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1/n To the best of my knowledge, all of the available approval rating graphs of Donald Trump date only as far back as the 2016 election (and perhaps the leadup thereunto). I was thus curious to see what the public thought of him in the more distant past, so...
2/n I spent a nice chunk of my weekend (clearly being autistic) gathering every bit of survey data I could find canvassing public feelings towards Trump. I managed to assemble a dataset that dates as far back as 1990. So now I'd like to share with you the fruits of my labor.
3/n The first think that jumps out at you is that Trump's favorability was fairly abysmal across the 90s (at least as far as the data I could gather indicates) and into his 2000 Reform Party presidential campaign run. In 2004, however, he launched 'The Apprentice', which... 
4/n appears to have given him a new lease on life. In fact, in 2005, Democrats were just as likely to have a favorable opinion of him as Republicans. This bipartisan sentiment, however, began to diverge in 2011--the year that Trump ostensibly began selling himself to...
5/n ...GOP voters while dabbling in Birtherism (the idea that Obama wasn't born in the US). From that point onward until inauguration, his favorability rating entered into terminal decline among Democrats, and shot upward among Republicans.
6/n Other findings: roughly half of liberals thought favorably of Trump in 2005 (though this figure is somewhat lower among Whites)
7/n At least before 2011, favorability was actually highest among minorities. For instance, over 60% of Blacks were favorable of Trump in 2007 (which feels like eons ago).
8/n That's all for now. There's more data I'll be adding when I get around to it that compares the change in the proportion of voters who considered Trump a 'serious presidential candidate' in 1999/2000 vs. 2016.
cc @MattGrossmann (think we discussed this topic before)
9/n Around 9-11% of the public still had never heard of Trump in up to the year 2000. The Apprentice [naturally] took care of that
10/n l-o-l
11/n Just 17% of Republicans viewed Trump as a 'serious presidential candidate' (as opposed to a sideshow seeking media attention) in 1999. This figure shot up to 34.5% in 2011 and 43% by July 2015 (around the same time he announced his candidacy)
12/n So much did The Apprentice (seemingly) embellish Trump's public image that, by Christmas 2005, 55% of respondents (including almost 60% of Democrats) said they'd put Trump on the 'nice list' if they were Santa 🤣
13/n Similar figures by ideology
14/n Like their greater favorability of Trump (see earlier graph), minorities (particularly blacks) were also significantly more likely to add Trump to the 'nice list' than Whites.
Woops. Forgot to replace all of the labels above. Here's the corrected graph
15/n Once upon a time (2011), nearly 74% of Democrats thought that Trump was 'intelligent'
16/n ...while a majority (55%) of Republicans felt that Trump didn't share their values
17/n and just 49% (of Reps) saw Trump as 'honest'
18/n and just 42% thought that Trump had the kind of experience needed to be president.
19/n Too funny
