Trump approval ratings thread 1.2

[Adam Griffin]

Given how the army is disproportionately white, male and non-educated this is pretty bad isn't it?

The total military force of the Armed Services (active duty & reserves; enlisted & officer) is 71% white including Hispanic/Latino servicemembers.

12% of the service is Hispanic/Latino; assuming 3 in 4 fall into the white category, around 62% of the Armed Services is White Non-Hispanic, which is almost identical to the national population as a whole.

However, the military is blacker than the nation as a whole (17%) and so this would explain at least in part why Trump's approval rating wouldn't be higher.

Compared to the 71% figure above, active duty enlisted members are 67% white. They don't collect information on "Hispanic/Latino" except in the situation of total military force, so we could only guess that among active duty enlisteds, White Non-Hispanics are probably in the high-50s.

[Adam Griffin]

Fivethirtyeight has a filter for registered and likely voters and doesn't help Trump all that much.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/voters/

They mesh LV & RV together. Depending on their exact weights, it may be a bit skewed when comparing it to the Ipsos data: I'd say 2/3 to 3/4 of all polls being conducted right now are using RV rather than LV (largely because the notion of "likely voter" 3 years from an election is pretty ridiculous from a polling standpoint).

[Adam Griffin]

nbc news.

Yes.  Your point?

Dumbass thinks the focus group was conducted by NBC I guess: he couldn't be bothered to read past the URL.

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Ayyyyy lmao

[Adam Griffin]

And this is the kind of sh**t that gets me:

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So exactly how do you "find out what's going on, on your own"? Do you grab a notepad and ride up to Washington, conducting interviews yourself? Do you begin to diligently research legislation as introduced by reading through each bill line-by-line and comparing it to the statements from both sides of the aisle?

No, your lazy ass sits in your computer chair, isolated in your echochamber of social media while googling the simplest terms possible to get the "news" that corresponds to your preconceived biases, applying the most ridiculous and conspiratorial levels of scrutiny to any perspective that doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy inside while accepting literally anything at face value that does. In other words, being a sucker for "the media (that isn't)" that spoon-feeds you positive reinforcement.

These people truly are the scourge of the earth and will be the death of civilization if they're allowed to continue with their nonsense. Both society and the gene pool would be much better off without them.

[Adam Griffin]

Trump's approval has been falling in the 538 tracker, he was at 37.8% a week ago, now he's 1.1% less than that at 36.6%. In RCP he lost 1.5% over the last week from 38.5% to 37.0%. What is causing this change?

Looks like he's at 36.7% approval in 538's model presently, which is only 0.1 point off of his worst day ever.

[Adam Griffin]

He's losing his base of supporters.

The Atlantic

Newsweek

The links don't work.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/the-voters-abandoning-donald-trump/550247/
http://www.newsweek.com/trump-approval-rating-base-president-778628

[Adam Griffin]

Trump is currently sitting at 40% approval. Unless you thought he was going to get less than 40% of the vote in 2020 (in which case you might be retarded), why do you care that he's rising? Would it really have mattered if more solid McCain voters approved of Bush and gave him a 45% rating instead of a 25% rating? It makes no practical difference. I'll be worried when Trump can expand beyond people that already voted for him, the vast majority of which will again rationalize a vote for him in 2020 even if Democrats nominated Jesus Christ himself.

I think there's something to be said about the subtle effects on turnout that can occur when dealing with two disparate points on the approval scale; had Bush been at 45% approval in 2008, downballot Republicans likely wouldn't have been wiped out to the extent that they were. A low approval rating is often indicative of apathy and despondence among the base - even if it's only a relative handful of voters here and there, it can add up quickly downballot. It adds up not just in terms of votes among those people, but it compounds in how much they volunteer, donate and so forth, which also affect how many votes they earn outside of their base.

Of course, the difference between 40% and 45% approval for a presidential election alone probably doesn't change the overall outcome in that specific race, but there are other reasons to care where that number falls.