Approval ratings get weird, someone with a lower approval rating can beat someone with a higher approval rating.
So relatively fewer people are “excited” about a democrat candidate. If they have to pick between that candidate and Trump, they may still pick the candidate as the best practical option available, but they don’t necessarily “approve” of the choice they are making. People have a hard time mustering “approval” for a milquetoast candidate, even if that person is the least objectionable to a broad set of folks.
Meanwhile Trump is making a particular sort of folk very happy, in a way no other modern politician has dared to do. Most people may find it highly objectionable driving a lot of disapproval, but you will have the die hard MAGAs ecstatic about stuffing those brown people into vans and locking them up in El Salvador without any due process.
Approval ratings get weird, someone with a lower approval rating can beat someone with a higher approval rating.
So relatively fewer people are “excited” about a democrat candidate. If they have to pick between that candidate and Trump, they may still pick the candidate as the best practical option available, but they don’t necessarily “approve” of the choice they are making. People have a hard time mustering “approval” for a milquetoast candidate, even if that person is the least objectionable to a broad set of folks.
Meanwhile Trump is making a particular sort of folk very happy, in a way no other modern politician has dared to do. Most people may find it highly objectionable driving a lot of disapproval, but you will have the die hard MAGAs ecstatic about stuffing those brown people into vans and locking them up in El Salvador without any due process.