kurtster wrote: 
Whatever significance you're referring to depends on the success of the poll's methods. I think you might benefit from reading this FiveThirtyEight.com article, which cautions both pro- and anti-Trump Americans from reading too much into polls at this point in time. In the article, btw, Nate Silver states that Rasmussen Reports "aren't very good pollsters."


Instead, Trump’s approval ratings are systematically higher in polls of voters — either registered voters or likely voters — than they are in polls of all adults. And they’re systematically higher in polls conducted online or by automated script than they are in polls conducted by live-telephone interviewers. 

...

While there can be good reasons for using polls of voters as opposed to those of all adults, however, I’d be wary of making too much about the difference between registered-voter and likely-voter polls. At this early stage, it’s hard to predict what the likely voter electorate will look like in 2018. Midterm voters are typically older and whiter than registered voters overall, which should help Republicans. But they’re also better-educated, which should help Democrats. Furthermore, the “enthusiasm gap” can vary quite a bit from election to election, although it usually favors the opposition party in the midterms (i.e., Democrats in 2018).

The differences between these various types of polls may also narrow as we collect more data. So far, the only pollsters surveying likely voters are Rasmussen Reports and Zogby, and they aren’t very good pollsters. And the only pollsters we could find releasing numbers among both all adults and registered voters — which provides for the most direct comparison between those groups — are YouGov and Pew Research. YouGov’s poll showed Trump’s approval rating lower among all adults than among registered voters, but his disapproval rating was lower also. That’s a fairly typical pattern: Adults who aren’t registered to vote are often politically disengaged and may have indifferent views toward Trump.

...

In the meantime, be on alert for selective citation of polls that are used to advance a narrative. In his press conference last week, for instance, Trump cited a Rasmussen Reports poll showing him with a 55 percent approval rating — neglecting to mention that no other recent poll shows him above 49 percent approval.

But I’ve seen at least as much cherry-picking from liberal and mainstream reporters. In my Twitter feed last week, for instance, a Pew poll that had Trump at 39 percent approval⁵ got a lot more attention than a Fox News survey which had him at 48 percent instead.⁶
 

...Trump is not very popular, but he’s also no more unpopular than Barack Obama was for much of his presidency. If his numbers hold where they they are right now — especially among registered voters — Republicans would probably hold their own in 2018, and 2020 would be another highly competitive election.

What’s different, as I mentioned, is Trump’s approval ratings are much worse than what a president typically enjoys at this stage of his term. So the question is whether his ratings will continue to decline or if he steadies the ship, or eventually pivots and sees his approval ratings improve. It’s possible — I’d wager more likely than not if forced to bet — that Trump’s ratings will continue to decline over the next six to 18 months, at which point he’d be in trouble since he’s starting from a low baseline. But while he faces a lot of challenges — mostly of his own making — he sometimes benefits from news coverage that overextends itself and predicts his immediate demise only to have to pull back later, perhaps making him seem more formidable in the process.

 

 

 islander wrote: 
 What are you talking about ?

 I'm citing the Rasmussen poll and nothing else. 

 islander wrote: 
Negative polls are fake news.

~ Lord Dampnut 

 kurtster wrote: 
You do realize that the poll you quoted (one that is generally noted as having a rightward slant) actually shows a higher percentage of people with a different/opposing view than the one you are trumpeting (hah!). 

 kcar wrote: 
You do realize the significance of looking at one particular poll over a lonnnnnnng period of time, right ?

 kcar wrote: 
All negative polls are fake news.

~ Lord Dampnut 

 kurtster wrote: 
OTOH:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1669/general-mood-country.aspx

	Satisfied	Dissatisfied	No opinion
	%	%	%
2017 Jan 4-8	26	72	2
2016 Dec 7-11	27	71	2
2016 Nov 9-13	27	70	3
2016 Nov 1-6	37	62	1

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

Poll	Date	Sample	Right Direction	Wrong Track	Spread
RCP Average	1/12 - 2/16	—	35.0	55.4	-20.4
Rasmussen Reports	2/12 - 2/16	2500 LV	46	48	-2
Reuters/Ipsos	2/10 - 2/14	1774 A	31	52	-21
Economist/YouGov	2/12 - 2/14	1100 RV	31	52	-21
IBD/TIPP	1/27 - 2/2	885 A	50	48	+2
CBS News	1/13 - 1/16	1257 A	29	61	-32
ABC News/Wash Post	1/12 - 1/15	1005 A	29	63	-34
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	1/12 - 1/15	1000 A	37	52	-15
Monmouth	1/12 - 1/15	708 RV	27	67	-40

 

 kurtster wrote: 
I am!  It's like Christmas everyday! That is an impressive report and very telling of where we were and where we're heading.

