"Cracker Barrel Smerconish," the MSM and their favored polls.

 

 

Friday, February 17

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)	Poll	Results	Spread
President Trump Job Approval	Rasmussen Reports	Approve 55, Disapprove 45	Approve +10
President Trump Job Approval	Gallup	Approve 38, Disapprove 56	Disapprove +18

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Is Real Clear Politics a reputable source for the Borgists?   I thought it was.  Foolish me. They run summaries of a number of daily tracking polls every day.  the Borgists prefer the Gallup poll evidently because it consistently shows Trump with very low numbers (circa 38%) while the Rasmussen Poll has shown his approval number climbing from around 44% to 55% yesterday.

This old man watches a lot of TV news.  I have yet to hear any of the TV news stations even mention the Rasmussen Poll.  Not even Foxnews mentions it.

And today "Cracker Barrel Smerconish," a pseudo neutral politicallu, had the audacity to proclaim on his news program that what remains of Trump's support is in "Cracker Barrel Counties," i.e., among rural buffoons.  One of his guests told him that such attitudes are why the Democrats so thoroughly lost the 2016 election.   He shrugged that off citing the Gallup Poll as evidence that the deluded Cracker Barrel denizens are learning their error.

Well, pilgrims, I think the Democrats deserve to retain such attitudes and their selective delusion concerning polling and data.

Smerconish claimed in his own defense to like Cracker Barrel food.  I do not.  I think their dining rooms are over sized McDonald's seeking to imitate rural cooking in America.  pl  

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/

https://www.crackerbarrel.com/https://www.crackerbarrel.com/

Comments

[Bill Herschel]

Trump's attacks on the "media" and polls unfavorable to him are ultimately a tempest in a teapot. Their only relevance is that Trump makes them. He seems to care about unfavorable press and polls. Care a lot. A real lot. Enough to spend a ton of time talking to the American people about the subject.

I wonder how much longer he will be able to control himself. Because there is a very simple way out. War.

Note, he approved some cockamamy operation in Yemen (yeah, Yemen where American interests are paramount and our ability to intervene is limitless... oh, oil? KSA tankers escorted by the U.S. Navy? returning to my point...) which was a bust.

How long will it take for him to realize that war is the President's friend? Ukraine? Syria? We've already got tripwires in place. And we haven't even mentioned "We've got you back," Israel.

"I have decided to clean up the mess left to my Administration by Obama and enforce his 'red line'." That's all it would take to silence the press and boost the polls.

[The Twisted Genius]

The Rasmussen poll doesn't show the approval rating climbing. The poll done from 1/17 to 1/18 showed a favorable/unfavorable spread of 53/47. That's an increase in favorability of 2 points. The poll done right after the inauguration by Rasmussen, 1/22 to 1/24, had a favorable/unfavorable spread of 57/43. So Trump’s approval rating since his inauguration has dropped 2 points according to the Rasmussen poll. This is still a far different story told by the Gallup poll.

I share your opinion of Cracker Barrel, but it’s still fast, cheap food while traveling.

[Jack]

Sir

The Democrats and their NeverTrump media haven't learned anything from the recent presidential election. Nor have they learned from their losses of state houses and state legislatures under Obama. What they don't get is they're just one state away from the ability of the GOP to call a constitutional convention.

Instead of trying to understand why they have done so poorly in so many states, they are doubling down and looking more foolish as they beat the drums of smugness and condescension in their celebrity media universe.

[Sam Peralta]

Col. Lang

POTUS mentioned the Rasmussen poll in his press conference.

[turcopolier]

Sam Peralta

He did and he should. pl

[turcopolier]

TTG

Ok. I see it now. Bob and Edith's is in my opinion a much better place to get Southern diner food. Cracker Barrel's main advantage is that you can see the sign from an Interstate highway. The "Sawmill Gravy" at CB appears to me to be made of sawdust. pl

[turcopolier]

Bill Hersvhel

Is there any basis for this calumny other than your dislike of him. Obama set up these tripwires. pl

[Paul Mooney]

You would think folks would learn...

I am kind of a political junkie of the leftish persuasion. No poll that I saw running up to the 2016 had Trump winning. The closest one, at FiveThirtyEight had Clinton winning but by a smaller margin than the other polls.

I don't understand why that is not earth-shaking - not just to us who read these polls but to the companies that publish them. They missed the ONE THING that they had to get right in 2016 - and missed by a lot.

