Thoughts on Polling Data

The latest figures from RealClear Polling suggest, unsurprisingly, that President Trump is underwater on literally every issue.  Obviously, these numbers are continuously in flux, so you’ll have to trust Curmie that these were the figures when he was writing this piece.  (Statistics are accurate as of the early evening of April 4, he promises.)  Overall, he’s at -16.  On the issues: -23 on the economy; -17.1 on foreign policy; -8.7 on immigration; -31 on inflation; -4.2 on crime; -15.7 on Iran; -18.6 on Russia/Ukraine; and -5.9 on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

RealClear Polling draws its numbers from a host of different polls, then averages them.  Curmie is skeptical of polls in general, so these numbers may or may not mean literally anything.  Moreover, some of the poll results are now months old.  This can, of course, lead to a wide divergence in results.  There’s a difference of 59 points (!) between the Marquette (+34) and Gallup (-25) polls on Israel/Palestine, for example (that Marquette number is literally 30 points higher than any other poll on the same topic).  Also, both those surveys were taken over four months ago, so they don’t necessarily reflect anyone’s current thinking.  Among polls taken in the last two months, Trump fares best (+4) in Morning Consult on immigration and worst (-45) in Reuters/Ipsos on inflation; both those polls were taken in late March.

Another factor in all this is that it’s difficult to come to a consensus on the taxonomies themselves.  Take tariffs, for instance.  Are they foreign policy, or the economy, or more specifically inflation, since that’s the way most of us experience their effects?   What Curmie wants to concentrate on today, Gentle Reader, is not the overall numbers (Trump is a terrible President.  Duh.), but the responses to specific issues relative to each other.

It will come as no surprise that Curmie would be in the “disapprove” category both overall and on most issues.  He’d have to choose between negativity and neutrality on crime, perhaps.  Otherwise, it’s disapproval straight down the line.  More to the point here, the other issue that concerns him the least is inflation, which certainly is a cause for concern, but, except in terms of the contrast between campaign promises and reality, isn’t awful.  Yes, it will get worse unless someone considerably smarter than Trump—the average platypus, for example—finds a way out of the diversion war excursion in Iran, but we’re not there yet, at least officially. 

Curmie does understand why other people prioritize inflation as a negative, however: they see it first-hand.  We all do.  One of Curmie’s more GOP-leaning friends recently described food prices as “skyrocketing,” which is an accurate description for some but not all groceries.  By contrast, the fact that all the major stock market indices are down for the calendar year and we’re currently in a “correction” (down 10% from the previous high) doesn’t hit home unless you’re directly affected. 

Curmie’s retirement nest egg dropped almost 5% (not even counting the loss of buying power caused by inflation) just in March, but if you don’t have investments or you’re young enough that retirement funds aren’t an immediate concern, then it’s the fact that gasoline is a dollar or more a gallon more expensive than it was even a month ago, or that Netflix just raised their rates (again) that catches your attention. 

Plus, those price hikes are happening now, not a few months ago.  So we’re all attuned to those increases: they affect us all, and they’re on our minds right now.  The relationship between reduced buying power and the conflict with Iran is clear, but it’s more complex, and unless we have someone we care about who’s going to be shipped out, we’re (relatively speaking) unaffected in the short term, or at least we think we are.  So what’s happening in Iran isn’t as important to the average American now as, Curmie fears, it will be.

Those Israel/Palestine numbers are intriguing, too.  Perhaps it’s worth noting that whereas the page and the URL both reference “Palestine,” the link to the page says “Hamas,” instead.  That’s kind of a tell, don’t you think, Gentle Reader?  The survey results are going to depend a lot on how the questions are asked.  Ask Curmie whether he supports Israel against Hamas, and the answer will be unequivocally affirmative.  But if the “other side” becomes the Palestinian people, then Curmie’s response will change—maybe not 180˚, but certainly more than 90, enough to not be on Israel’s side, in other words. 

So Trump’s unconditional support for all things Israeli (or simply anti-Muslim) becomes more problematic.  Still, at least until relatively recently, that assistance was manifested primarily in financial and rhetorical terms; how many respondents will have changed their minds (in either direction) when military action started happening (not in Palestine, but you know what I mean, Gentle Reader) is difficult to determine.

Trump’s strongest area in the polls is crime, and the fact is that there’s little either positive or negative that comes to mind immediately.  Folks generally don’t have a lot of time to think about their responses to survey questions.  Given time to consider the boatload of pardons to drug lords, sex offenders, and those who actually attacked cops on January 6, Curmie has got to go with a negative rating, although still not as vehemently so as in other areas.

The topic Curmie finds most intriguing is the war between Russia and Ukraine.  Once again, the data is a little old, with only the Big Data Poll (-20) conducted in the last month, but the results have stayed pretty consistent over time: approval rates range between 34 and 41, disapprovals between 51 and 59.  What’s interesting here is that this is an “oh, yeah” topic.  That is, it’s no longer at or even near the top of many people’s lists of the most important issues.  When reminded, though, the majority of people responded with a version of “yeah, he fucked that up, too.”  Note, too, that the disapprovals are always not merely a plurality, but a majority.

Somewhat surprising but hardly shocking is another simple fact: while the American people don’t like Trump’s performance by a margin of 56.9-40.9, and the generic congressional vote favors the Democrats by 47.6-41.6, opinions on the Democratic Party are unfavorable by 20 points (55.6-35.6): worse than the GOP’s -15.4, and worse still than Trump’s favorable/unfavorable rating (not the same as his job approval, listed above) of -13.4.  Democratic smugness is explicitly contra-indicated.

Curmie dislikes the Democrats, too, although he’ll still probably vote for them for the same reason he’s voted for them more often than not in recent years: they’re not Republicans, and they’re especially Not Trump.  There comes a point when being Not Trump will no longer be sufficient.  Unfortunately, Dear Leader is so aggressively narcissistic, belligerent, and downright stupid (or treasonous; that might be an option, too), that virtually anything the likes of Newsom, Pritzker, AOC, et al. do will inevitably be seen as reactive. 

Curmie has read all the doomsday scenaria about stock market crashes, runaway inflation, international food shortages, etc., which are projected to happen before the end of the calendar year.  He’s not buying that rhetoric—not yet, at least.  But the only hope we have to avoid a collapse of epic proportions is that enough Republican Congresscritters will exercise a little concern for the nation and indeed the world instead of for their own standing with Dear Leader.  Replacing Mike Johnson with someone with both a brain and a backbone would be an excellent place to start.

That could happen.  So could the Rapture.  (Hey, it’s Easter.  Gotta be thinking about all the possibilities.)