Tag Archives: polls

media news, national news, political news

How does POTUS battle back?

For the ever-lovin’ life of me, I don’t understand a lot of things, such as public opinion polling that seems to fly directly against the winds of success of a particular politician.

The pol I have in mind is the president of the United States of America, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. By an overwhelming measure, Joe Biden has enjoyed a successful presidency.

Jobs are up; inflation is in check; the economy is the strongest on Earth; infrastructure is being improved; we are battling climate change; our international alliances are stronger than ever; we have gotten past the COVID pandemic.

Is the world a perfect place? Of course not! We cannot possibly produce a perfect world. Immigration is in crisis; war has erupted in Ukraine and in Israel and Gaza.

Biden is taking plenty of heat for all that has gone wrong on his watch and virtually none of the credit for all that has gone right. The RealClearPolitics poll average places Biden at a 39.7% approval rating.

What the hell is going on?

I know the polling is a static measure. It gauges the public mood in the moment. It is the proverbial snapshot of our feelings right now.

Still, it annoys me to no end in sight that President Biden continues to fight this perception — fed by the right-wing mainstream media — of a public that is uncertain about our future. The MAGA media are clinging to the coattails of Biden’s presidential predecessor, the former Idiot in Chief who wants his old job back.

They are swallowing the swill he peddles, believing the nation is going straight to hell. It damn sure isn’t!

I have no advice to offer the president and his re-election campaign team on how to revive the president’s standing. I guess perhaps the president ought to just keep hammering at his predecessor — the GOP nominee-in-waiting — by reminding everyone about the chaos that accompanied him throughout his sole term in office.

Only the idiotic former POTUS actually pledges to make matters worse if the worst happens and he is elected this November.

Polling takes a lot of hits. I am not going to concede that the polls we see today will hold up until Election Day. Still, they are enough to drive me out of my mind!

national news

Wait for the trials … and convictions!

Norm Ornstein is one of those Washington, D.C., gray eminences whom the media turn to for a look at the political landscape and whether it is changing under our feet in real time.

Ornstein believes that Donald Trump’s current standing as the “frontrunner” for the 2024 presidential election is going to change “when and if the convictions” start rolling in from the felony criminal trials that await the former POTUS.

I believe he is correct. At least I hope he is correct. You see, the polling data showing Trump ahead of President Biden in several key battleground states simply baffles me beyond all measure.

Ornstein suggests that Biden could be in serious trouble if he is unable to persuade Americans that the successes he has enjoyed are the real deal. I believe they are, but he continues to underperform among voters who continue to tell pollsters that the country is headed in the “wrong direction.”

Huh? I don’t get it! Unemployment remains below 4%. Jobs keep piling up. Inflation, while still troublesome, is beginning to level off. The Fed appears set to put the brakes on interest rate increases.

Yes, we have war in the Middle East. And in Ukraine. Biden has held our alliances together.

The border crisis? It still is a serious problem, but it’s good to remember that we’re still detaining and deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants weekly.

“One of the things that I think is clear here is that most voters have paid no or little attention to Donald Trump’s legal problems,” Ornstein told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi. “That will change when we get criminal trials. And especially if and when we get convictions.”

It’s good to ask ourselves: Are Americans really and truly so stupid, gullible and ignorant that we want to elect a convicted felon as POTUS?

If we are, then this nation of ours is headed straight into the crapper.

We are much better than that.

media news

World has gone bonkers!

I am not usually prone to wondering about the state of play in today’s world, wondering out loud about contemporary trends.

But so help me, I cannot fathom these public opinion polls showing Donald Trump actually defeating President Biden in head to head matchups prior to the 2024 presidential election.

The guy — that would be Trump — was impeached twice while he worked in the White House. He has been indicted twice for felony crimes; one of the indictments came from the Manhattan District Attorney, the other from the U.S. Justice Department.

It all makes me wonder: what the hell is wrong with this nation of ours?

