Polls, the press, and Trump…continued
The steady drip-drip-drip of the “Trump is so unpopular” message goes on.
I’ve already dealt with the issue at length recently, so I’ll not go into it in depth again right now.
However, I’ll add that—unlike Donald Trump—I don’t think most of the polls are “rigged.” But I certainly think that all polls have become more deeply and broadly flawed in recent years because proper sampling has become more difficult and response rates also aren’t what they used to be.
In addition, there is no question in my mind that polls can and will be spun by the press and pundits to say just about anything they want. Right now their goal is to deeply undermine the Trump presidency in any way possible, and polls are another means to that end, one the MSM plans to exploit to full advantage.
Yes indeed, Trump has historic unfavorables, but you know what? He did as a candidate, too. One could just as easily write alternate headlines that say Trump’s unfavorables have uniformly lowered and his favorables risen since the days of the campaign, and that this has happened despite the relentless Trump-dissing by the media, plus his own intermittently intemperate tweeting.
Or one could say that—according to the same poll that is reporting Trump’s continuing low approval ratings—the country is nevertheless evenly split (48-48) on whether people think he will be a good president.
Considering where Trump started out, that’s pretty astounding.
As for me, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we’ll see. So far, Trump has exceeded my expectations, which were extremely low. But the reality of a Trump presidency will only emerge as his campaign of words becomes an administration of actions. And actions have consequences in the real world, consequences that don’t necessarily align with spin on either side.
“. . . the reality of a Trump presidency will only emerge as his campaign of words becomes an administration of actions. And actions have consequences in the real world, . . .” [Neo]
This is precisely why I am optimistic about an overwhelmingly business-led administration. The business world can make good and bad decisions, but in either case, those decisions are known by the business men/women themselves to actually have real world consequences.
Conversely, professional politicians and academicians live in the world of theory. Socialism is an excellent example of such theoretical world; it’s never the theories that are bad or wrong, it’s always the flawed execution of superb theories. The continual defense is to either ignore the repercussions of their decisions, or to say: “Don’t worry, this time we’ll get it right,” when the real conclusion is that socialism just doesn’t work.
Furthermore, this business-led administration knows full well from the outset that they are facing attempts at major push-back and scrutiny. They know full well that their errors must be minimized because they, unlike Democrats, will not benefit from any adoring and hagiographic press.
As with GWB, this will be a relentless assault upon Trump’s administration. Trump needs to know when to fight and when to let the sniping pass unnoticed. Just as the msm-dnc would be wise to not go overboard on Trumpisms, Trump needs to ignore some of their petty attacks. Neither is likely to happen, but the Trump regime should not be so easily distracted by the left’s blather.
The Lewis bruhaha was bungled. Trump should have reminded him that he didn’t attend GWB’s inauguration because GWB’s election was “illegitimate”. And then walked away.
3 strikes and you’re out. Same applies to the MSM, foremost purveyors of fake news. If there’s no consequence, the campaign of disinformation will continue unabated.
FYI from Zerohedge (posted @ 2:10 pm):
” . . .The ABC/Wapo poll showed an 8-point sampling margin for Democrats with only 23% of the results taken from Republicans . . .”
Link:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/
GB.
Of course it “will continue unabated”. There will be many minor skirmishes in the days ahead, no need to over extend on every single one. It is the battles that are important. And there will be many battles ahead. My ignored advise is yes, fight the occasional skirmish, but concentrate on the battlefield at large.
T,
Live by the poll, die by the poll. Trump must conduct himself without regard to polls.
Really good polls these days cost a lot of money because they need to be carefully constructed and executed. In a world of instant communications the time and money for that are in short supply.
I will not answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. During the campaign I was called either by pollsters or campaigns at least ten times a day. I never picked up. I’m sure there are millions of people like me. I now consider the telephone to be an inconvenience and cold callers (salesmen, phishers, pollsters, charity beggars, and political prostitutes) to be a pox on society.
For political polls I like the idea of identifying a large group of people that represent the target population and consistently polling them throughout the campaign. The USC/LA Times poll did this and was correct. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-polls-20161109-story.html
Interestingly, the poll designer didn’t believe his own poll results. His poll was a scientific experiment, but he was emotionally unable to believe the numbers. Heh.
Yeah, “favorability” doesn’t seem to translate as well as to electability as we thought. Even less well to effectiveness.
Obama is riding high on favorability now, although Hillary lost, the Democratic Party has been beaten back to 1920 levels and the majority of Americans consistently have said the country is on the track during Obama’s tenure.
“Live by the poll, die by the poll. Trump must conduct himself without regard to polls. [parker @ 458]
I agree. As JJ points out above I call the basic structure of the polls into question. Results are announced all the time, the structure of the poll (how the questions are worded, the order in which they are asked, etc.) is not often revealed. I, personally, think that there is much more push polling going on that anyone in the business is willing to admit.
@Neo – didn’t you have somewhere a post about how the polls were within the margin of error this election cycle?
It seems that the polls, in aggregate, are not “flawed” as being suggested by some here, but misinterpreted or misapplied.
National polls certainly got the majority vote correct. But they didn’t / don’t show how the EC would play out.
