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John Zogby: It's Friday and welcome to the first edition of Real Polling in Real Time with Zogby. This is our fifth year anniversary of doing this podcast we have decided to rebrand it. And that's something we're going to talk about a little later. Jer, how you doing?
Jeremy Zogby: I'm doing well and I'm excited.
John Zogby: Yeah, me too. Happy anniversary with with our podcast.
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah,
John Zogby: I want to do three things today. We have some new presidential numbers and they are, I think, really fascinating us. So we'll dwell on those a little bit. Then. Secondly, you go behind the scenes a bit try to assess the president's base and the president's opposition for that matter.
John Zogby: From the point of view of media [00:01:00] watching, and you've, you've got quite a story to tell. then thirdly we'll just take a couple of minutes and explain the rebrand at, at the end, why we're doing what we're doing. sound okay?
Jeremy Zogby: that sounds perfect.
John Zogby: Alright. So let's start with with the presidentials president's approval numbers.
John Zogby: It's been a wild three weeks but, in our polling just this week of a thousand and one likely voters, what we've discovered is that the president's approval rating, disapproval rating actually mirror right to the percent popular vote victory in November, he won 49 and changed to 48. And change over a vice president, Kamala Harris.
John Zogby: And that's where we have them 49 percent approve and 48 percent disapprove. So no movement at all, despite [00:02:00] controversy, despite really a lot of things. And so I think when we look behind those numbers, though, we see some. Really fascinating demographics as we did during the election. The president seems to not only have obviously consolidated his MAGA base, his Republican base, conservative base, born again, Christians, evangelicals.
John Zogby: percent approval. That's even higher than it was on, on election day, but Jarrett he has support, in fact, even growing support among members of the so called Obama coalition. Gets good approval rating from young voters, black voters, from Latino voters. What's going on there? What do you see?
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah well, [00:03:00] the young voters, as you alluded to the Obama coalition that you reported a lot during the Obama presidency and after. I mean, my understanding was, for a while, that was kind of like the holy grail of a, of a coalition. That if you could excite women, who are more than half of the electorate 18 to 29 year olds, and in this case, it's tracking millennials and then Hispanics, and then the black vote, that could almost guarantee you a win. And what we've seen since, and you know, a lot of other people covered this in their election polling, we did as well. Hispanics went for Trump. the black vote, particularly younger and young men went for Trump and so did, so did the, the young vote in general, and a lot of this could be summed [00:04:00] up or understood as something like the antihero or the underdog, I think is a better you know, somebody gets beat up so much. And they get attacked so much that it can often have the effect of a growing appeal. And so all throughout social media, you could see this leading up to the election with a young black men, you could see on Twitter or X that them saying, you know, what one video that jumped out to me that I thought spoke volumes was one guy said, Trump is getting, he's getting the people treatment. He's getting the kind of treatment that I get. And this guy's driving through, you know, Philadelphia and in the background is the inner city of Philadelphia. And, and the implication was at any minute, this guy could get pulled over by the police and he could get ticketed or he could get arrested or he could get hassled and he was making the point, this is what's happening to Trump. So when, when [00:05:00] you see the media going after him with such intensity, It's almost like take a closer look. And so that's why in this poll, I thought it was important to to see, you know, not just what media do you consume, but if you boil it down, what do you place your trust in most? And so we divided it into local news, which could be TV, online print, national networks, Which could be on the TV or going to the CNN or NBC, CBS, ABC website.
Jeremy Zogby: Of course, that's going to include Fox news national newspapers, the times, the post, of course, also the wall street journal and beyond. And then social media as a distinct news source, podcasts, distinct and talk radio, distinct. And what we found no surprise talk radio, the part of the original MAGA support. 80 percent approve 80 percent of those who, who trust talk radio, the most approved of [00:06:00] Donald Trump, but those who, who trust most social media, it goes up to, I believe it was the the 60s, 60 percent or so approve of Donald Trump and then those who follow podcasts, it was 70%. And so typically, and I'm going to wrap it up now. We, we're used to looking at this. You know, in a, in a partisan view or a political party ID view, where are the independents, where are the Democrats, where the Republicans, of course, age is huge and other key demographics like race. But what we find here is, is the real divide in your perception of, of the president's approval or disapproval, or just perception of his, his leadership in general. It comes down to the great divide of the traditional news sources, like networks and newspapers. And if you read those, you have a very low approval rating or, or opinion of Trump. It falls [00:07:00] to the forties low forties, high thirties, or if you're going to podcasts and this is where people are going, these free form two, three hour discussions. And there's a bunch of them, Russell Brand, Joe Rogan, and, and. hundreds of others. You see the world differently because the real divide is this coincides with the millennial generation, those who to bring this full circle, those who once supported and, and, and perceived Obama as the champion and carried him to victory. Now, as they move into their thirties and forties, a lot of them have become homeowners. A lot of them have become parents. They are citing. With Donald Trump, this is where they're getting their information from, and they've moved away from the networks and the newspapers, and I don't think they're going back.
John Zogby: Okay. Fascinating information and as always a brilliant [00:08:00] analysis. what's going on here? I mean, for starters know, for many, the last three weeks have been the, on the verge of Armageddon, you know so what we do find is. The country really split down the middle. I mean, 49, 48, remember there's opposition and among that 48 that disapprove 39% strongly disapprove.
