First things first: The theme song of the week is the theme to Love, American Style composed by Charles Fox and Arnold Margolin.
What’s the point: The President continues to be unpopular in most polling. Yet, many of his backers and he insist that the average poll doesn’t adequately capture his true level of support. Trump and these supporters are mistaken, however.
Just this week, the President tweeted out a result from his favorite pollster, Rasmussen Reports, that showed his approval rating stood at 50%. Rasmussen’s polling does not meet CNN standards for a number of reasons including that it doesn’t call cell-phones.
The fact that Rasmussen has a better approval rating for the President than other pollsters isn’t new. This is why we’ve seen Trump mention Rasmussen many times. That leads to the media pointing out that other pollsters are far more pessimistic about his standing with voters.
But the average isn’t always right. Before last month, there was no way to really know if the average was biased against Trump. It was conceivable that Rasmussen Reports was right. Maybe their likely voter screen was somehow picking up something true about the electorate that other pollsters were missing. Remember, pollsters did somewhat underestimate Trump in the 2016 election.
The midterm elections prove that at least for now Rasmussen is dead wrong and traditional pollsters are correct.
In the final three weeks before the midterm, 16 different pollsters released generic congressional ballot polls.
