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What is Donald Trump's approval rating on FiveThirtyEight in 2025?
Executive Summary
FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver/Silver Bulletin reporting shows Donald Trump’s net approval in 2025 was underwater, with snapshots around mid-October and early November indicating a net between -8 and -10.8 points, and an October 16 summary listing 44% approve / 52% disapprove. Other provided sources did not supply a FiveThirtyEight figure and instead focused on news coverage; the clearest FiveThirtyEight-related figures come from Silver-linked summaries [1] [2] [3].
1. What people are claiming — a short inventory that matters
The core claims in the material are threefold: first, that FiveThirtyEight (via Nate Silver/Silver Bulletin) tracked Trump’s 2025 approval and found it underwater; second, that specific snapshots showed a -8 net (44%/52%) and later a new second-term low of -10.8; third, that FiveThirtyEight itself faced organizational changes prompting Silver to host approval data on the Silver Bulletin. The supplied documents that directly assert numeric estimates are a Newsweek summary of Silver’s tracker and a Silver Bulletin roundup showing the -10.8 net figure [1] [2]. Other supplied items labeled as general news (p1_s1–[5], [7]–p2_s3) explicitly do not give FiveThirtyEight approval numbers and are therefore non-evidentiary for the specific polling claim.
2. The most direct FiveThirtyEight-origin numbers — what they say and when
Nate Silver’s tracker, as quoted in Newsweek on October 16, 2025, reported Trump’s net approval at -8 points with 44% approving and 52% disapproving, noting an unusual uptick during a government shutdown [1]. A November 4–6 update in the Silver Bulletin aggregated polls and placed Trump at a -10.8 net approval, described as a new second-term low reflecting a pattern of underwater polls for Trump across several pollsters [2]. Silver’s commentary and the Bulletin’s dashboard plans also indicate that his team was maintaining a running, weighted average of polls and had migrated or supplemented FiveThirtyEight polling work onto the Silver Bulletin platform amid organizational transitions [3]. These are the clearest, dated figures in the provided set.
3. Conflicting sources and gaps — what’s missing from the packet
Multiple provided sources that one might expect to reference approval numbers — several ABC News and other news dispatches — do not report FiveThirtyEight approval metrics and instead cover events and commentary about Trump and policy [4] [5] [6]. That discrepancy matters because it highlights that the only quantitative FiveThirtyEight-adjacent numbers in the packet come via Silver-linked outlets rather than FiveThirtyEight’s own archived pages. The supplied materials also note a transition in where Silver’s polling data is hosted; this organizational change creates ambiguity about whether a “FiveThirtyEight” branded single page carried the same continuously updated metric throughout 2025 or whether the canonical tracker effectively migrated to Silver’s Bulletin [3]. The packet lacks a contemporaneous FiveThirtyEight homepage snapshot, leaving room for interpretive error if one equates “FiveThirtyEight” strictly with its historical site rather than Silver’s ongoing outputs.
4. Methodology and interpretation — why numbers moved and how they were constructed
Silver’s figures reflect a weighted average of multiple presidential approval polls that adjusts for pollster reliability and “house effects,” combining polls across adults, registered voters, and likely voters to produce a single net approval metric; that method explains why a range of polls yields a smoothed, often more stable estimate than any single survey [2]. The documented movement from -8 to -10.8 in October–November 2025 is attributable to accumulating polls that trended more negative for Trump, not a single outlier survey; Silver’s writeups emphasize consistently unfavorable results across pollsters rather than one anomalous finding [2]. The Newsweek summary also highlighted that an approval uptick during the government shutdown was “pretty unusual,” underscoring how context-specific events can transiently affect the composite metric, which remains sensitive to short-term shifts in multiple pollsters’ fielding windows [1].
5. The bottom line and how to verify now if you need an exact number
Based on the supplied materials, the authoritative snapshot of Trump’s FiveThirtyEight-linked approval in 2025 was underwater, with a mid-October composite at 44% approve / 52% disapprove (net -8) and a subsequent early-November Silver Bulletin composite at net -10.8, described as a second-term low [1] [2]. For absolute confirmation today, consult the Silver Bulletin’s approval dashboard or archived FiveThirtyEight pages for the exact date you care about; the packet indicates Silver moved or duplicated FiveThirtyEight polling work to the Silver Bulletin, so check both Silver Bulletin entries and FiveThirtyEight archives for the most authoritative timestamped figures [3]. The supplied news sources that do not contain these metrics should not be relied on for polling figures (p1_s1–[5], [7]–p2_s3).