Approval Ratings May Skew Democrat Numbers

An analysis of two presidential approval polls on President-elect Donald Trump reveals that skewed sampling may be responsible for attaching an unusually low approval rating to the President-elect before he takes office.

Gallup has established a national Republican-Democrat split of 28 percent to 25 percent as of Jan. 8, while the Pew Research Center has shown that the national proportions lie at 33 percent Democrat and 29 percent Republican.

Though slightly different, both Gallup and Pew data compare similarly to ABC and CNN polls, which show that both news networks over-sampled democratic participants.

ABC sampled 1,005 individuals in an approval poll pertaining to Trump. Of these participants, approximately 23 percent identified as Republican, whereas 31 percent identified as Democrats.

Similarly, a CNN poll questioned 1,000 individuals and sampled 32 percent Democrats and 24 percent Republicans.

Both ABC and CNN polls yielded relatively low approval ratings for Trump, with ABC coming in at a 40 percent approval rating and CNN showing a 44 percent approval rating.

Moreover, a CNN report shaved 4 percentage points off of the actual approval rating given by poll data.

CNN gave the following speculation on how data reflect a future Trump presidency: ”Trump’s wobbly handling of the presidential transition has left most Americans with growing doubts that the President-elect will be able to handle the job.”

Each of the previous four presidents had an approval rating of at least 72 percent during their transition into office, according to Western Journalism.

President Barack Obama was sworn in with an 84 percent approval rating, according to CNN.

Trump retaliated to the ABC and CNN polls citing his poor approval rating, tweeting, ”the same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls.”

”They are rigged just like before.”

Both ABC and CNN surveys did not elaborate on any methodologies that were used to balance Democratic participants versus Republican participants.

Sources: CNN (2), ABC News, Gallup, Pew Research Center, Western Journalism / Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr