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Can You Trust Trump’s Approval Rating Polls?
FiveThirtyEight ^ | JAN. 17, 2017 | Nate Silver

Posted on 02/12/2017 1:25:32 PM PST by NobleFree

[...] Here’s the thing. The loss of trust mostly isn’t the pollsters’ fault. It’s the media’s fault. Oh, yes, I’m going there. The loss of trust in polls was enabled, in large part, by reporting and analysis that incorrectly portrayed the polls as showing an almost-certain Clinton win when in fact they showed a close and highly uncertain Electoral College race , especially after FBI Director James B. Comey’s letter to Congress on Oct. 28 .

As my colleague Harry Enten put it a few days before the election , Trump was only a normal-size polling error away from winning. Clinton would win if the polls were spot on — and she’d win in a borderline landslide in the event of an error in her favor. But the third possibility — if the polls underestimated Trump, even slightly — would probably be enough for Trump to win the Electoral College . (That’s why FiveThirtyEight’s forecast during the final week of the campaign showed Trump with roughly a 1-in-3 chance of winning the Electoral College, dipping slightly to 29 percent on Election Day itself.)

That third possibility is pretty much exactly what happened. Trump beat the final FiveThirtyEight national polling average by only 1.8 percentage points. Meanwhile, he beat the final FiveThirtyEight polling average in the average swing state — weighted by its likelihood of being the tipping-point state — by 2.7 percentage points. (The miss was larger than that in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Clinton met or slightly exceeded her polls in several other swing states.) This was nothing at all out of the ordinary. The polls were about as accurate as they’d been, on average, in presidential elections since 1968 . They were somewhat more accurate than they’d been in the most recent federal election, the 2014 midterms . But they were enough to tip the election to Trump because Clinton had been in a precarious position to begin with. [...]


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: argumentadhominem; frothaboutthetitle; neverreadthearticle
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To: NobleFree

You can trust this instead.
41 posted on 02/12/2017 3:07:17 PM PST by bluecollarman (P)
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To: Flick Lives
Nate Silver’s polling

Silver does no polling.

42 posted on 02/12/2017 3:08:20 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: Flick Lives
Nate Silver’s polling

Silver does no polling.

43 posted on 02/12/2017 3:08:20 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: bluecollarman
A poll's trustworthiness or lack thereof ought not be judged by its results but its methods.
44 posted on 02/12/2017 3:10:09 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: NobleFree

This guy is a HACK!!!.

Polls are BS, PROPAGANDA

FAKE NEWS from COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZERS!!!


45 posted on 02/12/2017 3:11:10 PM PST by Rome2000 (SMASH THE CPUSA-SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS-CLOSE ALL MOSQUES)
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To: NobleFree

Only if they agree with you. That is why you pay for the worthless result of them.


46 posted on 02/12/2017 3:13:21 PM PST by richardtavor
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To: NobleFree

A lot of times, especially the ones I take part in, poll mostly democrats and independents and then cherry pick the rest. That is, if they’re not pulling the whole thing out of thin air depending on who is doing the poll.
His approval ratings must be really high.


47 posted on 02/12/2017 3:15:02 PM PST by Trillian
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To: NobleFree
You almost need a completely new definition for insanity from Einstein's. What’s really comical about the polling business overall, is how almost every single media and private poll pegged Trump’s approval in the low to mid 30s before the elections, with disapproval ratings almost universally north of 62% or even higher. Hillary consistently polled at least 10 percentage points better on both scores. We all know how that turned out.

Most recent polls Peg his approval/favorability rating 6 to 10 percentage points better than on election day. In other words, if the election were held today, Trump would win the electoral college vote by an even bigger majority, and would most certainly win the popular vote.

What the governing coastal elitists simply cannot get through their thick skulls is that you can’t use traditional metrics – like junk polling in this case – to quantify a complete outsider and non-politician like Donald J. Trump. Polls just do not apply to President Trump. Or else, he wouldn’t be president today.

48 posted on 02/12/2017 3:19:51 PM PST by Sidebar Moderator
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So this huckster is now trying to spin his election failure?

Plain fact is this knucklehead and the vast majority of pollsters got it WRONG. There was an obvious bias against the President Trump, and it was pretty much across the board. If the pollsters had actually gone out and polled people without manipulating the sample, they wouldn’t have gotten it wrong. But they did manipulate the data based on their personal preferences and in the process destroyed their credibility. You have a better chance of predicting behavior based on reading chicken entrails than relying on these polls.


