President Donald Trump's approval rating "has been in a free fall" in recent weeks, according to famed polling expert Nate Silver in the latest edition of his Silver Bulletin Substack released on Monday (November 10).

Silver reported that Trump's net approval rating has consistently decreased since October 19, having been -7.5 at the time and dropping to -13 as of Monday, which was the lowest of any point during his second term in office.

"Donald Trump’s approval rating has been in a free fall since late October. His net approval rating in the Silver Bulletin average on October 19th was -7.5. But today, it’s down to -13.0. That’s the lowest it’s been during his second term. The share of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump also hit a second term high of 45 percent yesterday," Silver wrote. "That means Trump is once again less popular than [former President] Joe Biden was at this point in his term (net approval rating of -13.0 vs. -8.3). But at the same time, Trump’s net approval rating is still about 5 points higher than it was on day 291 of his first term. Tuesday’s exit polls also indicate that Trump is well underwater in Virginia (-20 net approval rating) and New Jersey (-15)."

Trump's approval rating was also reported to have dropped several points in the past month in the latest Emerson College Polling survey released last Friday (November 7). The president was reported to have a 41% approval rating, which was a four-point decrease from 45% reported in the survey conducted in October, as well as a 49% disapproval rating, which was a 1% increase from October.

Rasmussen, which has been accused of leaning conservative but claims to be independent, had Trump at a 45% approval rating for several days during its daily poll. The president was at 45% between October 28 and November 3 before improving to 47% last Tuesday (November 4) and dropping to 46% last Wednesday (November 5).

Trump began his second of two non-consecutive terms with a 56% approval rating in the daily Rasmussen poll and was at 50% as recently as October 16. The recent Rasmussen poll results are significantly closer to several other national polls that have the president's approval rating within a range between 37% and 44%.

Silver gained notoriety for successfully predicting 49 of 50 states in the 2008 presidential election, as well as former President Barack Obama's re-election win in 2012 and Biden's win in the 2020 election. The pollster was, however, criticized for giving Hillary Clinton a 71.4% chance of winning over Trump after the former president 304 electoral college votes to win the election.

"I think people shouldn’t have been so surprised," Silver told the Harvard Gazette in 2017. "Clinton was the favorite, but the polls showed, in our view, particularly at the end, a highly competitive race in the Electoral College. We had him with a 30 percent chance, and that’s a pretty likely occurrence. Why did people think it was much less than that? I think there are a few things."

Bob Delmont