There has been a lot in the news lately, including mass firings, deportations, and the unbelievable Trump/Vance/Zelenskyy shout out match in the White House. How will the American public react?
This market will resolve based on the net approval rating (approval - disapproval) reported by 538 (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/) on March 22nd. It's currently (March 1st) sitting at +0.7%.
Update 2025-03-03 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Resolution Clarification:
The market will resolve based on the absolute net approval rating reported by 538 on March 22nd (and not the change from March 1st).
Comparison operators are strictly applied; values exactly equal to 3% or -3% do not count as meeting the criteria.
Update 2025-03-08 (PST) 538 was unfortunately shut down last week. I've looked at Nate's approval page as a potential substitute, as it seems closest in spirit to 538. Unfortunately, the numbers are fairly different, so I'd have to do questionable math to make it closer to 538.
With that in mind, I intend to resolve the market as N/A. I'll wait until Monday to gather feedback.
1,000People are also trading
Fairest course of action here is N/A, as the resolution source no longer exists. Changing resolution post-hoc is bad practice.
@Jo2e2b I would recommend either choosing the Silver Bulletin tracker which has the most similar methodology to 538's or resolving N/A
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin
The RCP's methodology is too different, and while the systematic bias doesn't matter since this is a relative change, their methodology isn't very transparent and is too different from 538's to be a fair switch.
While you make up your mind, you should temporarily close the market to trading.
@bens Do we have the exact averages for the Silver Bulletin as of March 1 for the starting point? I’d be good with that one.
@Jo2e2b Either choose a new criteria or resolve this N/A. If you do not I will be forced to rate your resolution bad. Keeping the market open and still tradable when no one has any idea what's going on is not good. I've given you days to decide. I don't want to wait till Monday.
@HillaryClinton you are not the only only trader. Others deserve a chance to be heard, and a reasonable amount of time for doing so. Threats are not OK.
I guess my only issue with changing the criteria to +\- 3% relative to the RCP average on March 1 is that I would expect the RCP average to be less responsive to a general drop in polls than the 538 average, since the RCP methodology gives more weight (relative to the 538 methodology) to polls that tend to be more favorable for Trump on average.
This was +0.9% on March 1st. I'd use this.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating
Maybe change it to 3% change in polling vs absolute -3%
"ABC is also eliminating the political and data-driven news site 538, which had about 15 employees."
I guess they won't close for two weeks, but who knows.
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disney-to-cut-nearly-6-staff-across-abc-news-disney-entertainment-networks-8af04b40
@Emanuele1000 that's a bummer. I'll try to find an alternative if this were to happen. Any recommendations?
@Jo2e2b I’d lean toward resolving N/A in that case, unfortunately. There are a few others out there, but they have a significantly different average.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker puts Trump at -3.8 already (and is technically tracking favorability, not approval).
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating puts Trump at +1.3 still.
Nate Silver has announced that he’s going to be creating one, but it’s not out yet, and will probably be at least somewhat different from 538.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx only shows Gallup’s polling, which is several weeks out of date, and not an average
While 538 is now down to -0.3.
Replacing with any of the other sources is going to be significantly different from the original market.
@Gabrielle Yes, I think it needs to be resolved in N/A, I understand the site has already been shut down, they are all fired immediately.
@Jo2e2b Alternative found. Nate silver, the former head of 538 did his own:
we should use this.
@HillaryClinton I've looked at Nate's appoval page, which seems closest in spirit to 538. Unfortunately, the numbers are fairly different, so I'd have to do questionable math to make it closer to 538.
With that in mind, I intend to resolve the market as N/A. I'll wait until Monday to gather feedback.
@Jo2e2b you can put out a poll for market participants for if they are ok with replacing it with Nates page.
@ScipioFabius I don't want to decide based on a poll. I'm listening to feedback and arguments instead, but will take my decision independently.
Just to clarify, @Jo2e2b, does this resolve to the approval rating on March 22nd, or the CHANGE in approval rating from March 1st (0.7) to March 22nd? (In which case, -2.3 would be enough to resolve to <-3)?
Also, by > and <, do you mean less than or equal to and greater than or equal to? Like, does 3% or -3% exactly count?
@bens description and comment thread below clearly indicate it's only net approval, not change in net approval
@bens I must confess I didn't really consider this when asking the question, since the net approval rating was so close to zero anyways. While it would probably have made more sense to look at change, let's stick to what I said, which is absolute net approval.
Regarding the comparison signs, I used strictly less than and greater than, so let's stick to that. 538 gives two digits of precision, so it shouldn't matter too much.
Let's stick to what I said, which is absolute net approval.
I disagree with this choice as it is quite obviously the spirit of the market to have the listed options be an equal change in approval. The change in approval is what the title question is asking. The numerical approval rating itself does not answer the title question since their relation is arbitrary.
Furthermore I think generally sticking to 'what you said' is a terrible idea since you used "3%" instead of "3ppt". Which makes the calculation for the answers even more confusing.
I suggest sticking to the spirit of the market and an equal, 3ppt change in approval rating either way.
Disclaimer: I hold a lot of NO for +3, but I am confident in my position regardless of the requirement being +3 or +2.3, and would argue for the abovementioned resolution standard regardless of any of my positions.
@dgga his net approval was already trending down, so it's arguable the current resolution is closer to the spirit of the question regardless
@dgga of course it does? If his net approval went down for other reasons, e.g. tariffs causing inflation, it would be spurious to attribute the entire swing to his talk with Zelenskyy.
If you're making a spirit of the market argument to revise a perfectly clear description, you can't just pretend wider context is irrelevant.
@cthor I'm making an argument for less ambiguity and you are making an argument for more ambiguity. If trump nuked New York tomorrow and his approval rating went to 3%, are you saying this market should ignore the trend becausr it has nothing to do with the Zelensky talk?
@dgga I'm saying the current description is perfectly clear, unambiguous, and adequate and you haven't made a good enough case to revise it.