Kinda depends on how you count it. People are leaving the Republican Party and turning independent. Are they still fascists? Yeah. Are they enthusiastic about Donald Trump personally or the Republican Party generally? Not so much anymore.
So is the base “American Ultra-Nationalists and Bigots”? Or is it “Remaining Members of the Republican Party”?
Ignoring the outlier poll in the OP
I mean, we’ll see if this is an outlier or the first round of new polls showing a continued downward trend. Even just using this single pollster, we’re seeing a negative trend.
There is a downward trend for sure, but these numbers suggest this pollster has some kind of systemic error, being consistently so far below the RCP average. Even if you think there’s some kind of issue with RCP (though it has an excellent historical record), Nate Silver’s average is at 38% at the moment.
Estimates are an aggregation of polls. So you’re going to see a few polls where he’s doing below the average and a few above it. But if there’s a downward trend, you’ll see more lows than highs. 29% is certainly surprising, but if he was already at 38% it’s not wildly out of bounds. If someone showed up with a poll showing him at 47%, I’d assume it was an outlier, but I could easily see how you might land on a group of respondents consistent with this response rate.
Kinda depends on how you count it. People are leaving the Republican Party and turning independent. Are they still fascists? Yeah. Are they enthusiastic about Donald Trump personally or the Republican Party generally? Not so much anymore.
So is the base “American Ultra-Nationalists and Bigots”? Or is it “Remaining Members of the Republican Party”?
I mean, we’ll see if this is an outlier or the first round of new polls showing a continued downward trend. Even just using this single pollster, we’re seeing a negative trend.
Trump still hasn’t found a floor of support.
There is a downward trend for sure, but these numbers suggest this pollster has some kind of systemic error, being consistently so far below the RCP average. Even if you think there’s some kind of issue with RCP (though it has an excellent historical record), Nate Silver’s average is at 38% at the moment.
Estimates are an aggregation of polls. So you’re going to see a few polls where he’s doing below the average and a few above it. But if there’s a downward trend, you’ll see more lows than highs. 29% is certainly surprising, but if he was already at 38% it’s not wildly out of bounds. If someone showed up with a poll showing him at 47%, I’d assume it was an outlier, but I could easily see how you might land on a group of respondents consistent with this response rate.