Donald Trump is boasting of record-breaking support, but the truth is somewhat different.
CNN data guru Harry Enten has spoken out about Trump’s selective use of his clips during campaign rallies and on Truth Social, revealing the troubling details the president is careful to omit.
Trump regularly boasts of his support among his MAGA faithful, and has cherry-picked clips of Enten discussing polling that trumpets his popularity.
But the data analyst warned the president, 80, that outside the MAGA bubble, his support is collapsing.
Trump is desperate to prove Americans still like him.
In one clip Trump shared on Truth Social, Enten discusses a poll which shows 53 percent of Republicans named Trump as the president they admired most, compared with 18 percent for Ronald Reagan and eight percent for Abraham Lincoln. The clip was recorded in August and discusses a poll from May.
In another clip from March, Enten details an NBC News survey which found support for Trump among self-identified MAGA voters at 100 percent, with no disapproval recorded.
Trump has played the clips at rallies in Montana and Tennessee, and has used them to claim on Truth Social that he has record-high support in the polls.
“I have High Ratings and, more importantly, he said that I’m losing the support and approval of the Republican Party when, in fact, CNN just came out with a Poll showing that I’m at 98 and 99% support within the Republican Party, an All Time Record High,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social this week.
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But Enten says those numbers tell only part of the story.
“President Trump plays the clips that are best for him and his base,” Enten said. “But I think it’s important to note, we’ve done many hits on Trump’s struggles with the non-MAGA parts of the Republican Party.”
Gas prices are having a knock-on effect on Trump’s approval rating, as Americans struggle with the cost of living.
Trump won non-MAGA Republicans by a commanding 56-point margin in 2024. Now, Enten said, his support among that group has not merely slipped—it has fallen below his disapproval rating.
“It’s that he’s actually underwater, underwater with the non-MAGA parts of the Republican Party,” Enten said, calling the shift “a potentially truly devastating sign.”
And the warning goes well beyond the Republican Party.
“You could talk about Republicans, but at the end of the day, this election is going to be won and lost in the center of the electorate,” Enten said. “And among independents, Trump’s numbers have just dropped off a cliff.”
In the average poll, Enten said, Trump is now 50 points underwater among independents when approval is measured against disapproval.
“That is the worst for any president going into a midterm on record,” he said. Enten added that Trump’s net approval among independents is even worse than Richard Nixon’s was shortly before he was forced to resign in 1974.
“So yes, it is true,” Enten said. “Donald Trump is holding on strong to that MAGA Republican base, but the real problems are in all the other parts of the electorate where he’s really fallen off a cliff, especially among non-MAGA Republicans and among independents.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
It’s not all good news for Trump.
Trump and his party have been losing ground since he launched his war with Iran in February.
The war has caused fuel prices to spike. AAA figures show the average price of gas in the U.S. at $4.25 a gallon, while diesel stands at $6.35.
And Americans are not happy about it, including Republicans.
CNN’s latest survey, released last week, found that roughly two-thirds of respondents, including around one-third of Republicans, believe Trump’s policies have made economic conditions worse. Nearly seven in 10 said he had not done enough to bring prices down.
And that anger is now translating into a serious warning sign for Republicans ahead of the midterms.
The RealClearPolling average gives Democrats an eight-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, raising the prospect that Trump’s party could lose control of the House.
Several congressional districts that Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024 have also become competitive, putting Republican lawmakers in increasingly precarious positions as voters prepare to head to the polls.
For Enten, that signals the midterms will be a “blowout” for Trump and his party.
“The midterms are just days away, and I’m pouring over hundreds, no, thousands, of polls and data points,” Enten said Sunday. “And you know what the numbers are telling me? They are telling me that we are heading towards blowout territory! My goodness gracious! And of course, don’t be angry with me because the numbers do the talking and I just listen.”
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