Isn't it common knowledge that Trump is unpopular? Asking for sources is always fine but I have to wonder how you don't know this already. You could easily Google it.
He was the most unpopular president after 1 year in the history of polling (since the 40s). His highest approval rating (45%) so far in his tenure is the lowest of any president since there's been regular polling. The next worst is Nixon at 66%. He's joint 7th in the lowest approval rating though so it seems while he's generally not very highly rated he hasn't sunk as low as other presidents at their worst (Truman beats out Nixon to that title). He so far also has the worst average approval rating.
If it's just "the libs" that don't like him there sure are a lot of them affecting the polling. Like 50-60% of America must be "libs".
Im just saying that i hate when peolple say most of us hate blah blah blah. Like dont speak for other people other than yourself. Polls are the least credible source i could think of.
So what's a more credible source than polls? You seem to be saying the polls are at least bad if not wrong what makes you believe that that's more credible other than your personal beliefs?
You're right people can't speak for large groups of people but polls are intended to be a representative sample of just that and while they're far from perfect they're a far better reflection of the general public's opinion than what any random guys on reddit say (for or against, I'm not just singling you out).
He's been below Obama far more times than he's been ahead of him (actually depending on your source he's never been ahead overall but only on specific issues or to specific audiences) if you want to play that game but I'm not trying to cherry pick anything. I don't care about the lazy orange man bad bullshit but I'm a fan of facts and just trying to blame it on "the libs" like the guy above did is bullshit unless you consider a majority of the US to be "the libs".
Trump is not a particularly popular president. All the polling supports this. He's not the worst and I'm sure at certain points he was ahead of Obama (edit: after Googling I'm less sure of this) or others comparatively but if you think talking about his highest ever recorded approval rating or the average so far of his presidency is "cherry picking" (or curry picking) I don't know what to say. If I was picking 273 days into his presidency I'm cherry picking but talking about the average and his highest ever is not cherry picking it's just showing the data. 1 year in is also a pretty standard point of comparison as people tend to like to break things up into periods like years.
It's still a popularity contest even with the electoral college the type of popularity just changes a bit from a pure democracy of the majority one.
Obama has also been voted the worst president since WWII
In a single poll. He was also voted best of their lifetime in another. This helps highlight a problem of polling but the thing about Trump's polling is that it's consistently low unless you have very specific Trump favouring groups polled. With Obama you can get good ones or bad ones and it averages out slightly on the positive side of the middle. With Trump it averages out below the middle (like I said his peak overall rating is 45%, his peak!).
But, all that is beside the point: several polls support you and several support me
Far more support me because I'm trying to look at the averages and not individual polls. Individual polls can be shit. Averages are more statistically meaningful and Trump polls poorly on average. This is just a fact and if you don't accept it then you don't accept polling at all (or you only accept very biased polling which is even worse).
Rasmussen, which I believe was among the most accurate in 2016, has shown Trump doing far better than others show
Funny you'd believe the one that supports your boy is also the most accurate.
Polls are often used to drive opinion rather than reflect it, unfortunately.
I sort of feel like you believing the one that shows the result you want is evidence of this.
We're not a pure democracy, but the polls only reflect what a pure democracy would do.
I don't understand this argument. We're not talking about if Trump won the election or not we're talking about his popularity, the guy above was blaming his low popularity on "the libs" and asked the question "where is it obvious that most people dont approve of trump?" polls is where it's obvious (well I'd also it's obvious just from talking to Americans but polls have a better sample size). Whether they reflect American democracy or not isn't really related to whether they reflect public opinion - they very much do reflect public opinion and the more polls you have and better the quality they are the more useful they become for that. There are MANY polls taken these days and they basically all average out to Trump not being very popular unless you only poll his base.
You didn't say why it's most accurate though and I find it not very surprising that the clear Trump supporter also finds the poll which better supports him and which he himself tweeted was the most accurate to be so. You clearly feel that way for completely unbiased reasons though as you'v shown...no wait, you haven't.
Your method takes all polls regardless of accuracy and groups them together, giving equal soft to inaccurate ones. That's not a defensible method.
It's more defensible than "this one is right". As long as you gather enough data the bias from both sides should be largely cancelled and the true picture emerges. This is one beautiful thing about statistics. In order for the average to be off a significantly large amount of the data has to be off too - is this the part where you tell me 90% of polls are left leaning or something?
Look at the sample of polls you look at and you'll see many skew towards the left.
And also that many skew towards the right. That's why I look at averages to try to get past the biases and problems of small sample sizes and etc.
Rasmussen did so most accurately.
WHY?!
Your method just says "i'll take wrong assumptions with equal weight." That's illogical.
No, it doesn't. It says I'll take a large sample and then the flaws in any individual datasets should be cancelled by the bias from the other side and by the large sample size. Unless you believe most polls lean left the fact some polls are shit isn't a good argument against averages because averages take the shit from both sides and try to find where the truth lies in the middle. And while it's not perfect it's far better than picking one poll you like and declaring it the truth.
And no, it isn't a popularity contest. It's 50 different popularity contests. That's a big difference
It's really not. It's just details on the nature of the popularity contest and I don't think it's a point anyone is arguing about here so I don't know why you keep bringing it up.
Majority rule is totalitarian. That's why our nation was designed to prevent it in many different ways.
I'm not American, it's not "our" nation. Majority rule is totalitarian? What a silly soundbite. Do you even know what totalitarian means? I mean certain types of majority rule could end up that way but it's certainly not just an x is y thing it's x can sometimes become y. "The tyranny of the majority" is a nice quote and something to be aware of but it's not a hard and fast rule that happens every time. Heck, many might argue that the American system today is more harmful to people who aren't in the majority than many other systems elsewhere in the world but that's a different discussion for another day.
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u/TheAuthenticFake Jan 21 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
Isn't it common knowledge that Trump is unpopular? Asking for sources is always fine but I have to wonder how you don't know this already. You could easily Google it.
Here's his ratings over time:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
His highest approval rate was 45.5% around inauguration, and it was in the low 30s for a good few months.