So What Do The Polls Say?

I was struck by this headline on Real Clear Politics which discusses the results of new polling regarding President Trump's approval rating:

President Trump Job Approval: Gallup 46% | Rasmussen 59% | Quinnipiac 34%

 

 

Think about that for a moment.  Quinnipiac finds only one in three American voters approve of Trump's performance.  Gallup finds the nation split roughly in half on the subject.  Rasmussen puts the figure that approve of Trump's performance closer to two-thirds than one half.  From this we know only one thing for certain:  All of these polls cannot be correct.  The same polling organizations that got November's elections so wrong are now going their separate ways when it comes to the nation's view of Trump.  Even more astounding, the difference between Quinnipiac and Rasmussen is fully one quarter of the electorate (59 versus 34 percent)

 

For what it's worth, I did look to see what sort of coverage each of these polls got in the mainstream media.  I'm sure it will come as no surprise for you to hear that there was much more coverage of the low result from Quinnipiac than the other two combined.

 

The reality right now is that the polls should be ignored.  Clearly, two out of these three are wrong, and it may be that one is extremely wrong.  Let's just consider Trump's actions on the merits and stop with the nonsense of using polls to determine the nation's view.  Until we start having polls that agree with each other (at least within a statistically acceptable variation), these measurements are nothing but junk.

 

One final note.  Rasmussen and Gallup ran daily polling on president Obama's approval ratings for the last eight years.  These organizations had their program up and running well.  On the other hand, Quinnipiac was just occasionally polling on the president's job approval.  That does not make Rasmussen and Gallup right and Quinnipiac wrong, but it certainly points in that direction.  In addition, Rasmussen got much closer to the November results than Quinnipiac.  Rasmussen got the popular vote margin exactly correct.  Quinnipiac, however, predicted in its final polls that Clinton would win Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania (by 5%) -- predictions that were all wrong.  Most likely, Rasmussen's numbers are correct and Quinnipiac's are wrong.