538 wrote:
XY wrote:
Trump RCP approval average is 41.1%
Ooooooof!
The 538 poll went up from 39.7% to 40% overnight. The reason it ticked up is the Rasmussen poll, which is now doing polls twice and week. The latest Rasmussen poll says:
48% approve of Trump
53% disapprove
The sum total is 101%. There are no undecided people in the Rasmussen poll. It currently gets a C+ rating. It should be getting an F for putting out such garbage results.
After sending out their results, it looks like Rasmussen "fixed" their results to 46% approve of Trump; 53% disapprove. . . . LOL . . . a simple (actually) major error when reporting, or an attempt to skew public opinion.
Yeah, I get annoyed at the frequency of YouGov and Rasmussen polls. Often they are half the recent sample on 538's compilation. Closer to election day we'll have more input from the better pollsters, like SurveyUSA and Ipsos and all of the news organizations like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.
Yes, Fox. Their coordinated polls are very high caliber. All of the network news organizations join with other groups but the network is listed first in the title...like ABC News/Washington Post poll.
My favorite pollsters for statewide races is Mason-Dixon. I noticed Nate Silver has them listed as B+ pollster, not A. I disagree. When I lived in Las Vegas and bet on politics frequently by far my most treasured source was Mason-Dixon. Whenever one of their polls on a statewide race differed sharply from conventional wisdom, I learned to go with Mason-Dixon. Of course, that was mostly 10-25 years ago. Maybe they have dropped off and I haven't followed as closely.
The dynamic right now is that the polling doesn't always represent the state of the race. Posters on liberal sites hate me when I emphasize that, but it is valid. For example, Bredesen has been leading every poll in the senate race against Blackburn in Tennessee, yet Blackburn remains the betting favorite. And that is legitimate. This far away from election day the terrain and the ideology are more important than polling. Bredesen may have a 61/21 favorable versus unfavorable rating, but he is in a state where Trump enjoys a 58% approval rating. Bredesen leads the polling only narrowly despite his opponent Blackburn having a slightly unfavorable net statewide. That means many voters who approve of Bredesen and disapprove of Blackburn are still planning to vote for Blackburn. It sounds illogical but it happens all the time in senate races, which have taken on more and more of a stubborn ideological slant, almost like a mini presidential race.
It is going to be extremely difficult for Democrats to win races in those red states where Trump owns high approval rating. I always care exponentially more about long term indications, and not today. The logic for years has been that Republicans would pick up senate seats in 2018, due to the map and which party is defending more seats in troubled areas. I believe in the big picture perspective so I expect the GOP to net at least 1-2 seats.
Obviously I hope I am wrong.
The closer to election day the more the polling for individual races becomes relevant, but it never fully erases the impact of the terrain and fundamentals of the state. For example, I have won several bets on Alaska races even when the polling was completely the other way. Lisa Murkowski never led a single poll against Tony Knowles for Alaska senate over an entire year. Her average deficit was 4 points. Yet I wagered on Murkowski and it was an immediate rout in her favor. Not only is Alasla very conservative but I knew that Alaska polling tends to over sample Anchorage and therefore is invariably too favorable to the Democrat.
IMO, Alaska is the worst polled state in the country and Georgia is second. Georia polling also overstates the Democrat. The model is simply flawed although is is getting slightly better. For more than a decade New Jersey polling was among the worst in the nation, always overstating the Republican. But now that New Jersey has become more Democratic those races are seldom competitive and the state is not polled very often.