HARRISBURG (TNS) — Donald Trump might not admit it, but CNN data guru Harry Enten has to be quickly becoming one of his favorite folks on television.
And that is because Enten has rolled out a couple of stellar data breakdowns for the president across the first month of his second term. And he delivered another on Wednesday, showing how Trump has broken long thought political polling rules to come out on top.
And when Enten was finished, his breakdown created quite the social media stir among MAGA influencers who were celebrating. And rightfully so because he delivered some very interesting — and for Democrats, concerning — numbers.
“What is going on here?” Enten said as he first showed a screen that had Trump with a +3 net approval rating. “Well, Donald Trump is doing his best Frank Sinatra impression. Going my way. OK, Trump’s net approval rating, overall, look at this. He is +3 points. He’s above water. He’s been above water his entire second term. Look among the Independents, though. He’s way under water. He’s at -10 points.
“He is winning overall and losing Independents, and this looks an awful lot like what happened in the election where, of course, Kamala Harris won among Independents but Donald Trump won overall,” he continued. “Trump is repeating the playbook, breaking history, doing poorly with Independents, but doing considerably better than he did in term one overall being above water.”
Enten then posed the question of why that could be.
“This makes no sense you might think,” he explained. “Well, what’s going on here? Well, first off what’s going on here is remember in term one there was all that big opposition to Donald Trump? Democrats hated him. Well, right now Trump’s net approval rating among Democrats is under water, way under water at -78 points. But the Trump base is consolidated behind the president to an extent that we really did not necessarily see in term number one. Look at this. His net approval rating (for the GOP) is +84 points so more Republicans are behind Donald Trump than Democrats are opposed to Donald Trump, and that is lifting him up and giving him that net positive approval rating despite the fact that he is losing among Democrats and losing among Independents.”
Enten explained that the difference isn’t just the margins show within the party.
“It’s what percentage of the electorate do they make up?” he said. “And Donald Trump and the Republican party has changed the electorate. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at party identification.”
Enten showed a graph that showed Democrats being at +5 in 2017 and at +6 points in a 2021 when it came to party identification advantage. But, he showed, in 2025 the advantage had flipped to +2 points for Republicans.
“So, Donald Trump and the Republicans have remade the electorate,” he said. “They’ve turned some people over from being Democrats or Independents to become Republicans. New folks have entered the electorate who are more Republican leaning. So, when you combine that with the Republicans are really, really behind Donald Trump, all of a sudden you got a winning recipe whereby breaking all the rules of politics you give Donald Trump that net approval rating when he had pretty much a consistently negative one in term number one.
“As I said in the beginning, he’s copying Frank Sinatra, doing it my way.”
