Gallup’s approval rating is retiring. Here's what should replace it
For eight decades, Gallup has asked Americans the same question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the president is handling his job?" Last month, they announced they're retiring it.
Gallup built its reputation on consistency.
But consistency has a cost. When the format never changes, neither does what you can learn from it.
This week, instead of asking people if they approve or disapprove of Donald Trump, I asked people to place themselves on a Venn diagram, pick a seat on a plane, and locate themselves on a grid.
I designed a graphic for each question: a set of seven Venn diagrams, an airplane seat map, and a 2x2 grid.
Each graphic does double duty — it's both the survey question and the results visualization.
I designed these graphics because a good question should say something before anyone answers it.
The Venn diagrams — fully separated at the top, nearly concentric at the bottom — show that ideological proximity is a spectrum, not a category. The airplane seat map distinguishes your political opinion of Trump from your curiosity about him as a human being. And the 2x2 — voting intention on one axis, whether you understand Trump voters on the other — reveals a voter type the current political landscape ignores.
Gallup's approval rating measures a conclusion. These questions reveal the fault lines underneath — the places where our vote and our curiosity, our politics and our empathy, clash.
The Venn Diagram
In the early 1990s, the psychologist Arthur Aron created a method for measuring how close two people feel to each other: a row of seven circle pairs, ranging from fully separate to nearly overlapping. He called it the "Inclusion of Other in the Self" scale.
Aron's circles were built for interpersonal closeness. I borrowed them to measure ideological proximity.
How much does your worldview overlap with Trump's?
The conventional narrative is that American politics has sorted into two irreconcilable camps. If that were fully true, you'd expect a barbell — most Trump supporters in circle 7 and everyone else in circle 1. But that's not what the data shows.
Democrats did sort to the extreme. Half the sample chose circle 1, and it's overwhelmingly blue. But Republicans didn't. Their responses are spread across circles 4 through 7, with no single circle dominating. Even among Trump's own voters, there's a range of how much they feel their worldview actually overlaps with his. Some are fully aligned. Many aren't.
That's what the approval rating erases. "Do you approve?" collapses that entire spectrum into a single yes.
The obvious application beyond politics is brand research. The circle pairs can show you not just whether someone likes a brand but how close they feel to it — and those are different things. A customer can like a brand without sharing its worldview. They can feel close to its values without being a loyal buyer. That distinction matters for messaging, positioning, and how a brand navigates controversy. It's a richer brief than awareness scores, resonance metrics, or willingness to recommend.
How aligned are you with Trump's politics and vision?
Weighted to Pew 2025 party distribution · Results by political affiliation| % of respondents |
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The Airplane Seat Map
The comedian Mark Normand has this bit about flying. What if you could pick not just where you sit but who you sit next to, dating app style?
"Obese Nazi with a service dog. Swipe left. Tiny Asian lady with a surgical mask. That's my gal…. "
I’m with Normand. I’d swipe right for someone who will leave me alone for five hours.
But Trump?
He's the one seatmate who might actually be worth five hours of conversation — or at minimum, five hours of observation. You could ask him anything. You could say nothing and just watch. Either way, you're getting off that plane with a story.
Unlike the Venn diagrams, the plane sorted roughly the way you'd expect. Row 19 — Trump's row — skews heavily Republican. Row 14, seat A — the window seat farthest from Trump — was chosen by 33% of respondents and is almost entirely Democratic.
But not everyone sorted that way. A handful of Democrats chose seats in Trump's row. I asked them why. One said: "I want to hear what he has to say and engage in a conversation with him. I would share my feelings and see if there's any common ground for him to consider other viewpoints."
For brands and agencies, the application is more literal than it might seem. Every brand has a version of this question: not just whether customers like you, but whether they'd choose to sit next to you. Would they seek you out in a room? Would they lean in or move away? A seat map built around a brand — its spokesperson, its values, its most polarizing product decision — would surface a different kind of loyalty data than any scale.
You're on a 5-hour flight.
Where would you most want to sit?
Seat fill shows % who chose that seat · n=297
The Voter Grid
Eric Weinstein talks about xenophilic restrictionists — people who love other cultures but supports stricter immigration limits. His point is that the position only looks contradictory because the political landscape has no room for it.
The 2x2 is built on the same logic.
Two axes: would you vote for Trump, and do you understand why people do?
Most people assume these track together. But separating them creates space for a position that a single axis erases: people who would never vote for him but can nonetheless articulate why others do. That's a distinct political identity that the approve/disapprove framework doesn’t account for.
The largest quadrant is box 1 — 42% of respondents would vote for Trump and understand why people do. That's not surprising. What is surprising is box 3: 20% would never vote for Trump but say they understand why people do. Among non-Trump voters, the sample splits roughly 40/60 between those who get it and those who don't. That's not a small difference. It suggests that opposition to Trump contains two distinct political psychologies that probably don't agree about how to respond to him.
Every polarizing brand — and most interesting brands are polarizing — has its own version of this grid. On one axis: would you buy this brand? On the other: do you understand why people do? The box 3 customer is the one most agencies miss. They're not your buyer, but they get you. They might defend you to a skeptic. They might become a buyer later. They're a different kind of asset than a loyal customer, and a standard awareness or sentiment study will never find them.
Where do you fall on Trump and his voters?
Fill height = % who selected that quadrant · n=297vote for
Trump
never vote
for Trump
why people do
why people do
vote for
Trump
never vote
for Trump
why people do
why people do
These questions are an attempt at something different — not just better measurement, but a different theory of what measurement is for. A good question doesn't wait for the data to become interesting. It's already interesting.
If you're working on a survey and want a second set of eyes — on the questions, the structure, or whether the format is doing enough work — that's what a Survey Roast is for.
You send me a draft, I send back a recorded critique. No jargon, no slide decks. Just honest feedback.
You can see an example here.
Cheers,
Sam