President Trump is more popular than he’s given credit for and his travel ban is supported by nearly half of Americans, an analysis found.
Last week, anonymous polls conducted online and through automated phone calls found higher levels of support for the new commander in chief and his controversial immigration policies than polls administered by live survey-takers, Politico found.
“In the polling field, we call this ‘social desirability bias’ — the idea that respondents may be reluctant to reveal unpopular attitudes on surveys,” Patrick J. Egan, a professor of politics and public policy at New York University, told The Post.
“The jury is still out if this is the case with support for Trump, but it is possible,” he added.
For example, the Internet-based Rasmussen poll released Thursday found Trump with a 54 percent approval rating and 46 percent disapproval — almost the mirror image of the live-phone CNN poll released the same day, in which only 44 percent of those polled approved of his job while 53 percent disapproved.
The disparate Trump approval ratings have become a point of contention in press briefings. Polls of Trump’s immigration policy are similarly skewed.
Online surveys like the one conducted by Reuters found that 48 percent of Americans supported the president’s entry restrictions, but when Americans in a Gallup poll were called by pollsters, only 42 percent favored the measures.
The findings reinforce the notion that “shy Trump supporters” are being significantly underestimated by pollsters trying to measure Trump’s popularity — as they may have been in polls taken before November’s election.
They also harken back to the “Silent Majority” that gave Richard M. Nixon the presidency in 1968, when anti-establishment protesters won the headlines but not the White House.
Trump is paying attention to the polls no matter what they project.
“I had given him the whole [polling data] the other day on the ban, or whatever it was,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told Real Clear Politics. “He gets it.”
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