Tag Archives: public opinion surveys

There he goes again

Donald Trump is at it once again.

The president says his poll numbers compare favorably to Barack Obama’s poll numbers at the end of his first year in office.

Umm. No. They don’t.

Trump appears to be citing a Rasmussen poll that puts his approval rating a 46 percent. He said in a tweet that Obama’s poll standing in late December 2009 stood at 47 percent. Rasmussen is a generally Republican-friendly polling organization.

One qualifier is in order. The Obama poll numbers factored in all the surveys taken. They stood at 47 percent, just as Trump said.

But the president’s current poll average — compiled by RealClearPolitics — stands at 39.5 percent.

As if it really matters, which it doesn’t. As a critic of this blog reminded me, Trump isn’t running for re-election for another three years. That assumes, of course, that (a) he’s still in office or (b) wants to run for a second term.

If only the president would stop obsessing about polls.

Obama’s poll numbers spiking in final days

I have a good time following certain public opinion polling sites, my favorite of which is the RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Here’s what it shows now about President Obama’s poll standing among Americans: The nation is falling back in love with the guy.

The average of polls shows Obama’s standing at 57 percent. There’s now an 18-percentage-point spread between the “favorable” and “unfavorable” ratings.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html

How does the poll average rate Congress? It’s about 14 percent. Interesting, yes?

Why the poll spike for the president? It might have something to do with how voters view him in relation to the man who will succeed him in just a couple of days.

He’s conducting himself with remarkable calm, grace, dignity. Donald J. Trump, meanwhile, is continuing to lash out at his foes, the media, almost anyone who makes a critical statement.

What’s not to admire about a president who is leaving the stage with such style?

‘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

 

Speaking of polls, take a look at this

PollingFundamentals

Now that public opinion polls have become a staple of American political coverage, it’s good to look at the latest survey of Americans’ views of the job the president is doing.

RealClearPolitics posts a national average of polls daily.

The numbers are instructive.

President Obama now stands at 2.7 percent approval-over-disapproval in the average of polls that RCP posts.

Why is this important? It’s important because most of the remaining candidates for president — Republican and Democrat — keep talking about polls and their relative standing among them.

Donald J. Trump bellows constantly when the polls show him beating fellow Republicans Ted Cruz or John Kasich. Cruz counters with favorable poll reports when they suit his cause. Kasich keeps saying the polls show him as the only GOP candidate who can beat Hillary Clinton.

Oh yes. Bernie Sanders keeps talking about the polls that show him “closing the gap” for the Democratic nomination with Clinton.

Polls, polls, polls …

Remember when pols said “the only poll that counts is on Election Day”? Not only longer. They keep yapping about the polls and the media keep reporting it.

Thus, they have become important.

Back to the RCP poll average.

President Obama’s poll ratings had been in the tank for most of his second term. They weren’t necessarily horrible; just flat, lingering in the mid-40 percent range. What’s most interesting is that his favorable ratings were usually significantly less than his unfavorable ratings.

Today, though, it’s different. His favorability rating, according to the RCP average, stands at 49 percent, nearly 3 percent greater than his unfavorable rating.

Two more quick points.

One is that the RCP average takes into account all the major polling results done. Conservative polling outfits are measured, along with liberal polling companies. They’re tossed in altogether and you get the average of all the polls.

The second point is that RCP’s average of polls about the job Congress is doing shows a 14 percent job approval rating.

 

 

Should pols care about polls?

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Politicians say all the time — sometimes boastfully — that they don’t care about public opinion polls.

My answer? They should care. Why? Because they represent the people being questioned by pollsters. Politicians aren’t supposed to operate in a vacuum. They’re supposed to understand what their constituents are thinking about critical issues of the day.

Let’s take the Iran nuclear deal … as an example.

A new poll shows Americans favor the deal worked out with other great powers that would prohibit Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. The University of Maryland survey says 55 percent of Americans favor the deal and want Congress to approve it.

Do politicians ignore the poll? Well, I guess one would have to examine the poll closely to see if it was done without bias and scientifically. Pollsters shouldn’t ask loaded questions aimed at generating desired responses.

All congressional Republicans appear to oppose the deal. Most Democrats appear to support it. Are they defying the poll results of constituents whose interests they represent?

According to The Hill: “The poll was conducted online, and the participants went through an in-depth process of listening to arguments from both sides. People were subjected to a detailed list of critiques of the agreement, followed by rebuttals to those arguments with reasons to get behind the deal.

“The most convincing criticisms focused on the lack of ‘anytime/anywhere’ inspections of Iranian facilities, the fact that limits on Iran’s nuclear development ‘will go away’ in 15 years and Iran’s ability to use the money that it receives under the deal to threaten regional security. A majority of Democrats said those arguments were either ‘somewhat’ or ‘very convincing.’

“’There is a lot of concern about key terms of the deal, especially the limits on inspections and the release of frozen funds to Iran,’ Steven Kull, director of the university’s Program for Public Consultation, said in a statement.”

It doesn’t appear, therefore, that this survey was designed to elicit the results it produced.

Do members of Congress accept and act on those poll results or do they proceed as if they know better than their bosses?

 

'Spunk' drives Obama's poll spike? Perhaps

Polls are fun to follow. I do so regularly.

The most interesting and authoritative poll is actually a compilation of public opinion surveys. RealClearPolitics.com compiles the results and publishes a running average of all the polls. The key subject of these polls is President Obama’s approval ratings.

Lately, they’re going up … significantly.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/14/obamas_new_spunk_lifted_ratings_white_house_says.html

As of this morning, the president has earned a rating of just less than 45 percent of Americans who approve of the way he’s doing his job.

Two quick points about these findings.

(1) They belie the notion that Obama’s poll numbers are “plummeting, skidding, spiraling downward” or whatever nasty verb the right-wing media keep using to describe his standing among Americans.

(2) White House aides believe the polls reflect his newfound “spunk” in dealing with the loyal opposition that now controls both legislative houses of the U.S. Congress. I agree with that, to a point. I think they reflect Americans’ continuing distrust of Congress, whose approval rating is still languishing at around 14 percent, according to RealClearPolitics’ poll average.

Juxtaposed with Congress’s dismal standing among Americans, the president is looking pretty good.

What does all this mean for the future? My strong hunch is that it means Congress needs to govern more and obstruct less. Believe it or not, view is that Americans actually want their federal government to work for them. It takes cooperation between the two governing branches — the White House and Capitol Hill.

Pay attention, folks.