General Discussion

One thing that bothers me about the polls is the question of party affiliation and sampling.

I would guess that they sample and adjust percentages of Democrats, Independents, and Republicans polled to match something like Gallup's annual findings. But Gallup conducts it's interviews over the course of the year and comes up with an annual average of those interviews. I'm not aware of any reporting of trends over the course of the year. We don't get slices of time.

When comparing 2024 to 2025, there is a two percentage point increase in the number of Independents. Both Democrats and Republicans lost about a percent. But when you look at the Lean numbers, the year over year movement is a 6 point swing toward Democrats. (Repub leaning Independents -3 Dem leaning Independents +3)



I think -- and I don't think it is much of a stretch given the horrors of the felon's regime -- if there was ever a time that an unprecedented number of people would exit the Republican party, this would be that time. And if that is true -- if over the months more have moved from identifying as Republican to Independent than captured by Gallup -- that steady 90% approval from Republicans we see in poll after poll is actually 90% of a shrinking number.

A shift of a couple percent from Republican to Independent may not seem like it would make much difference, but if pollsters are consistently giving too much weight to the 90% approval group (Republicans) and too little weight to the 25% approval group (Independents), the overall approval reported is too high. And if the actual percentage of people that identify as Republican is shrinking over time, then the creeping gap between the "true" approval and reported is getting bigger.

There's more in the report that provides a little hope -- like the increasing number of people who identify as liberal...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-political-independents.aspx