“Hey look, over half the country hates me!”
by digby
 |
| A) Obama was at 51% with 10% unemployment in December of 2009 B) Trump is actually at 37% and has 4.1% unemployment C) he’s a liar |
But the truth, across almost every reputable poll, is that Trump’s approval ratings have lagged behind those of nearly all of his predecessors, including Obama, since day one of his presidency.
The cleanest comparison between the approval ratings of the two presidents is Gallup’s daily tracking polls, which are released as both three-day rolling averages and weekly averages. The three-day averages released on December 28, 2009 — the day Trump cited in his tweet — showed 51% approval for Obama with 43% disapproval. On December 28 of this year, Gallup released a three-day average showing 38% approval for Trump with 56% disapproval.
The weekly numbers tell a similar story: For the week ending December 27, 2009, 51% approved of Obama, and for the week ending December 24, 2017, 37% approved of Trump.
That gap is mirrored in other polls with long-term trends and similar methodologies now as they had in 2009.In CNN’s polling among all adults, 35% approved of Trump in mid-December 2017, while Obama held a 54% approval rating in December 2009. CBS News finds a 14-point gap between Obama’s approval then (50%) and Trump’s approval now (36%). NBC News and The Wall Street Journal show a smaller 6-point gap on approval, but Trump’s disapproval number (56%) tops Obama’s by 10 points (46%). And the Quinnipiac University poll finds a 9-point gap between Trump’s approval (37%) and Obama’s positive rating (46%) among registered voters.
Trump’s tweeted claim rests on the findings of a daily tracking poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports. Those findings come from a poll conducted using a mix of online interviews and those conducted via calls to landline telephones by a recorded voice interviewer rather than a live person. They claim to interview likely voters, without specifying in what election those people are likely to cast ballots, nor how they are identified. Polls conducted this way do not meet CNN’s standards for reporting, because they can under-represent certain segments of the population.
Rasmussen’s polling received a C+ rating in FiveThirtyEight’s most recent pollster rankings, and it has been found to lean toward the GOP when compared with other pollsters, which means it typically understated support for Obama and has a tendency to overstate support for Trump when compared with other polls.
He’s totally uninformed and dim about policy and his strategic abilities are really just a feral survival instinct. But polling is something he knows about and understands. So, I think this is a case of sheer mendacity to fool his rubes. He looks at the real polling, you know he does. And he knows he’s failing. He just doesn’t want his cult followers to know it.
The truth is that his cult doesn’t need him to tell them this. They believe he’s a genius and nothing he does will shake most of them out of their devotion. But it’s telling that he feels the need to shore them up anyway. He must know there’s some slippage.
.