I have a single group with 1 question to verify something about the survey-taker (and thus contains logic to disqualify them out early).

Then all the other questions are in another group.

The progress bar stays at 50% the entire time because, it would seem, it considers 1 group of 2 completed as 50% even though 98% of the questions are in the second group.

To the survey taker that makes no sense. . . is there a way to distribute the survey progress based on total answers rather than total groups?

How is your display? Group by group or question by question?

You can manually adjust the progress bar value by inserting a script like this in the source of a question or the group description:

Hello All,

Yes arranged group by group. Using the latest version of LimeSurvey 3.15.5 .

Okay, I see, need to put it in the "source" link within the question editor. That works fine, but only if going question by question, which perhaps I can live with.

Prefer to have all the questions at once but in that case, the progress bar disappears anyway from the top of the screen as the participant scrolls down, so I have to choose between letting them see all the questions up front, or having an accurate portrayal of the progress bar but also question by question.

Oh, the decisions!

In the mode all in one a progress bar doesn't make sense. Because you are on the first (and only page), so it is either 0% completed or 100% completed, depending on how you see it. Afaik the progress bar is based on the "pages progressed", not on the "questions answered".