THE REASON FOR THE DISPARITY IN APPROVAL RATINGS BY NUTSACK NATE SILVER -- Nerd Post

Now I personally think Silver is a fucking snowflake. However he is a decent statistic guy when he pulls his crybaby head out of his ass and just compiles data as he did in his latest article. He takes some cheap shots like usual in his commentary but his numbers are legit on the subject. So I tend to use his numbers and ignore his spin.

[link to fivethirtyeight.com (secure)]

*Snip-What’s the real story? The differences between the polls aren’t random, or at least they don’t appear to be based on the relatively limited amount of data we have so far. Instead, Trump’s approval ratings are systematically higher in polls of voters — either registered voters or likely voters — than they are in polls of all adults. And they’re systematically higher in polls conducted online or by automated script than they are in polls conducted by live-telephone interviewers. Here’s every approval rating poll that we can find for Trump so far this month:

:pollaverage:

So what do we learn from this? Ultimately what we already knew just confirmed with data now.

The method of polling dictates the results.

An important admittance is made here though. That being likely voter polls lean Trump and general population and phone polls lean against Trump. The problem with phone polls of course being who are they selecting to call when not calling likely voters? And why?

It's obvious they know exactly who to poll and how to get the result they want.

*Snip-All adults vs. registered voters vs. likely voters
Trump has a fairly poor 43 percent approval rating — and a 51 percent disapproval rating — among polls of all American adults, but he improves to a 47 percent approval rating and a 49 percent disapproval rating among polls that survey registered voters or the narrower group of likely voters. That’s a reasonably big difference. So which polls should you use?

Traditionally, approval rating polls are conducted among all adults, so those are probably better for making historical comparisons. And there’s something to be said for inclusivity if your goal is to assess the extent to which Trump has a mandate with the public. He is, after all, the president of all Americans and not just those who are registered to vote or who do so regularly.

But for forward-looking, predictive purposes — to assess the effect that Trump will have on the midterms, for instance — the voter-based polls are probably more useful.

So again Nate Silver whines some more and uses some creative positioning sticking to the overall average he just criticized to keep Trump one point behind in his assessment before finally getting to the point. When the rubber meets the road in 2018 and 2020 Trump and the right are likely to take it again because registered and likely voters are after all what makes the real difference and matters. The general population opinions change with the wind.

Republicans are in the driver seat and general population polls mean little these days because we are operating within the polls margin of errors constantly. Which he goes on in another article that gets deep into the nerd math of the failed election polls and explains how the margin for errors compound in many instances to be as high +/- 8%. (8%!)

Here's that article. Prepare for more whining before he finally gets to the point and numbers that matter like the 8% swing in error. A lot of it is him blaming the media for the polls being viewed as so wrong and why it's their fault. (Which is good imo) He is at least being truthful about the numbers in between having a political opinion. The data is what matters. [link to fivethirtyeight.com (secure)]


So for my fellow statisticians here I thought I would share the info Nate put together for us. The data is good and useful and explains a lot. You just have to ignore him and use his numbers in the way he is too cowardly to. Unbiasedly and bent towards results not feelings.

Those numbers say Trump and the right are in good shape despite the media spin. Those who vote approve of Trump and those who vote are the only ones who matter in this game.

Last Edited by Merit on 02/20/2017 08:55 PM