The Poll that bothers me

[Jimmy Higgins]

link

The latest Quinnipiac bothers me. It shows Chuck Schumer has a 60 to 28 lead on Wendy Long, a person who my sources tells me, isn't even too familiar with herself.

To make matters worse, Obama has an approval of 56 to 40.

Meanwhile Clinton's lead is only 47 to 35.

I find these either contradicting or potentially worrying.

 

[Tristan Scott]

link

The latest Quinnipiac bothers me. It shows Chuck Schumer has a 60 to 28 lead on Wendy Long, a person who my sources tells me, isn't even too familiar with herself.

To make matters worse, Obama has an approval of 56 to 40.

Meanwhile Clinton's lead is only 47 to 35.

I find these either contradicting or potentially worrying.

As in most of the polling I've seen the challenge is to get Clinton's numbers up. Trump's numbers seem to have topped out, nationally at about 40% He's got a small bump from his convention, but that's probably soft and will evaporate in the following weeks.

 

[Derec]

- Trump is from NY which should give him a boost
- Hillary is a very unpopular candidate and her saving grace is that her opponent is even more unpopular.

 

[Rhea]

aren't those numbers extremely old?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

aren't those numbers extremely old?

What numbers? The OP are from yesterday.

 

[Rhea]

I meant Derec's.

 

[hurtinbuckaroo]

Trump's % in those polls far exceeds the % of people who would actually trust him in the White House, so they're incredibly suspect.

 

[ksen]

I meant Derec's.

Anyone else find it weird that other than Bill Clinton's and W.'s first runs the candidate with the highest unlikeability won the election?

 

[Tristan Scott]

I meant Derec's.

Anyone else find it weird that other than Bill Clinton's and W.'s first runs the candidate with the highest unlikeability won the election?

No. I don't care if a President is likable. Ronnie Raygun was very likable, but IMO he was a shitty President.

Besides the people answering these polls don't even know the person they are saying they like or not. Who gives a shit?

 

[zorq]

Regarding Derec's graph, I think the growth of party partisianship in America over the past two-three decades helps to crush the likability of ALL politicians as the more of the members of the opposing party become more and more likely to actively despise rather than merely oppose their political opponents' leaders.



Saying that these are least likable candidates in recent history might not be as relevant as noting that the political parties are more opposed to each other than ever in recent history.

 

[MarkW]

I meant Derec's.

Anyone else find it weird that other than Bill Clinton's and W.'s first runs the candidate with the highest unlikeability won the election?

Since the numbers in the chart are based on polls from March and April of election years, I don't find them all that meaningful. If the same tendency held for unfavorable ratings for October of the same years, it might be more significant.

 

[Jayjay]

I'm worried that Nate Silver's fivethirtyeight.com is predicting roughly the same odds for Trump as it did for Romney four years ago. Slightly more, in fact, and Trump is rising.

But all in all, not very worried. A month ago I considered betting money on Trump winning, but now that the email debacle is out of the way I think Hillary has a pretty good shot.

 

[Deepak]

Anyone else find it weird that other than Bill Clinton's and W.'s first runs the candidate with the highest unlikeability won the election?

Since the numbers in the chart are based on polls from March and April of election years, I don't find them all that meaningful. If the same tendency held for unfavorable ratings for October of the same years, it might be more significant.

Maybe what we need is for Trump to ride around in a tank

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Long ago, when Reagan was running against Carter, I heard a high ranking GOP operative on radio truculently explaining negative campaigning. If we can't raise the numbers for our candidates, we will lower the numbers of our opponents. And since then, negative campaigning has been the GOP strategy with a vengeance. The far right hate radio types adopted this whole heartedly, so its no surprise 35 years on hateful division is the main characteristic of our political system. It was no accident. This has been the plan since before Reagan was president. I remember years ago, various political analysts bemoaning the fact that because of the nastiness of American politics, people started staying away from the voting booth. The GOP was just as happy as could be with that because their voters showed up at the voting booth. This is one reason I hate the GOP. We can no longer expect reason and civility to be an important part of politics. I am hoping the GOP loses the presidency and the senate and suffers a big loss in the house.

 

[James Brown]

True. To me, campaigns seem to be less about "Vote for me because..." and more about "Don't vote for my opponent because..."