The Presidency, My Assignment

The Presidency

Answer the following questions:

1. How does FiveThirtyEight.com rank the reliability of the polls?

FiveThirthEitht.com gathers data from other polls and applies their modeling technics, data weight, and applies corrections to get their ratings for each candidate.  These polls take onto account voters, like for instance, adults vs voters or registered voters vs. likely voters (likely voters would carry more weight than only Adults).  These polls can also consider the group size where a larger group will be more accurate.  They also consider how old the data is as an older poll will be less accurate than a newer poll.  Next, they apply a trend line regression or local polynomial regression math modeling formula. This smooths out the lines of the graphs, making them look better however, to much can alter the accuracy of the data.   Then they do a process correcting for “House Effect”. which FiveThirtyEight.com defines as “…which are persistent differences between the poll and the trend line” (Silver 2020).  Lastly, estimating uncertainty by looking at past forecasts have been to past elections.

In conclusion, the article from FiveThirtyEight.com made the best comment yet when it said, “…there’s not any good way to determine how Trump’s “true” approval rating compares to our estimates” (Silver).  In other words, after all this, they don’t really know.  It is still just a guess.

2. How do Trump's approval ratings today compare to this time last year?

            “On August 27, 2019, President Donald Trump held a 41.3 percent approval rating and a 54.2 percent disapproval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll tracker” (Klein 2020) and not much has changed today as he still has high disapproval numbers.  A Rasmussen poll, which came out on the 14^th of September, has Pres. Trumps Total Approval at 51% with a Total Disapproval at 48%.  This poll has not been included in a FiveThirtyEight poll. 

2a. What might explain the change?

The press and the establishment can’t stand him and will do anything they can to discredit him, blame him for everything that they can.  They have been throwing everything they can at him, but he hangs in there.  This makes them furious.   Last week, he is being blamed for the fires in California.  When I was a kid growing up in the burbs of Los Angles, I can remember going out of my house to go to school and their would-be ash on cars, literally on everything.  That was way before Trump. So, it is ludicrous to think that Thump has had anything to do with forest fires in California, Oregon, or Washington. They happen every year and they will continue to happen for the remainder of time.  With all that they have accused him of, his disapproval numbers should be higher that what they are, but I think most informed voters can see what is going on.

3. How does Trump's approval compare with other presidents?

Pres. Trumps numbers are worse than most of the other presidents.  With few exceptions, his numbers are lower, but they don’t seem to fluctuate much, unlike some who’s numbers went up and down.  

3a. Is his approval rating pretty much the same as other presidents or much different? You may want to compare Trump's approval with specific presidents or use a general comparison.

When you compare the past presidents and their ratings to Pres. Trump, I noticed something.  Trump has some of the lowest ratings and for the most part, only with few exceptions, did a previous president have lower ratings.  However, these lower ratings of past presidents had a substantially large disapproval rating, but they could all be attributed to some critical event.  For example, Pres. Truman’s dip was the result of massive labor strikes after WWII.  With Pres. Carter, it was due to the Iranian hostage crisis and again when the rescue attempts failed.  With Pres. Trump, is disapproval ratings are just constant

3b. Explain WHY his approval is similar or different.

Pres. Trumps ratings have been very low for some time but with all the scandals, accusations, controversy that has plagued him throughout his presidency, you would expect his disapproval would be near 100%.  When you ask likely republican voters, he has around a 90% approval rating, so says a Washington Post-ABC News poll.  One explanation is these strong approval ratings are split more along party or loyalty lines than about actual topics or situations.  

There is one thing that I have learned about polls is… they are probably wrong.  “Polls are to create opinion, not report it” (Limbaugh 2020).  The election of 2016 is a great case study in how wrong poles can be.  I think that's proves Mr. Limbaugh’s claim. The polls said Hillary Clinton was all but in the oval office.  Trump out played her by winning more electoral votes than she.  I believe the 2020 election will go down in history as one of the biggest landslide victories, maybe not as big as Roosevelt’s win in 1932, but huge, nonetheless.  We will see, hopefully, by the 4^th of November.

 

References

“How unpopular is Donald Trump?” (2020, September 15). FiveThirtyEight. https://www.projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Klein, E. (2020, September 2). Can anything change Americans’ minds about Donald Trump? Vox. https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21409364/trump-approval-rating-2020-election-voters-coronavirus-convention-polls

Limbaugh, Rush. (2020 September 15). The Rush Limbaugh Show, Radio Broadcast, Premiere Networks.

Silver, N. (2020, March 2). How We’re Tracking Donald Trump’s Approval Ratings. FiveThirtyEight. https://www.fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-were-tracking-donald-trumps-approval-ratings/