General Discussion

I have a theory that the overall approval ratings reported by gallop and other "trusted" organizations are inflated -- perhaps by a lot.

The reason is that they probably all rely on Gallup's 2025 annual average of partisan affiliation to correct sample sizes to reflect their published annual estimate of party affiliation.

The problem with this is that the annual average of Gallup interviews over the course of 2025 fails to capture the reality, which is that the exodus from the Republican party has, and continues to, accelerate.

I suspect they are well aware of this because they conduct party affiliation surveys throughout each year and only publish the annual average at year's end.

In other words, that stubborn 90% approval rating among self-identified Republicans represents a percentage of a shrinking number of people -- a number that is erroneously being inflated because they do not apply partisan affiliation survey results based on the same slice of time as the approval surveys.

I could of course be wrong about their model, but at a minimum, I think someone more well-versed in the models used should look deeper into this.

If i'm right, then the reason the are ceasing president approval reporting is that they KNOW their model needs fixing to capture reality, and rather than fix it and face lawsuits and blowback from the felon for publishing even MORE abysmal numbers, they are opting out.