Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[pbrower2a]

Gallup polling has released overall data on its polls as collected in all 50 states that was used in polling for national trackers from January to July.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/214349/trump-...tates.aspx

This Gallup average for fifty states is priceless for showing data that I do not have for 22 states altogether, including five states with ten or more electoral votes. of those five states, only Illinois was no mystery...  I expected execrable results in polling of Illinois for Donald Trump and found them (36-58). I was very curious about Georgia (16), Indiana (11), Missouri (10), and especially Ohio (18) and now I have averages from January to July.


In any event, a polling average from January to July  is effectively an estimate of a poll from mid-April. But I have polls from as early as January, and no matter how germane the polls from then were they are less germane than this data.

In any event

(1) I get data that I have never had for 22 of 50 states
(2) The data is objective and relevant, even if dated
(3) I can cast off some old data
(4) I can cast off data from polls that I suspect for being from advocacy groups, favorability polls, and polls with confusing categories such as "Excellent-Good-Fair-Poor", or a composite (which I have for Massachusetts, an estimate that I had based upon several questions on specific issues).
(5) I no longer have the excuse "beggars can't be choosers" for accepting a poll from an advocacy group (unless I trust the pollster).    

Is it completely reliable? No, due to obsolescence. As with a road map which is obsolete even as it is published so is a political poll. But if I am in the middle of nowhere and lost I might use a four-year-old road map to get myself out of a tight spot if something happens to the newer map.

Gallup's daily trackers have been going downward for the President, and the latest data are the right ones. If there is any distortion it is that an average from January to July is closer to an average from April than from now.

So here is the Gallup data, with everything but the District of Columbia and the individual districts of Maine and Nebraska:





Blue, positive and 40-43%  20% saturation
............................ 44-47%  40%
............................ 48-50%  50%
............................ 51-55%  70%
............................ 56%+     90%

Red, negative and  48-50%  20% (raw approval or favorability)
..........................  44-47%  30%
..........................  40-43%  50%
..........................  35-39%  70%
.......................under  35%  90%

White - tie.

...If anything, this map may be too sympathetic to President Trump. Gallup tracking polls have trended downward from January, but they didn't start out well for him, either.  I am not going to calibrate polls of the states downward to adjust for this.  Who knows? The Gallup  average for the states between January-July (average presumed to mean "April") may be more relevant in September than now should events go better for him. I have at most seat-of-the-pants ideas of what may have gone on in states with no other polls (yes, President Trump is in trouble in Indiana and Ohio -- probably worse than this map shows) but that is not how I show polling data. I'm showing polling data and not my estimates.

Besides, you may not like my 'intuitive' estimates, and you would have good cause (my extreme partisanship shows in my prose elsewhere).

I do not dispute Gallup data; I simply put it in different categories that I consider more relevant to predictions of electoral results. 

Now for the theme of disapproval as shown in the Gallup data:




navy under 40
blue 40-43
light blue 44-47
white 48 or 49
pink 50-54
red 55-59
maroon 60 or higher

This becomes a start, and hardly a last word. There are more recent polls, and more relevant ones. Most of them will look worse than what I have on the map.