David s:
Duck, dodge, and hyde (apropos 3 stooges reference in your case)
Answer the question. What do YOU think the trend for approval of Obama’s performance based on YOUR examination of the available evidence. I am not nor have I ever been asking you what the polls say. Because my question was never about what polls you choose to favor today over the one you’ll choose tomorrow, or those you do not choose either day. It was to try to get you to move away from specific poll results and do a little research. Jeez.
You agree with your favored poll results because the polls rescue you from the heavy task of examining and thinking for yourself. I got that. So I asked you which way YOU think the trend is going, because citing a poll is not examining for a trend.
David, you aren’t going to answer. Not truthfully. Admit it. It would kick the props right out from under you if you looked about and truthfully reported what you see. Assuming you understood it. I sympathize with your dilemma.
here’s the answer:
All the evidence points to Obama’s approval rating dropping and disapproval rating rising since the end of January. The variance between the two ratings is shrinking faster than that for any other president in recent history. Recent history being since this sort of data has been gathered.
And David, believe it or not, the average of all polling data, Zogby’s and any others I’ve looked at, taken over a the period of time since Obama has been in office and indicating a solid trend, also supports me. More on that answering realitycheq below. But I invite you to visit the links he cited but did not understand were contradicting the point he was trying to make.
realitycheq:
‘I will say again – the only ‘poll’ that mattered was the election, which Obama won. You boys and/or girls should try to get over it.’
Wrong. Completely, utterly wrong. The question is approval/disaproval of performance. That requires performance. The election results, like those of any election not involving an incumbent, do not represent an approval of performance. There is no way to rate performance in office for someone who is not an incumbent. An election not involving an incumbent is about expectations, not approval or disapproval of performance. One might argue that it’s a reflection of the expectation of approval, human nature being what it is and all. Even that is a vast difference from approval of actual performance.
Throwing you a bone here – a certain percentage of people voting for McCain can be assumed to have moved into the approval column after the inauguration. That is historically the way it goes in the US. the electorate gives the new guy the benefit of suspending a certain amount of partisan criticism and non-partisan critical examination no matter how they voted. We’re talking the electorate at large here, not pundits. It’s the source of the traditional first 100 days of high approval for a new president. And Obama, whether you accept 50% or 60% current approval rating is not doing well historically. Which is beside the point.
‘Discerning a TREND requires at least two data points for comparison.’
Again, wrong. It takes more than two. A sample of two data points is meaningless as far as discerning a trend is concerned. I like as many data points that I can get in my business. Which is why the very clear graphic on the first link you provided is immediately acceptable to me. I appreciate it’s clarity. Itputs the information in an easily understandable format.
And it completely contradicts the rest of your nonsense. It shows that the RCP approval average is trending down from 1/27 to the present (there are some ‘outliers’, but the trend is there) and the disapproval average markedly trending up and apparent to the most casual observer.
Averages of the polls. Not what each poll says on a given day. What all the polls averaged each day and plotted over a span of time indicate.
So, in response to this:
‘RCP is an abbreviation for Real Clear Politics, which was self evident from the provided links. Did you not read?’.
I read. I understood what it meant to the discussion. You didn’t.
Here’s the relevant statement from my original post exactly as written (I see that I didn’t vet it well before posting it, but I think it’s clear enough.
‘Do you think that the significant numbers people numbered among the 59,930,551 are now changing their minds and supporting Obama based on his performance, or people that were numbered in the 69,438,983 are moving away from supporting Obama based on his performance.’
Now, things may change. Someone may get cheap fusion going and usher in a golden age on Obama’s watch for instance. Bbut the way things are TRENDING at the moment, you, and david S, are whistling past the graveyard, stuck in denial, badly written computer programs…something other than intellectually honest at any rate.