What was needed was more state specific polling this cycle. The polling at that level was way too thin and infrequent to get a clear picture. Probably would have made it sharper clinton’s weaknesses in the rust belt.
Without that level of info, it was up to the pollsters and pundits to put their interpretation on the polls vis the election.
I believe that is where the “bias” came in, and where the possibility of a trump win was “lost” in the discussions.
That possibility was further obscured by the historically extreme net negatives each candidate was polling at, which increased the volatility (real range of possible outcomes).
Trump won against all the odds and with most people telling him he was doing everything the wrong way. He was elected because the usual ways of doing business in government were not working. He was elected to do things differently.
Many people are now telling him that now that he’s won he should start acting “presidential.” If he followed their advice he would be like the Bushes and McCain and Romney. That would allow the left and the press (redundant I know) to destroy him the way they did them.
Trump has so far proven that he knows what he’s doing. Instead of offering him advice, his critics should be asking him for it. At the very least they should let him do things his way until some results are evident. It seems to me that he’s earned that. Then is the time to critique him; not now before we even know what he’s going to do.
Let’s give the guy a break. Paraphrasing him: After the last 24 years, what have we got to lose?
parker has it right. This is all reminiscent of GWB’s election in 2000.
What’s different is trump’s (and his team’s) response to it all has been wanting.
The more trump bites at the bait, the more it reinforces, intensifies, and escalates this.
“Trump has so far proven that he knows what he’s doing. “ – Irv
Maybe. Maybe not.
his electoral win doesn’t necessarily prove that. You ought to check this out:
http://neoneocon.com/2017/01/17/michael-moore-really-nailed-it-pre-election/#comment-2165399
We’ll see.
Big Maq – I think Trump’s response has been just about right. He’s driving the left and the never-Trumpers nuts. They interpret everything he says in the worst possible light and it ends up making them look silly, the same way it did during the election. The more they fight him, the more he laughs all the way to the bank. He was elected to not pay any attention to political correctness and he’s doing a bang-up job of it. Every day I’m reminded over and over again why we voted for him.
@Irv – agree that over-reaction on the left makes them look silly and loses them credibility.
Same was observed with some of conservative media’s coverage of obama, and some GOP action that tried to play to their crowd the way the dems are today.
I disagree that trump walks away unscathed by all this.
The only reason it may “appear” so is that many (most?) are taking a wait and see attitude.
He will be forgiven if he is seen by his constituency that he has “delivered”.
Like obama’s hope and change campaign, trump has set some high expectations.
We’ll see.
Rather interesting take on how the press in Russia behaves wrt putin.
Perhaps worth a read and keep in the back of our minds…
https://medium.com/@alexey__kovalev/message-to-american-media-from-russia-6e2e76eeae77#.vjczndnre
Big Maq – “Same was observed with some of conservative media’s coverage of obama, and some GOP action that tried to play to their crowd the way the dems are today.”
The difference is that it is the vast majority of the mainstream media that is doing it to Trump in what are supposed to be hard news venues whereas it was only some bloggers, radio show hosts and a few news analysis and opinion shows on Fox that did it to Obama.
It is important to evaluate the size and quality of the opposition and not just the fact that they both do it.
Something I wonder about is — if Obama’s favorable rating is running at 58% and Trump won with 46% of the vote, that would seem to mean that a respectable slice of people who rated Obama as favorable also voted for Trump.
Which blows a hole in the liberal theory that Trump voters were driven by their racist hatred of Obama.
Interesting.
I’m getting the impression that what Trump SAYS is irrelevant. It can be anything, it changes day to day. It is tactical. What he DOES, however, matters. Let’s see how that works. His cabinet picks look solid, for instance. I was not sanguine about Prez Trump, but he seems to be doing OK.
@Irv – yes, the main difference is in “size” as in the msm’s reach vs conservative media’s.
We can debate about how qualitatively different they really are.
Based on what I used to listen to w rush, hannity, levin, etc.., or read breitbart, etc. over the years, retrospectively, maybe the conservative media were much more frequently over the top / hot. Certainly, no less.
What 2012 and especially 2016 did for me was to emblazon the biases, sensationalism, inconsistencies (hypocrisies?) of much of the media, no matter which side.
Differences in size does not give the smaller ones a bye, afaiac.
It only means their impact is smaller.
They are still playing the same game, though.
This has to be a challenging time for pollsters, whether they’re after the most accurate result or the result that has the most impact on opinion. During the 2016 campaign it must have been more difficult than in previous campaigns to get a handle on not only what the electorate thought but on how they thought–what were the processes involved in forming an opinion, or in making a voting decision.
For me the process was very different from previous campaigns, and produced a different result from week to week, sometimes day to day. I couldn’t just consult my personal ideology or experience–there were far too many factors to consider. Many were new and unfamiliar factors, which included considering a presidency that might be conducted in unconventional and unsettling ways, often upsetting traditions that I valued and thought necessary. It was a process that required open-ended thinking, denying the comfort of an easily-formed neat and tidy opinion.
I’d love to know what’s going on behind the scenes in the polling business, how they’re trying to figure out sampling and the construction of their questionnaires. I’ll bet it’s a great day for consultants.