
There is a substantial difference in awareness of the Court among those who generally pay attention to politics, which is nicely illustrated by awareness of the stories about Justice Thomas’s disclosure statements. About 36% in the May survey said they paid attention to politics “most of the time” while 64% pay attention less frequently.
News stories about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ financial disclosure reports. (Here are some recent topics in the news. How much have you heard or read about each of these?) By attention to politics.
Attention to politics
Heard a lot
A little
Nothing at all
Most of the time
60
28
12
Less often
18
34
48
In the most attentive 1/3rd of the public, awareness of the stories about Thomas’ disclosures were quite well known, but this dropped precipitously once we move beyond those most attentive to politics generally.
The lesson is an old one. Most people don’t pay as much attention to either politics or the Court as you, dear reader, or I. This means public reaction to Court decisions may not follow what elite expectations may be, simply because much of the public wasn’t expecting the cases to be decided. Even in Dobbs, a substantial 30% didn’t see the case coming as late as March 2022.
Further, given how much partisanship affects perceptions of the Court, the 25-30% who believe there is a majority appointed by Democratic presidents will have curiously distorted opinions of the court. In May, among Republicans who eroneously believed a majority of the Court were appointed by Democratic presidents, 57% disapproved of the Court. Among Democrats with the same misperception, 60% approved of the Court. Compare that with Republicans correctly saying there is definitely a Republican appointed majority: 76% approve, while among Democrats also saying there is definitely a Republican appointed majority: 14% approve.
There is a reporting and messaging lesson here. A substantial share of the audience you are trying to reach is likely unaware of some facts you take for granted. It is important to expand awareness of those facts by making them part of your story, even if they seem “obvious.”
GOP candidates have struggled a bit to find positions on Russia and international affairs they can be consistent on and that GOP voters want
The shift from the Reagan party to today is striking, but we might consider the future in which the GOP is America first, isolationist.
This comment by @StuPolitics prompted me to share data from my @MULawPoll _National_ data on opinion concerning Ukraine aid and the US role in the world.
“It really is amazing how quickly the GOP position on foreign policy/int’l relations has flipped. It has gone from tough against the USSR to soft and squishy against Russia.” — @StuPolitics
On aid to Ukraine, the balance of opinion hasn’t moved much since Nov. The largest group, 40-45%, says we are giving about the right amount, some 30-35% say too much and just under 25% say not enough aid.
The partisan divide though is pretty strong but also stable. Reps most likely to say too much, Dems least and inds in the middle. Roughly half Reps and Rep leaners say we are giving too much aid to Ukraine
Note the Lean Reps are slightly more anti-aid than Reps. More on that below.
We’ve also asked @MULawPoll respondents about the US role in the world.
Most say it is better for the future of the country if we play an active role in the world, 55-60%, with 40-45% saying stay out of world affairs. A little tightening on this since Nov. 2022.
When we look at the “stay out of world affairs” by party ID, those independents who lean Rep and pure independents jump to the top of the chart as the most isolationist, at 58-64%
Reps are less so, though still at near 50%
And Lean Dems are about 40%, with Dems under 30%
Back to @StuPolitics comment, consider the international successes of nuclear arms reduction under Reagan, collapse of USSR under GHWBush and the seeming spread of democracy under Clinton.
The last 23 years have not had much to claim as big success stories for either party.
Those negative views of the US role among independents and leaners (esp Rep leaners) represent an opportunity for “isolationism” to grow, most likely in GOP but possibly with Dems too
Leadership can shape these views, exploit them, or follow the crowd. It ain’t the 1980s no more.
Gallup has an update on partisanship trends today. Links at end of this thread
I want to address the “leaned” vs “unleaded” party issue. Do “partisans” include independents who lean to a party, or not. Similarly, does “independents” include leaners or not, a how it matters
Gallup question wording is slightly different from the wording many academics use. “In politics as of today” vs “generally speaking” has modest difference but not the issue I care about which is how much difference is there between leaners and partisans.
Rep leaners are 11% and Dem leaners 13%. That close symmetry has been pretty stable. You get more partisans (obviously) if you include leaners as partisans, and more independents if you call them independents. The Gallup headline is based on calling them independent.
The “academic” question wording also asks partisans if they are “strong” or “not very strong” (ie “weak”) partisans. Here you also see 11-12% are weak & just under 20% are strong for each party.
Here are Gallup’s party ID trends since 2004, with leaners separate from partisans or pure independents.
How do these groups differ?
Some claim leaners are “really partisans”. That isn’t right.
They are more partisan than pure independents, but not as partisan as those who pick a party on the 1st question. I know nuance is hard, but leaners are indeed leaners and not committed partisans.
You also see lack of partisan commitment in the “someone else” and “wouldn’t vote” percentages that rise to the middle of the PID scales.
Also note how “weak” are different from “strong” partisans. Sometimes less partisan than lean, sometimes not.
Here is Biden approval by partisan lean and strength. Similar to the vote choice above, though Reps and lean Rep are quite similarly negative, and “weak Reps” a little more approving. More monotonic w Dem strength.
Here is a comparison of favorably to Trump and to Biden by Party ID with leaners.
Both partisans and leaners equally despise the other party’s guy.
But note in both parties leaners are less favorable to their party’s guy than are partisans.
Negative partisanship is strong.
Another big difference is attention to politics. More partisan means more attention, with pure independents especially less attentive, though “weak” partisans are close to pure inds
Among other things this means leaners & weak are slower to pick up on issues and candidates
It’s easy to focus on size of each group. Inds tend to grow in non-election years, then decline close to elections
But “are they independent or hidden partisans” is important & the answer is learners are in between. Less party loyalty in votes than partisans, but clearly lean.
In an election, partisans vote w party >90% but leaners typically in the 80s. They can also push that up or down depending on the candidates. They aren’t “swing voters” but that lower loyalty and potential for more or less loyalty is important in election outcomes.
Links to Gallup trends in partisanship, showing 49% “independent” but that includes leaners!
The tables are great and go back to 2004. Also have table w leaners as partisans. 43R-43D-14 Ind
This Axios story is misleading. It combines independents who lean to a party with “purely” inds. Dem & Rep are modestly down, leaners up a bit, pure Ind still low teens. See full data 2004-23 below. Leaners vote w party but less than partisans
I don’t care for the WaPo headline. These aren’t “independents who vote party” but people who say they are independents AND who say they lean to a party and mostly vote that way, but less so than partisans, more so than independents who don’t lean.
Most important just look at the full data and there are not sharp or sudden shifts. Relative stability over 19 years with some modest but important shifts (a bit more leaners, bit fewer partisans) and little change in pure independents.
March 20 marks the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War. Initially, the war had substantial majority support, saying it was “worth it”. But that fell rapidly and by July 2004 as many said it was “not worth it”. By 2008 we reached near 65% not worth it, which is little changed.
Three aspects of Iraq War opinion. (Created 11/5/2007).