In a similar vein, many of these outlets now are pushing for subscribers - usually with a "you need us especially now!" I can't help but think that in 2016 they really only needed to be right about ONE THING. CNN, NY Times, Washington Post - all of them now asking for paid subscribers. You were wrong, very wrong, about the thing they spent more airtime and more ink and more pixels covering than any other in 2016.

Why would I pay for that? I can just make stuff up and be wrong for free.

[Valissa]

Good overview of many different Rasmussen polls on Trump and the popularity of various of his policies.

What They Told Us: Reviewing Last Week’s Key Polls http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/weekly_updates/what_they_told_us_feb18

[fellow_traveler]

Rasmussen had Romney and Clinton winning the last two elections, so they have some cred.

RCP is just an aggregator. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Lee A. Arnold]

It's better to go by the aggregate of the polls. RealClearPolitics showed Clinton winning by 2.1%, and that's pretty close, she won the popular vote by 2.9%. Here is a graph of the 4-way race:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton_vs_johnson_vs_stein-5952.html

I don't remember the exact number, but I think she lost the Electoral College by somewhere around 100,000 votes spread over 4 states. Not much at all -- this election was a squeaker.

[walrus]

It's not just America, "progressives" everywhere are in a state of denial. What Trump and Brexit have done is to give people around the world permission to ditch the prevailing political correctness BS.

We are going to have a little test in a state election in Australia shortly; I expect Pauline Hanson's "One Nation" party and the "hunting shooting and fishing" party to be major winners, perhaps holding the balance of power.

[doug]

I think Trump is fully aware of how hostile the DC and coastal elites are and that they are doing a full court press to bring down his administration. Worse, I think a significant portion of the congressional republicans are of the same mind. The two main thrusts are foreign "emoluments," and flailing away at the notion he is compromised by the Russians. And endless repetition that the Rooskies rigged the election. These latter attack modes are designed to suppress his base and the former to provide the legalistic cover for impeachment.

So Trump is fighting back. He is a scrapper and relishes it as much as Slick liked campaigning. And his style appeals, at a very gut level, to his base as much as it irritates the snot out of the chattering classes.

As for the value of war to cement his hold on the office, that was one point he made at his presser. I liked it and think he should talk more to it. I see significant risk if he comes to believe that it may be the only way he can remain in power. Worse, that likely is the case as I see impeachment down the road as near certain unless he can keep control and support of his base. Clearly, that support is what Trump is focusing on and he should.

[Lee A. Arnold]

No idea why you are watching TV news, but anyway: Trump's approval looks like around negative 5.

Probably more accurate to take the average of a month of polls. RealClearPolitics average spread for Trump job approval is negative: -5.3 point spread. Here is that page:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html

The most accurate pollsters (according to 538 analysis) in that RealClearList list are: Fox, Reuters, CBS, CNN. Average of just these four is same: -5 point spread.

I don't think it really means that much, this early in any Administration, but it is unusual.

And it might have been as high for Hillary, who knows? Don't forget, Trump & Hillary both have had very high personal disapproval ratings for years.

[ex-PFC Chuck]

There was a frankly scary piece up on Medium a few days back that goes a long way to explaining how the Team Trump pulled off the win, and why the polls totally missed it. It is entitled "The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine." In essence, sophisticated artificial intelligence applied to a massive collection of "Big Data" allowed them to identify small segments open to persuasion and tailor email and social media messages precisely aimed at those segments. They were able to do this with a much finer resolution that conventional polling techniques are capable of.

https://medium.com/join-scout/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine-86dac61668b#.58zvsb6ns

WRT the Democratic Party's response to the Trump victory, as far as their Borg billionaire (How about a new word, Borgillionaire?) owners are concerned it's a feature, and not a bug, that they taking no action that would force them to look into the mirror and figure out why they lost so badly. Hilary didn't lose the 2016 presidential election alone. The losses the Party suffered in the 2010 and 2014 off-year elections that what had been their party's working class base was wising up to the fact that they'd been the marks in the fraud the Dems have been pulling on them since Bill Clinton was inaugurated. If I were a Borgillionaire I'd double down on my contributions to the Democratic Senate and House campaign committees, as well as selected candidates of their party.

[bks]

Trump was +18 in Rasmussen on 17 January, so he's definitely trending down:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/trump_approval_index_history

[SAC Brat]

Nailed it. Why listen to these non-Cassandras now? Same with all the news outlets that got it wrong. What value do they have?

[The Twisted Genius]

pl,

Those poll listing were not easy to read. I checked three times. I sure somebody could do a better job of presenting that data.

