Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
The Trump administration recently launched its most high-profile attack on free speech yet—and it didn’t work. In fact, new polling suggests it’s backfiring bigly.
On Sept. 15, late-night host Jimmy Kimmel tamely critiqued the MAGA movement’s response to the murder of far-right activist Charlie Kirk. But even that proved unacceptable for the Trump administration, which successfully pressured ABC to suspend Kimmel’s show two days later.
Emboldened, President Donald Trump quickly demanded that NBC cancel late-night programs hosted by Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, who have also made fun of him. The next day, he threatened to pull broadcast licenses for networks that cover him critically.
And shortly after this, Trump’s already bad approval rating got even worse.
This is perhaps most noticeable in polling averages, like the one run by election analyst Nate Silver. On the day ABC suspended Kimmel, an average of 44.4% of the public approved of the job Trump was doing as president, while an average of 52.2% disapproved, making for a net approval rating of -7.8 percentage points.
But around Sept. 22, as the Kimmel discourse hit fever pitch and even some Republicans couldn’t get behind the president’s crusade against the First Amendment, Trump’s approval rating started to slide. As of Friday morning, he had a net approval rating of -9.6 points.
In other words, in those few short anti-free-speech days, Trump’s net approval rating dropped 1.8 points. If that doesn’t seem like much, know that it takes a lot to move a polling average.
A deeper dive into the polls seems to back this up. For surveys that exited the field in the week before Sept. 17—i.e., Kimmel’s suspension—Trump’s average net approval rating was -9.3 points, according to a Daily Kos review of polls aggregated by political analyst Mary Radcliffe. (Radcliffe is a former colleague of mine at 538.) But among polls that entered the field on or after Sept. 17, his net approval was down to -11.6 points. That’s a 2.3-point drop in about two weeks.
In other words, the Kimmel suspension tracks with a hit to Trump’s approval rating.
Of course, correlation doesn’t equal causation, and it’s impossible to know every factor causing Trump’s approval rating to fall. It could be statistical noise, though polling averages are designed to reduce such a thing. It could be the brutality of Trump’s immigration agenda or his administration’s mishandling of its files on accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It could be that almost 8 in 10 voters now think the U.S. is in a political crisis. It could be fears around the job market and Trump’s economy-wrecking tariffs, as Silver himself thinks is the case. After all, nothing hurts an approval rating quite like higher prices. Just ask former President Joe Biden.
Most likely, it’s all of this. And more.
And yet it’s possible that Trump’s attack on free speech is playing an outsized role. The Kimmel suspension was a highly publicized event that earned broad condemnation. Legacy media outlets covered it critically, and even popular right-leaning podcasters like Joe Rogan slammed it. Hell, even Ted Cruz did.
Americans across the political spectrum love the freedom of speech, and the Kimmel suspension has stoked fears around losing it.
Fifty-three percent of voters are pessimistic about free speech being protected in the U.S., according to a Quinnipiac University poll that entered the field the day after Kimmel’s suspension. That’s a big increase from March, when the same poll found only 43% were pessimistic. And in January, only 38% were.
The same poll found Trump with a dismal 38% approval rating among voters, down 2 points from August, when it was 40%. While that drop is within the margin of error, Trump’s dip in his polling average suggests real movement.
On top of that, 56% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of free speech, in a poll YouGov conducted after the Kimmel suspension. And 77% think it is probably or definitely a violation of the freedom of speech for the government to threaten to revoke the broadcast license of a television network that critiques it. You know, the very thing Trump has done.
Another new YouGov poll finds that only about 1 in 5 Americans think the government didn’t pressure ABC to suspend Kimmel—and 2 in 3 think the government should not take such an action.
In our era of stark partisan division, these numbers suggest the Trump administration has severely overplayed its hand in trying to silence a noted Trump critic. In fact, its attempts to do so have made Kimmel all the more popular.
Any updates?
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Vibe check
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