[Rasmussen Reports (Polling company) Aug. 11, 2010.]The very best poll is on an election day, and on election day, 2008, Barrack Obama had a whopping 53% following. That's huge.
Tracking for today (Wednesday) shows 24% of the nation's voters strongly approve of the way Barack Obama is performing as president. Obama currently has a 46% approval rating, not that bad, I suppose, meaning that 46% of the electorate at least "somewhat" approves of the president's performance.
At this same time, 19 months into his presidency, George Bush had an approval rating of just over 60%, (down from a high of 92% after the attack on New York) It took Bush longer to drop below 50% approval rating than it has Obama to underachieve this, but Bush continued to drop throughout the remainder of his presidency. Obama still has lots of time left to recover, probably.
In the "Well, DUH!" department: 70% of registered voter poll respondents say they believe congress takes payments in return for their votes. In fact, 56% say they believe THEIR congressman is on the take.
I do like statistics. I find a lot of it quite interesting. At the moment I'm wondering why there was a sudden peak of approval in February 2010, even though disapproval didn't seem to dip significantly.
ReplyDeleteIt's quite a stretch from me saying I'm leery of reading too much into polls to pretending I said they were all phony.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, there's no "statistical science" - just math. Science requires facts and a scientific process. It must be reproduce-able independently and demonstrate a natural phenomena.
Polls are more likely to describe how opinions are influenced by the environment. Not exactly a natural phenomenon.
I agree with your commenter’s.
ReplyDelete@A. - What? Maybe heathcare until the people realized how much it was going to cost. Otherwise I don't know. Good question. :)
ReplyDelete@Stephanie Barr - I had a really long retort but now it just seems honest and logical, and I know how you hate that. So I won't print it.
@Jeff King - Fair enough. :)
Who are they polling? I've never been polled.
ReplyDeleteHey Relax Max, we really need to stop and see each other more often. I'm going to try to visit more.
Miss ya hon!