I am heartened by the knowledge that we are a long way from Election Day. Polls can change.

Yes, I tend to trust polling as a stop-gap measure of the national mood.

I am just shaking my noggin.

Johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Election jumble boggles the noggin

The Donald Trump Era of contemporary politics has managed to upset conventional wisdom all over the place.

Consider that the former TV celebrity/real estate mogul/stable genius entered presidential politics … and no one gave him a chance of winning the presidency.

Then he did.

Four years later, he lost his re-election effort. He continues to mix it up. And those wacky polls are spreading conflicting messages. They told us Republicans would seize control of Congress. At this writing, that takeover remains an open question.

What the hell?

Conventional wisdom no longer exists.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Uncategorized

‘I don’t believe the polls’

(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Let us be clear about something President Biden said today at his first formal press conference of the new year.

He said he doesn’t “believe the polls” that indicate moderates are dropping away from him after they voted for him in 2020.

Uh, Mr. President? Believe the polls, sir.

I understand that all politicians say such things when the public opinion polling casts them in a negative light. When pols are riding high, then the polls become pearls of wisdom and discernment.

Indeed, Donald Trump constantly railed at the polls that showed him continually lagging in overall public support. He would suggest that crowd size at his rallies put the lie to those polls. Well … they were accurate, too.

President Biden is being victimized by the continuing pandemic, inflation, pressure from overseas adversaries. However, the economy isn’t in nearly the dire straits that his foes have suggested.

Yet, the polls continue to show him lagging among some key voting blocs.

The only course for President Biden is for the polls to start ticking back up. How does that happen? He needs to pitch strongly the successes he has produced during his first year in office.

For instance, jobs are coming back. Almost nothing soothes a restive public better than a vibrant economy. Joe Biden’s economic team can take some credit for the rebound that is occurring.

If the polls show some improvement, my hunch is that President Biden will learn immediately to endorse the wisdom of his fellow Americans.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Polls are useless this far out from Election Day

I am going to breathe a heavy sigh as I write these next few sentences.

I heard today that Joseph R. Biden Jr. leads Donald J. Trump Sr. by 13 percentage points, according to a Quinnipiac University public opinion poll. The media have exploded over those findings. They say the poll results point to potentially serious trouble for the president if former Vice President Biden emerges as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in 2020.

Allow me to state the obvious: Any poll this far away from Election Day does not mean a single thing. Nothing, man! Zero.

Must we be reminded that Donald Trump was seen as a novelty candidate when he declared his presidential candidacy in the summer of 2015? No one took this TV celebrity/real estate mogul seriously.

We take him seriously now, at least in terms of his standing as the president of the United States of America.

Do I want him to lose the 2020 election? Well, yeah! I do! I intend to use this blog as a forum to seek his ouster as president no later than Election Day 2020.

However, the polling that’s being kicked around a year and a half from the next election shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Talk to me, pollsters and pundits, next spring. Or maybe next summer. Then I’ll pay attention to the polls.

national news

Trump polls are up? We’ll never hear the end of it

CBS News is about to join Fox News as a news outlet that Donald J. Trump won’t label as a “fake news” purveyor.

A new CBS poll shows the president’s poll numbers rising. Indeed, in New Hampshire — the state that conducts the nation’s first presidential primary election every four years — Trump trounces Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Arizona U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, two men who are thought to be considering a challenge of their fellow Republican.

As CBS News reports: Republican voters have had two years of watching Trump as a candidate and president and husband and Twitterer and embarrassing, tantrum-throwing child and—to their credit or shame—they’ve decided to stick with him. It truly is Trump’s party, and every other Republican is just renting space.

So unless Robert Mueller drags him out of the Oval Office by his artificially-golden locks, Trump will be on top of the ticket in 2020.

