Trump shares ‘worst poll in the world’ to claim his approval rating is higher than it is

Donald Trump has shared an opinion poll once described as among the worst surveys on the planet, appearing to show his approval to be much higher than what is shown in more traditional ratings.

The online poll, by the firm Zogby, pegs Mr Trump’s approval at 51 per cent— a benchmark that is considerably higher than basically every other poll on the matter.

An average of Mr Trump’s approval rating compiled by Real Clear Politics puts the president’s approval rating at 43.1 per cent, with 54.4 per cent disapproving.

“THANK YOU! #MAGA”, Mr Trump wrote on Twitter in response, sharing a photo from the online poll.

Zogby has been given a C rating by FiveThirtyEight, a data-based news and sports website that tracks and rates polls for accuracy and consistency.

The poll is known to consistently skew in favour of Republicans and Mr Trump, and polling experts have noted that its methods are often not transparent.

“Any poll where they don’t provide detailed methodological information should actually be ignored,” David Redlawsk, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, once told The Atlantic of the Zogby polls.

Te founder of FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, has also slammed Zogby for its online polls, which he said “violate the most basic precept of survey research, which is that of the random sample”.

In that article, published in 2009, had the following title to describe Zogby: “The worst pollster in the world strikes again”.