But Trump may not like how his brand is faring in one important metric: his “E-Score,” a number compiled by E-Poll Market Research that is not publicly available, but which marketing executives, network television stations and advertisers rely on to figure out which personalities appeal to audiences — and which do not.
Like the Q Score, which measures the appeal of celebrities, the E-Score calculates awareness and appeal of individuals in the public eye. But it also tracks how individuals score on more than 40 personality and physical attributes.
In terms of those attributes, Trump was most often described as “aggressive” (48 percent) and “mean” (38 percent), according to his scores from December that were obtained by The New York Times. He also scored high for being “insincere,” “confident” and “creepy.” But he scored between 0 and 4 percent for the attributes of “sexy,” “impartial,” “handsome” and “physically fit.”
About 29 percent of people described Trump as “overexposed.” And his overall strong positive appeal is 14 percent, compared with an overall strong negative appeal of 39 percent.
Among adults over the age of 55, Trump consistently held more positive appeal than among those who are younger. Trump also consistently held more positive appeal with men than with women, across all age groups.
Marketing, advertising and entertainment executives pay E-Poll Market Research an annual subscription of $17,000 and up to access its database, allowing them to analyze the views of American consumers and assess the marketing effectiveness of each celebrity rated. The company, which has about 10,000 profiles in its database and surveys about 1,100 online participants every week, started tracking Trump when he was a television personality on “The Apprentice,” according to a spokesman, Randy Parker.
“We do not approve of the use of E-Poll’s data in this story and cannot confirm or deny the information you were given,” he said.
In 2010, during the heyday of “The Apprentice,” Trump’s Q Score showed he was more popular with African-American and Hispanic audiences than he was with white audiences, according to “Devil’s Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Nationalist Uprising,” by journalist Joshua Green.
Back then, advertisers viewed Trump as a symbol of multiculturalism, according to Green’s book. But Trump no longer has an updated Q Score because he left the entertainment industry; the company Marketing Evaluations stopped tracking him in the winter of 2015.
“He definitely had the profile of a ‘love to hate’ personality going into the election,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president of the company. “He had one of the lowest positive Q Scores and one of the highest negative Q Scores. It looks like he just continued doing that up until today.”
Schafer said the key to Trump’s success was “extremely high awareness,” even if much of it was negative. “You always have a portion of the population that enjoys that kind of reality, and that’s his base,” he said.
Officials in the Trump White House also receive E-Scores, in part because networks often want to know how those officials are perceived.
Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, has about 70 percent name recognition, compared with 35 percent for her husband, Jared Kushner; 37 percent for Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor; and 37 percent for Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, in a reminder of the overwhelming celebrity power of her last name. Kushner and Conway’s scores were from May, while Ivanka Trump’s and Sanders’ score were compiled in December.
In terms of facial recognition, Ivanka Trump scored 47 percent, slightly higher than Conway and Sanders, the most public-facing administration officials, who both scored a 32 percent for facial recognition.
Ivanka Trump’s overall strong positive appeal was 12 percent, compared with an overall strong negative appeal of 21 percent. While she was more disliked than liked among every age group by men and women alike, she consistently had a slight edge with men over women.
Ivanka Trump is most popular among adults over the age of 55 and least popular with adults between the ages of 18 and 24.
In a list of attributes that celebrities are graded on, she was most often described as “attractive” (32 percent), “beautiful” (28 percent) and “glamorous” (25 percent). She ranked lowest on “funny” (1 percent), “can identify with” (2 percent) and “exciting” (3 percent).
That was higher than the ratings for Kushner, whose overall strong positive appeal was 6 percent and whose overall strong negative appeal was 36 percent. Kushner rarely appears on television and has no social media profile. But he is a constant figure in the news, given his broad portfolios and influence in the White House.
Kushner scored highest for the attributes of “insincere” (29 percent), “creepy” (27 percent) and “overexposed” (22 percent). He was lowest in terms of “exciting,” “glamorous” and “emotional,” rating 1 percent in those categories.
Conway, a regular presence on network and cable television touting Trump’s accomplishments and criticizing the way he is covered, had a strong positive appeal of 9 percent and a strong negative appeal of 43 percent.
Sanders, who has phased out the regular White House press briefing, which often had contentious back-and-forths with reporters, and is now more often seen in friendlier venues like morning show “Fox & Friends,” ranked somewhat higher, with a strong positive appeal of 19 percent and a strong negative appeal of 28 percent.
The scores show that the public views Sanders as more of an honest broker than Conway, who became infamous in the administration’s early days for coining the phrase “alternative facts.”
Sanders scored 15 percent for “trustworthy,” compared with Conway’s 8 percent ranking in the same category. Conway was described by 31 percent of respondents as “insincere,” compared with 27 percent for Sanders.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.