I never had their Sawmill Gravy. I figured it was mostly flour and water. I could really go for some good sausage gravy and biscuits. Last time I had some was at the Silver Diner before it got all artsy-fartsy new wave cuisine. That was with scrambled eggs and hash browns. Would have been even better if it came out of a mermite container in the back of a Gamma Goat.

If you ever get to Richmond again, made a pilgrimage to Buz and Neds Barbecue. The one on Broadway is best. They do the pork and brisket without the sauce. You add as much as you want. Best I've ever had. Way better than anything I had in Columbia, SC. That city was split between ketchup-based and mustard-based. They could have had a green line down the middle of the town.

[Eric Newhill]

Sir,
You already know what I think about these polls - they're clearly rigged.

I said why they were rigged against before the election and I won't bother going into how and why they're rigged now. Nothing has changed. The poll's and pundit's abject failure to predict the election should have been enough to silence them for a long a time.

However, the leftist's primary means of swaying the public seems to be to repeat BS over and over ad nausea, hoping that sooner or later everyone becomes utterly brainwashed zombies. Obviously this works on a few predisposed, but not on sufficient numbers. In fact, it seems to backfire more often than not. Truly, I hope they keep it up. Then we will never have to suffer a lefty controlled anything again beyond a few state governments.

Cracker Barrel is garbage, IMO. I choose Chic Fil-A over it when I'm South and need to grab a bite on the road.

[doug]

One hope I have is that the Trump admin. is looking at the historical records of intelligence analysts with a view towards giving more weight to the ones that got it right. I guess I'm presuming that one of the functions provided is "if we do X, Y is the set of possible outcomes with various probabilities" and that records of this are kept. One would assume this kind of review happens automatically in any administration but that's just a complete assumption from an outsider.

As for CB, it seemed to me, back when I was living in New England, that Yankees took it to be authentic Southern Food. Can't opine on them personally. Only ate there once in spite of many decades visiting my folks in SC.

[Stan P.]

I come from the right side. I've been registered as a Republican since he age of 18 (1992). But I can never, ever recall entertaining, and certainly never propagating, something I knew or thought to be BS. While I sometimes try to persuade people to my position on some things, I could never imagine using information I knew or suspected of being untrue or even a half truth. If I won someone over to my position based on this I would feel so damn guilty and my conscience would haunt me.

I was very critical of Bush and the neocons and I've been on board with Trump based on a few positions regarding foreign affairs and the elimination of special interest in D.C. But what I see and hear in this current political environment is like something from "Through the Looking Glass". I really don't understand it and it seems to be a time of collective madness. The Sixties was a period of radical political activity, but from everything I've read about that time the activists seemed to be well informed and have well-thoughout ideas and didn't resort to outright fraud. I could be wrong on this.

[steve]

Rasmussen always favors Republicans. Well known bias. On the election, they had it wrong like everyone else. (From the Rasmussen site)

Monday, November 07, 2016

Rasmussen Reports’ final White House Watch survey shows Democrat Hillary Clinton with a two-point lead over Republican Donald Trump with less than 24 hours to go until Election Day. Among early voters, Clinton has a double-digit lead.

The latest national telephone and online survey of Likely U.S. Voters shows Clinton with 45% support to Trump’s 43%. Libertarian Gary Johnson picks up four percent (4%) of the vote, while Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets two percent (2%). Three percent (3%) still like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

[Stan P.]

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/how-can-we-get-rid-of-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1&referer=http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-president/">http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-president/">https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/opinion/sunday/how-can-we-get-rid-of-trump.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1&referer=http://www.unz.com/isteve/nyt-who-will-rid-me-of-this-troublesome-president/

How Can We Get Rid of Trump?
Nicholas Kristof
FEBRUARY 18, 2017

We’re just a month into the Trump presidency, and already so many are wondering: How can we end it?

One poll from Public Policy Polling found that as many Americans — 46 percent — favor impeachment of President Trump as oppose it. Ladbrokes, the betting website, offers even odds that Trump will resign or leave office through impeachment before his term ends.

[gowithit]

The final "composite" polling figures approaching the Nov '16 election had Clinton up by 3-4 pts. She came very close to that and well within the margin of error. There were "outlier" polls all over the place. From various reading sources, I recall that Rassmussen in the past has tended to inflate Republican % pts.

[trinlae]

Notiice the spread is clearly published but the error margins and confidence levels are off in some fineprint somewhere.