THE CRAZIFICATION FACTOR IS MUCH HIGHER THAN 27% NOW

A 2005 post from the blog Kung Fu Monkey declared that the popularity of a Republican politician or idea couldn't drop below 27%. It was written in the form of a dialogue, at a time when there was a notable decline in President George W. Bush's job approval rating:

John: Hey, Bush is now at 37% approval.... But I wonder what his base is --

Tyrone: 27%.

John: ... you said that immmediately, and with some authority.

Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.

Twenty years later, I think 27% is a low estimate. In this decade, the crazification factor appears to be 40%.

Kung Fu Monkey was more or less right about the 27% figure two decades ago. Bush's job approval was between 27% and 29% in eleven Gallup polls in 2008, and dropped to 25% in two polls. He had mismanaged the economy, two wars, and a major hurricane.

Now compare the polling for Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of his 2020 election defeat and the January 6 insurrection:

Even after January 6 -- which was, briefly, the object of bipartisan condemnation -- Trump ended his term with a 41.1% job approval rating. In that post-January 6 period, he never dipped below 39.3% in the Real Clear Politics average.

In Trump's second term, the public is dissatisfied with his handling of every major issue -- but his approval is above 39% on all of them, according to Real Clear:

Economy: approve 42.9%, disapprove 54.3% (-11.4%)

Foreign policy: approve 42.3%, disapprove 54.5% (-12.2%)

Immigration: approve 46.9%, disapprove 50.4% (-3.5%)

Inflation: approve 39.3%, disapprove 59.5% (-20.2%)

Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: approve 42.0%, disapprove 48.8% (-6.8)

And his overall job approval is still in the 44%-46% range. Here are the polls Nate Silver cites:

There's one below 40%, but just barely.

You might be waiting for the Jeffrey Epstein case to drag Trump's poll numbers down further, but the latest polling from YouGov shows that Trump's job approval is 41%, even though 67% of survey respondents have little or no confidence in the Epstein investigations and 40% believe Trump was involved in Epstein's crimes.

(According to YouGov, Trump's approval rating remains at 98% among MAGA Republicans and has actually increased, to 85%, among non-MAGA Republicans. So much for the possibility of signifcant base defections. There is a noticeable decline in support from independents, however, from 35% to 29% this month.)

In establishing a baseline for the crazification factor, the Kung Fu Monkey post cited the 2004 Illinois Senate election, in which crazy Alan Keyes won 27.05% of the vote against Barack Obama. I think the modern election we should look at the 2024 North Carolina gubernatorial contest. Even after the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mark Robinson, was found to have posted many offensive and/or sexually explicit messages on a porn bulletin board ("I'm a black NAZI!"), he received 40.08% of the vote. It's hard to imagine a worse candidate than Robinson, but millions of North Carolinians voted for him anyway.

It's comforting to think that all but a quarter of the country could turn against a Republican, but I don't think that's true anymore. Three out of five seems to be the best we can do now.