Anyone else sleeping better at night ?  I know I am ...  Best in nearly 8 years ...

 46% Say U.S. Heading in Right Direction

That’s up a point from the previous week. This is the fourth week in a row that this finding has been in the mid-40s after running in the mid- to upper 20s for much of 2016. The latest finding is higher that any week during the Obama presidency.

The complete list of all 80 false things Donald Trump has said in his first 4 weeks as president
The Star’s running tally of the bald-faced lies, exaggerations and deceptions the president of the United States of America has said, so far.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
Zero chance I'm gonna read all of that. Does this excerpt sum up the piece?:

Trump the loser, the outsider, the hot mess, the pathetic joke, embodies this duality. Trump represents both the alpha and the beta. He is a successful person who, as the left often notes, is also the exact opposite — a grotesque loser, sensitive and prideful about his outsider status, ready at the drop of a hat to go on the attack, self-obsessed, selfish, abrogating, unquestioning of his own mansplaining and spreading, so insecure he must assault women. In other words, to paraphrase Truman Capote, he is someone with his nose pressed so hard up against the glass he looks ridiculous. And for this reason, (because he knows he is substanceless) he must constantly re-affirm his own ego. Or as Errol Morris put it, quoting Borges, he is a “labyrinth with no center”.

But, what the left doesn’t realize is, this is not a problem for Trump’s supporters, rather, the reason why they support him.

Trump supporters voted for the con-man, the labyrinth with no center, because the labyrinth with no center is how they feel, how they feel the world works around them. A labyrinth with no center is a perfect description of their mother’s basement with a terminal to an endless array of escapist fantasy worlds.

 

If that's what Trump's younger supporters are all about, they haven't realized that self-destructive rejection of the status quo just makes matters worse. 

I think he's just reality-TV entertainment to them with a whiff of punk-rock middle-finger anger at social niceties and fake PC conventional BS. You have to wonder how happy his supporters will be when they realize Trump isn't making their lives better, he's actually making them worse. 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
 
Mine too. I try so hard not to be judgy. Lord knows, I try. But these boys - yes, BOYS are f*cking "Lord of the Flies" morons. Their parents should drag them out of the basements they waste away in and ship them off to a third world country (with NO Internet) where they are made to do some good, backbreaking work helping people with crops or wells or building town libraries....living on simple, substantial diets and going to sleep exhausted each night. Let them know what it actually feels like to make productive use of their time...that actually contributes to the wellbeing of others. Then maybe they'd take life more seriously and not squander it on hours spent in fantasy and other such bullshit.
 
 

 
 

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
That made my head hurt.

Maybe this should go in favorite quotes

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist  and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, 
OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart 
—you know, if you're a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, 
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the 
smartest people anywhere in the world—it's true!—but when you're a 
conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that's 
why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went 
there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my 
like credentials all the time, because we're a little disadvantaged—but 
you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would 
have been so easy, and it's not as important as these lives are (nuclear 
is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the 
power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of 
what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), 
but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it 
used to be three, now it's four—but when it was three and even now, I 
would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, 
you know, they don't, they haven't figured that the women are smarter 
right now than the men, so, you know, it's gonna take them about 
another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians  are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4546796/donald-trump-sentence

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
 
I know, from talking to friends and, yes, family members who voted for him that they are/were hoping the Republicans could get done the stuff they felt Obama didn't—no matter who was put in the White House. Some of them still could not get affordable healthcare, especially when self-employed. Some of them were single-issues voters (abortion) and don't really like Trump, but feel the GOP would be the only ones to support their beliefs. Some despised Hillary and her emails so much that they felt the other side deserved the vote. I know that a cousin really does want to see more immigration control (not contempt toward anyone, but something to make him feel safer from terrorism). But what my sister asked some of them was—-don't you realize the insanity you're aligning yourselves with, in the process?? There is nothing Trump can say or do that's bad enough for them to withdraw support. More than anything, they just want the GOP to have a turn.
 
What are they missing? The big picture of the consequences putting such an inept, inexperienced person in charge. The ripple effect on the rest of the world and the interconnection of it all.
 
IMHO

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
Tragi what happened over there... Ppppfffftttttt

je suis Sweden