trump is ticking up in polls and his approval with republicans is sky high...but republican party affiliation is at an all time low.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

theres a 10 pt gap (22-32) btwn repubs and dems...which is unheard of. when independents are asked if they lean repub or dem...they lean dem by a 15 pt margin!

but polls are polls and not entirely predictive. the real measure is elections.

last night in a special election in florida...dems flipped *another* seat that trump had won by 6 pts in 2016. dems won by 8 for a 14 pt swing. it was a solid red district that has voted republican for prez and downballot for decades. repubs held a significant advantage in voter registration and repubs even turned out to vote around 7% higher than dems. so in order for them dem to win...a significant number of repubs would have had to defect and independents would have had to lean significantly dem. all of that is in line with the gallup party affiliation numbers and in direct contrast to these trump approval numbers and generic ballot numbers.

and these types of dem swings/flips in special elections have been going on all year at a wider margin than even last year.

my guess is that the polling methodology for approval and generic ballot are not accurately accounting for the amount of people who are de-registering from the republican party whenever they extrapolate party data to compensate for any oversampling. so they are basing their estimates on a more concentrated (but ultimately smaller) pool of repub voters.

ie- if trumps approval with people who currently and previously identified as repub is really like 75% but 5% of those repubs claim independent now...then his approval among current repubs who still identify with the party is gonna look like the 80%s now.