My hope all along has been that Democrats need to find a new face, a candidate with a new approach and ideas and someone who at this moment isn’t on most people’s radar. Democrats aren’t listening to little ol’ me, according to CBS: And what are the Democrats giving him? Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Oh, and Nancy Pelosi just promised “I’m not going anywhere,” while Congressional Democrats are debating what they want to do first once they take back the House: Impeach Donald Trump, or pass new gun control laws?

By every historic measure, President Trump should be the Walking Dead of American politics. But put him up against a Democratic campaign of “Pelosi, Pocahontas and Impeachment!” and he may walk right back into the White House.

I’ll concede the president’s uptick in the polls. But no one is asking me what I think.

Whatever fate awaits the president if he is able to finish his term, any effort by him to win a second term in the White House will never include a vote from yours truly.

media news, national news, political news

Polls: They’re up, then they’re down, then they’re up again

hillaryclinton_093016getty_0

The political media have this fascination with polling while covering the Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump race for the presidency.

It all has given me reason to wonder: How do these polls fluctuate so dramatically so late in this campaign?

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/298793-race-breaking-clintons-way

The Hill reports that Democratic nominee Clinton is now regaining her political footing. Trump, the Republican nominee, had a disastrous week and he’s got seven days to prepare for the next joint appearance with Clinton.

Polls in several swing states are now showing Clinton with an advantage where two weeks ago Trump held a slight lead. Florida now tilts toward Clinton; same for Nevada; Ohio is now a dead heat; Pennsylvania is leaning in Clinton’s direction — again!

We’ve known about Hillary Clinton for the past 20-plus years. It would seem that voters’ minds are made up. Trump? Well, he’s quite the “known quantity” too, but for entirely different reasons. Americans know him through his reality-TV exposure and his flamboyant reputation as a real estate mogul and, dare I say it, a bon vivant.

But the polls go up. Then they go down. Then they go back up again.

Many Americans can’t seem to make up their minds.

I hate to think we have become a nation of wishy-washy fence-straddlers.

national news, political news

‘Undercover voter’ equals ‘shamed voter’

Kellyanne Conway, new campaign manager for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speaks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Kellyanne Conway earned her chops as a pollster and spinmeister.

Consider, then, what Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump’s new campaign manager has said.

It is that polls would show Trump doing better if “undercover voters” would reveal to pollsters that they are voting for her guy.

I’m trying to understand what she’s saying here.

I think that she’s suggesting that Trump’s millions of voters are too ashamed to admit out loud to strangers that they’re planning to vote this fellow.

Am I mistaken? Is that what “undercover voter” means?

If you’re committed to a candidate for high public office and someone calls you to conduct a public opinion survey, it would follow — normally, I guess — that you would be unafraid to tell the pollster how you think about an upcoming election.

Trump’s supporters, according to Conway, are keeping their thoughts to themselves.

Someone explain that one to me.

Please?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/kellyanne-conway-polls-undercover-trump-voter

 

national news, political news

Polls go up, they’re good; they go down, they’re ‘rigged’

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Donald J. Trump has made quite a show of trumpeting his “great” poll numbers while rolling to the Republican Party presidential nomination.

Indeed, the real estate mogul’s main selling point for months has been those polls. They’re up, therefore they’re legit.

But wait! The polls lately are trending in another direction.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has retaken the lead over Trump in their campaign for the presidency. The Democratic nominee has gotten an expected “bounce” from her highly successful convention.

Trump’s view of polls now?

They’re “rigged,” he says. He doesn’t believe them. CNN and some other media organizations are cooking the numbers to show Clinton with a phony lead, Trump says.

OK, then.

Let’s just shield Trump from all the bad news that inevitably will come his way, just as it flows toward Clinton when things don’t always go in the direction she prefers.

As for his fixation only with positive poll numbers and his outright rejection of those surveys that show him down against his opponent, I have just a simple piece of advice.

Suck it up, soldier! The only “poll” that counts is the one on Election Day. Then again, my gut tells me the GOP nominee is going to get another dose of very bad news when that day arrives.