John Zogby: So there's, there's high intensity really on both sides. The, the irony is that. In the middle of what, you know, we've often referred to as a revolution where, everything is changing all at once and you have the president and Elon Musk as real agents for change, at the same time, Ironically, the, the two guys who [00:09:00] not in any way, shape, or form what you could refer to as Everyman, the average Joe, are perceived as Everyman.
John Zogby: They are the ones that are leading the rage against the machine. They're not just shadowboxing. they're doing it. And we're talking about this has gone beyond disruption. And when you're talking about abolishing agencies, as we speak, within hours, USAID will have 300 employees as opposed to thousands upon thousands.
John Zogby: Justice department, FBI is being gutted. Even though a judge has blocked. president's offer of a buyout immediate resignation among 2 million employees. He's only [00:10:00] blocked that until Monday. I think it's actually a she actually blocking it until Monday, but we're talking about using the metaphor of really tossing.
John Zogby: The salad and yet it's being done without any consensus this country. And that's got people worried. And frankly, I will always, as I always have done present the numbers. And I'm still baffled by the numbers because that I talk to, are really worried and that now includes even some conservatives and it certainly includes people who are dependent on the federal government some way.
John Zogby: And yet the president's got he's not upside down. He's just slightly right side up approval, disapproval.
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah.
John Zogby: comments about that.
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah, I mean, I just to go [00:11:00] deeper on, you know, what what I'm saying is the real divide. In terms of. where people voters are getting their information, not only just where they're getting information, but what what they're going to trust. You know, those who read closely the national newspapers and those who follow closely the national networks. You know, in trying to understand this, why that why that's such a great divide. I think, You know, let me, let me try to attempt to shed a little light on it. Newspaper and, and network news is, is, kind of like, that's the choice of the expert class. Cause those who work in the, the, the network news and those who work in the national newspapers are, they're the experts.
Jeremy Zogby: They're the, you know, they're the journalists, they're the perceived professionals. They're the, they're the perceived professionals. And they get to have kind of more or less the final say on the [00:12:00] package product. And in the case of network, there's a lot of production that goes into that. And in the case of the newspaper, there's edit, there's editorial boards. And so there's kind of this packaged information and, and those who put their trust in it are vastly more likely to see Trump negative because maybe that's the perceptions. That's the starting point from these institutions. But you know, not to say that social media is free form because there's, you know, there's a lot of algorithms, but at least people can, can choose.
Jeremy Zogby: They can, you know, go on a YouTube, they can go on Facebook or X and, and they can type in their, their, you know, the figures they want to look at, the figures they want to follow and unfollow and read a hundred or, you know, 200 comments and. Like what they want to like and dislike what they want to dislike.
Jeremy Zogby: And then of course, podcast, it's, it's raw. You know, there's, there's very little post production watch a Rogan episode to, to [00:13:00] really understand that experience and, and that's what's going on is it, those are the mechanics of, of why we, you know voters are so different in their perceptions of Trump because of where they get their news.
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah. And I would just say to, to, to really be mindful of that trend and, and, and follow that trend. Because I think that that coincides with essentially more or less a gen major generational changes.
John Zogby: So just moving quickly into the final segment, as I mentioned, this is our fifth anniversary of the podcast. And I'm reminded of Zogby's Real America. had an, when it was Zogby International in the nineties and beyond, we launched a monthly newsletter, Zogby's Real America, and. started to in a [00:14:00] different direction with Point, Counterpoint, a conservative column, and a liberal column, and other news, a very good reporter, one of the best, in fact, I'm going to mention him, Dick Benedetto, a friend and long time White House correspondent for USA Today wrote to me and he said, look, if I want point counterpoint or debate.
John Zogby: I'll read the Washington Post and the New York Times and the Atlantic and so on. He said, what what I look to you guys for are polling numbers, data. That's what you do stick to the data. so I, I was reminded of that. We've been doing this podcast and, and it's been quite successful, right? We're very happy with the growing.
John Zogby: Listenership, viewership and so on, but we needed to be reminded of what we really do [00:15:00] what we really do is generate. Accurate polling numbers. And so that's what we're going to do. every week we're gonna talk about those numbers because you really can't get that this way anywhere else.
John Zogby: And so, and get it also from two different generations and I'm not gonna say ideologies, but let's say two different points of view.
Jeremy Zogby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I think I think you hit the nail on the head. It's it's, we often cited in the last five years, polling data, often our own polling data, but often other polling firms. But I, I think going, well, I know going forward, the focal point will be our latest and our greatest information.
Jeremy Zogby: Every time on Real polling in real time with Zogby.
John Zogby: And as a, a final note, you're gonna see [00:16:00] the same backgrounds, the same People the same attitude, the same everything. Unlike the networks and the cable TV, we're not going to introduce a whole new set, different persona, wild graphics, people talking way too fast. That's not what we do. This is what we do.
John Zogby: You know what? Let us know you think. Keep letting us know what you think. Respond wherever you watch it, read it, or, or listen to it. Let us know how we're doing. Have a good week.
Jeremy Zogby: Have a good weekend.
John Zogby: Take care.