Some Fascinating Takeaways from Trump's Latest Approval Polls
I try to keep up with Trump’s poll numbers.
Trump’s numbers had gone up a bit from their nadir. They are now at 9 points under according to my method. They had been 6 points under for weeks. He’s lost 2-3 points just in the last week or so. His disapproval has been flat but he’s shed a few points from this approval, some of which went to undecided. Hey, it’s progress.
Trump Approval Disapproval Not Sure Net 43 52 5 -9Previously, for a few weeks:Trump Approval Disapproval Not Sure Net 45 51 4 -6The only thing that I can see that could have resulted in a few points of movement is the massive mess in LA and a couple of other cities involving civil disturbances over the ICE raids. I was almost completely certain that this was a sure loser for us in the polls, but apparently that’s not so. Don’t ask me to explain how protests supporting an unpopular position - opposition to ICE raids against illegals - cause Trump’s polls to go down, but hey, whatever helps us is good.
Trump’s numbers are also going down on immigration. For weeks, Trump’s numbers had been good on immigration, generally at least four points up on the subject. They looked something like this at best:
Trump Immigration Approval Disapproval Not Sure 52 47 1Now the numbers look something like this: Trump Immigration Approval Disapproval Not Sure 47 47 6It looks like a lot of the support for Trump’s immigration policies has simply gone over to the uncertain category. It’s better than nothing.
An interesting poll out of Quinnipac found Trump’s popularity crashing at 38%. Granted this is an outlier, but Quinnipac is respectable. This is heading towards the numbers of his previous term. What was interesting was that his numbers on other issues varied a bit:
Trump Approval Disapproval Not Sure Net 38 53 9 -15Trump Immigration Approval Disapproval Not Sure Net 43 52 5 -9Trump Spending Bill Approval Disapproval Not Sure Net 27 54 -19 -27Notice how his numbers collapse on the spending bill, but almost all the collapse goes over to unsure? From immigration to spending, he loses 16 points of support, but 14 of those go over to unsure. So Trump supporters are simply moving from pro-Trump to unsure on the spending bill and from unsure to pro-Trump on immigration. Put another way, people are either with Trump or unsure or vice versa and they move back and forth. But people don’t go from unsure or pro-Trump to us because our numbers are flat.
All of our yelling about Trump is at best moving people from Trump supporters over to uncertain. That means we’re not working hard enough. Shifting people to not sure doesn’t cut it. It’s a hazy position. On the other hand, a lot of people who shift from pro-Trump to unsure may just sit out elections. They certainly won’t vote for us. And this may explain a lot of the spectacular Democratic upsets this year.
The one point that isn’t moving at all is opposition to Trump! That’s steady at 52-54%, or 53% average. So the Opposition, as we like to call ourselves, are a mere 50-55% of the country, basically half the country, a bit more than half if we’re generous and that includes the most contentious issues.
Only half the country is against Trump! The rest of the country is either with him or not sure, even on most of the issues. Ok, so we are going to win the next elections and all of the Senate, House, and state races we need to win, with the support of 53% of the country? Not buying it. We need more than that.
My Polling Analysis Methods
Granted my methods might not be perfectly correct. That is, I am starting to eliminate all polls with a significant Republican bias, which is probably 30-40% of them out there. I was finally forced to throw out Morning Consult, though there’s been no reported Republican bias. But its results are lining up with Rasmussen’s, or even worse, so they’re just not measuring the public properly. I throw out Rasmussen, RMG (Rasmussen clone), Tralfagar Research (another Rasmussen clone?), Zogby (this one surprised me), and Harris.
You can see above that some new rightwing polls, clones even, seem to have emerged. This is probably a part of the effort to “shape public opinion.” If you think about it it make sense. All of these polls are commissioned by large corporations and large corporate backers. Many are associated with MSM media outlets and all of those are huge corporations. All corporations are very rightwing and support MAGA or rightwing Democrats.
So they’re going to want biased polls who swing public opinion one way or the other. As you will see below, polls are probably as much a part of molding public opinion as the media is. The Jews and conservatives figured out long ago the importance of molding public opinion via the media. The media under capitalism towards conservatism but this gets a lot different under social democracy where a social contract has been negotiated between business, the ruling class, the workers, the consumers, society, and the state.
Nevertheless that gives me a pretty good picture of where things are at. One problem is with comparisons. I look back at Trump’s first term, and for much of that term, he was 20 points down, something like 37% approval to 57% disapproval. With those same presumably unadjusted polls, he’s down by 4.5 points right now. So he’s doing much better. But with my adjustments, he would have been even worse in first term.
Still my system seems to be predicting the results in local off-year races which have been characterized by Democratic upsets and huge Democratic swings from 15-95 points. These massive swings are not being predicted by Trump’s ~45% support to ~50% disapproval. There’s a lot of difference between a 5-10 point swing and a 15-95 point one.
Only Americans and a Few Other Idiot Countries Support the Rule of the Rich
I am convinced that this is part of the Republican project. It is only in the US, a lot of Latin America, Ukraine, the Philippines, the UK and increasingly the Anglosphere itself, and maybe a few other places.
The rest of the world has given up on the rule of the rich a while back, especially with the end of the Cold War and the dictatorships that accompanied it. Most of the world is under the rule of some form of social democracy whether the rich like it or not. Of course the rich do extremely well in all of these social democracies and they’re even doing pretty well in Communist China. But not as well as they could be doing under the rule of the rich.
There are few ruling parties in the world that are as openly in favor of the rule of the rich as the Republican Party of the US. There is one in Argentina and there are others in Paraguay, Peru, Haiti, and Ecuador. The first three are dictatorships. There is one in Ukraine, a dictatorship, and another the Philippines. The rule of the rich is quite logically hated almost everywhere on Earth. It is only in Argentina and the US where it excels in its pure form.
How are they doing these polls now? Do they call random cell numbers? Lots of people, myself included, have discontinued landline phones.
I'm not sure if you're awake, but Israel has just attacked Iran.