Trump’s Approbal Margins
2020-09-25
Politics: Trump’s Approbal Margins
We will analyse visually the evolution of the general opinion of American voters about the president Donald Trump, using fivethirtyeight.com and the detailed data it has on all polls that track the president’s approval.
approval_polllist <- read_csv(here::here('data', 'approval_polllist.csv'))
glimpse(approval_polllist)## Rows: 15,619
## Columns: 22
## $ president <chr> "Donald Trump", "Donald Trump", "Donald Trump", "…
## $ subgroup <chr> "All polls", "All polls", "All polls", "All polls…
## $ modeldate <chr> "9/27/2020", "9/27/2020", "9/27/2020", "9/27/2020…
## $ startdate <chr> "1/20/2017", "1/20/2017", "1/20/2017", "1/21/2017…
## $ enddate <chr> "1/22/2017", "1/22/2017", "1/24/2017", "1/23/2017…
## $ pollster <chr> "Gallup", "Morning Consult", "Ipsos", "Gallup", "…
## $ grade <chr> "B", "B/C", "B-", "B", "B-", "C+", "B+", "B", "C+…
## $ samplesize <dbl> 1500, 1992, 1632, 1500, 1651, 1500, 1190, 1500, 1…
## $ population <chr> "a", "rv", "a", "a", "a", "lv", "rv", "a", "lv", …
## $ weight <dbl> 0.262, 0.680, 0.153, 0.243, 0.142, 0.200, 1.514, …
## $ influence <dbl> 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0…
## $ approve <dbl> 45.0, 46.0, 42.1, 45.0, 42.3, 57.0, 36.0, 46.0, 5…
## $ disapprove <dbl> 45.0, 37.0, 45.2, 46.0, 45.8, 43.0, 44.0, 45.0, 4…
## $ adjusted_approve <dbl> 45.7, 45.3, 43.2, 45.7, 43.4, 51.5, 37.6, 46.7, 5…
## $ adjusted_disapprove <dbl> 43.6, 38.3, 43.9, 44.6, 44.5, 44.5, 42.8, 43.6, 4…
## $ multiversions <chr> NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, N…
## $ tracking <lgl> TRUE, NA, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, NA, TRUE, TRUE,…
## $ url <chr> "http://www.gallup.com/poll/201617/gallup-daily-t…
## $ poll_id <dbl> 49253, 49249, 49426, 49262, 49425, 49266, 49260, …
## $ question_id <dbl> 77265, 77261, 77599, 77274, 77598, 77278, 77272, …
## $ createddate <chr> "1/23/2017", "1/23/2017", "3/1/2017", "1/24/2017"…
## $ timestamp <chr> "00:45:20 27 Sep 2020", "00:45:20 27 Sep 2020", "…approval_polllist_fix <- approval_polllist %>%
mutate(
modeldate = mdy(modeldate),
startdate = mdy(startdate),
enddate = mdy(enddate),
createddate = mdy(createddate))Create a plot
Using this data we will calculate the average net approval rate (approve - disapprove) for each week since Trump got into office and create a plot that looks like this one.
Compare Confidence Intervals
Next we will compare the confidence intervals for week 15 (6-12 April 2020) and week 34 (17-23 August 2020).
## # A tibble: 2 x 10
## # Groups: year [1]
## year week mean_approval SD_approval count_approval t_critical SE_approval
## <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <int> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 2020 15 -8.23 4.38 94 1.99 0.452
## 2 2020 34 -12.7 5.31 84 1.99 0.580
## # … with 3 more variables: margin_approval <dbl>, approval_low <dbl>,
## # approval_high <dbl>We can see that confidence interval for week 15 is slightly narrower than that for week 34 due to a higher standard deviation driving a higher standard error. This may be due to a combination of data that was released in mid-August, including a not-improving COVID-19 situation in the United States coupled with disappointing economic data. The wider confidence interval results in a wider array of values over which we can be 95% confident represent the true share of the population that approves of the President.