49 posted on 02/12/2017 3:24:35 PM PST by RKBA Democrat (It's no longer Right versus left, but Americanism versus globalist scum.)
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To: NobleFree
Trump supporters are just as angry, if not more so, than they were during the election cycle. That's why they're still ignoring pollsters.

What the Establishment and Media (but I repeat myself) are failing to realize is that they can't put the toothpaste back into the tube. They have been completely exposed as blatant propagandists for the globalist authoritarian Regime, and there is no going back. Their credibility has been completely and permanently destroyed. The Media can continue tell people what to think, and what to think about, until they're blue in the face, but the People will never again buy what the Media is selling.

With all the fake news and fake polls which accompany it, and given the fact that the punditry is 90%+ Left wing, they've got a big problem on their hands, which is why they're resorting to violence, hateful lies, and outright unconstitutional methods.

The more hysterical and unhinged the Left becomes, the more normal Americans will be driven to support this Revolution, which President Trump is now leading, to drain the swamp, make America great again, and ultimately restore some sanity and common sense to Washington D.C. policy and culture.

The only option (aside from admitting how dead wrong they have been) is for the Left to double down on its race-baiting, hate speech, and fascist behavior, and this option is becoming increasingly counterproductive.

There's a reason that the Democrat party has been obliterated at all levels of government: federal, state, and local, executive and legislative—across the board. They've run out of constructive ideas, and there's nothing but bitterness and hatred driving them at this point. They are the ones who epitomize intolerance, violence, and lawlessness wherever they appear, as the magnitude of their own impotence begins to sink in.

Save in a couple of places like California and New York, the failed, repudiated Democrat party will be relegated to minority status for decades to come, as they continue to push the country toward a civil war which, in their wildest imaginations, will never turn out the way they expect.

In short, the Democrat party couldn't be more blind and delusional, and all of the elites, talking heads, and celebrities in the world aren't going to deceive the People ever again. The spell has been broken, and it will never carry the influence it once had...

50 posted on 02/12/2017 3:37:37 PM PST by sargon ("If we were in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, the Left would protest for zombies' rights.")
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To: NobleFree

Sure, about as much as you could have trusted the MSM pre-election day polls.


51 posted on 02/12/2017 3:53:55 PM PST by JimRed ( TERM LIMITS, NOW! Building the Wall! TRUTH is the new HATE SPEECH.)
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To: datricker
Many of us here said that the polls looked just like in Brexit

By the by, Silver explicitly refused to make a prediction on Brexit.

52 posted on 02/12/2017 3:54:56 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: NobleFree

Says the guy who gave him a 95 percent chance of losing.


53 posted on 02/12/2017 3:58:53 PM PST by Luke21
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To: Luke21
Says the guy who gave him a 95 percent chance of losing.

When was that? Before the general election Silver gave Trump a in 3 chance of winning.

54 posted on 02/12/2017 4:01:57 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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1 in 3
55 posted on 02/12/2017 4:09:08 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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To: NobleFree; All
In case you missed it; Margins of error apply separately to BOTH candidates.

....ie. a 4% margin of error meant Hillary could be 4 pts higher or lower, and at the same time Trump could be 4 pts higher or lower...an 8 PT. SWING ! Bottom line is the right combo of error margins completely flips the poll. YUUUUUUGE.

56 posted on 02/12/2017 4:14:51 PM PST by chiller (One from the Right - One for the Fight)
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To: datricker
...the polls looked just like in Brexit where they were also outside the conceivable margin of error.

Actually, Nate's saying the polls were well within the normal margin of polling error.

57 posted on 02/12/2017 4:18:42 PM PST by semimojo
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To: Sarah Barracuda
...the polls are 100 percent garbage.

Don't tell Kellyanne.

58 posted on 02/12/2017 4:20:58 PM PST by semimojo
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To: Flick Lives
Nate Silver’s polling is tarnished.

Nate doesn't poll.

59 posted on 02/12/2017 4:22:06 PM PST by semimojo
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To: semimojo
Reading the article is such a chore.
60 posted on 02/12/2017 4:22:55 PM PST by NobleFree ("law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual")
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