Polling analyst Patrick Allocco told Newsmax on Monday that presidential approval ratings, often treated as a political barometer, are not the decisive factor in determining how the party in power performs in midterm elections.
"Contrary to what most of the mainstream media says about presidential approval, we're the contrarian here," Allocco, founder of the Zoose Political Index, told "Finnerty."
"We believe that there's much, much more that impacts it."
Allocco's comments follow Gallup's announcement that it will stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years, dating to the Truman administration.
Host Rob Finnerty noted Gallup currently shows President Donald Trump at 36% approval.
Allocco argued that headline approval numbers often rely on broad samples that include nonvoters.
"A lot of these headline numbers are driven by all adult sentiments, which include plenty of people that don't even vote," he said.
"It is, quite literally, anyone 18 and above who has an opinion."
Campaigns, he said, focus on registered and likely voters instead.
"If you look at registered and likely voters — samples that campaigns actually care about — Trump is not sitting at 36%," Allocco said.
"The current polling cluster is basically in the mid-40s," he continued.
"Today, Rasmussen has him at 46%, RMG Research, 47%, Quantus at 43%. So that's really where we're at."
But Allocco said that even those numbers do not determine midterm outcomes, "because if that were the case — that presidential approval mattered — then the results over the last 90 years would be absurd."
Allocco pointed to historical precedent, noting that only three presidents have seen their party gain seats in midterm elections.
"Only three presidents — FDR [Franklin D. Roosevelt] coming out of the Great Depression; Bill Clinton, when voters thought that Congress overreached on impeachment; and George [W.] Bush after 9/11 — they're the only three presidents who gained seats in the midterms," he said.
"So it's certainly not just presidential approval alone. It's mood, context, and contrast that voters are looking at."
Roosevelt and Bush are the only presidents since direct voting in midterm elections began in 1914 to see their party gain seats in both houses of Congress.
Since World War II, the president's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House and four in the Senate.
In Trump's first term, the GOP lost 41 seats in the 2018 midterms but gained three in the Senate.
Finnerty also pointed to figures from Allocco's latest Zoose Political Index report — published Monday on Substack under the headline "Should Congress Be Fired?" — which found that 90% of voters said they have already made up their minds about how they plan to vote in November.
But Allocco said the true swing universe is even smaller than 10%.
"It's really only about 5%. Five percent will stay home," Allocco said.
"And the other 5% — those persuadable slice of the pie that we're looking at — they're the ones that are going to determine whether or not the Republicans are the party to vote for, or whether that the Democratic brand is so damaged at this point that the Republicans are the favored alternative."
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