A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll is the subject of a John Nolte story at Breitbart. The chart in question is on p.14 of the poll, scroll down.
The methodology of the poll was to ask respondents if the strongly approved, somewhat approved, somewhat disapproved, or strongly disapproved of various figures in American political life. There were also categories for unknown and no opinion. For contrast, they added in Vladimir Putin as the final name.
First they combined “strongly” and “somewhat” scores for each, and ranked them by total reporting either strongly or somewhat approval. Of all those, Trump had the highest approval rating at 47%, followed by Mike Pence at 44%, Joe Biden at 43%, Bernie Sanders at 42% and Kamala Harris at 40%. Everybody else ranked lower on total approving.
Next the polling folks subtracted total disapproved from total approved yielding a net score. Trump’s net was 0 meaning in addition to the 47% who approved, another 47% did not. Mike Pence’s net was +4, meaning only 40% disapprove of him. The only two other individuals with net positives were Gov. Ron DeSantis (+6) and Sen. Tim Scott (+3), but they weren’t as widely known. Sanders’ net was also 0, his disapprovals equaled his approvals. Biden and Harris had nets of -8 and -10 respectively.
People in Senate and House leadership all have poor rankings. The only person ranking worse than Pelosi (-22) and McConnell (-22) is Putin (-64) , and Schumer (-12) is nearly as bad as those two. Oddly, they didn’t ask about McCarthy.
Breitbart’s Nolte concludes Trump is America’s most popular politician. You could also make an argument for Pence or for DeSantis. The numbers do not augur well for Democrats.
