This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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March 2017
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@abulsme tweets from 2017-03-21 (UTC)

@abulsme tweets from 2017-03-20 (UTC)

@ElectionGraphs tweets from 2017-03-20 (UTC)

@ElecCollPolls tweets from 2017-03-20 (UTC)

Curmudgeon’s Corner: That list is big!

Once again Ed and Bruce join Sam on Curmudgeon’s Corner. This week we have both Trump and non-Trump topics! On the Trump side, with Ed: Trump/Russia, the healthcare debate, and America’s wars. On the non-Trump side, with Bruce: Hyperloop technology, old school retail, terrorism, and Internet privacy. And as an extra bonus, everybody talks about their favorite podcasts. Other than this one. This is of course everybody’s favorite podcast. That doesn’t have to be said.

Click below to listen and subscribe!

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Show Details:

Recorded 2017-03-24
Length this week – 2:55:55

  • (0:00:10-0:06:04) Intro
    • Ivan still out
    • Agenda
  • (0:06:41-0:41:57) Ed from Pennsylvania Part 1
    • Fitness
    • Favorite Podcasts
    • Russia Stuff
  • (0:42:36-1:08:34) Ed from Pennsylvania Part 2
    • Healthcare
    • Distractions
    • Fighting the last war
  • (1:10:34-1:46:03) Bruce from Washington Part 1
    • Facebook Discussion
    • Small World!
    • TV Update
    • Favorite Podcasts
    • Hyperloop
    • Old School Retail
  • (1:47:18-2:19:56) Bruce from Washington Part 2
    • Last week’s guilt
    • London attack and terrorism
    • US making things worse
    • Alex Interlude
    • Internet Privacy
  • (2:21:17-2:55:16) Sam on Podcasts
    • Favorite podcasts with Alex help
    • The rest of the favorites on my own
    • News update podcasts

 

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

@abulsme tweets from 2017-03-19 (UTC)

@abulsme tweets from 2017-03-18 (UTC)

A look at Trump favorability vs job approval

With all the hype today about the latest Gallup poll showing Trump’s job approval rating hitting a new low, I thought I’d look at the polls a little further. First of all, the usual advice… never look at single polls, look at averages. So look at pollster.com job approval trendlines rather than just looking at the Gallup trend. Also though, I’ve been looking at favorability trendlines as well as job approval, because it goes back prior to Inauguration Day. And in both cases, I prefer looking at the “net” numbers (positive ratings minus negative ratings). So time to make my own graphs based on Pollster’s trend lines:

I’ve gone all the way back to the beginning of October to show the last inflection point prior to the election. Trump’s favorability reversed direction and started improving around the middle of October after bottoming out at -25.4%. (Bottoming out for that time period anyway, he was worse than -30% at a couple times prior to winning the nomination.) Roughly speaking this last pre-election reversal came somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd debate.

Then after he won the election the improvement in his favorability accelerated dramatically, moving to by far the best levels he had ever seen. Presumably this comes from people just feeling more positively about him simply because he won the election. Since December 1st, Trump’s net favorability has stayed in a very narrow 1.8% band from -5.6% at the best, to -7.4% at the worst. For all intents and purposes, Trump’s favorability has been flat for over three months now. Now, it has never been positive, but it has not been getting worse for Trump… or better. Just flat.

As of inauguration day though, there was an additional measure. Job Approval. This actually started out positive, with more people approving of Trump’s performance in the job than disapproving. But this didn’t last long. Aside from a slight bump toward the end of February, the trend has been down. The longer Trump has been President, the lower his net job approval is going. It will be interesting to see how far this trend continues.

The favorability line has been the line I have watched more, leaving me with the impression that the public is so polarized that virtually nobody is changing their mind (in either direction) about Trump. But the job approval numbers tell a different story. This number is indeed shifting, and shifting away from Trump dramatically. Why the difference?

Well, of course, these are different sorts of questions. Favorability essentially measures how the public feels about a person in general. How much they “like” them. Job approval specifically measures how people think the person is doing in the job. It is very possible for someone to feel favorable about Trump (that is, they like him), while still thinking he is doing a bad job.

That is exactly what we seem to be seeing. Quite a few people are shifting toward thinking that they don’t approve of how Trump is actually performing in the job of President… but they still aren’t at the point where they will say they don’t like him.*

My gut feel is that while the job approval number is important, the real signal of a change in Trump’s political fortunes will be if the favorability numbers start to drop as well. We haven’t seen that yet. In fact he is still doing quite a bit better than he was right before the election. But surely if job approval keeps falling, at some point favorability will too… right?

(Meanwhile, I noticed another curiosity, which is that even while all this other stuff has been going on, ever since last summer… so well before the election… right track / wrong track numbers have been been moving dramatically toward right track… although wrong track does still win… What is up with that?)

*This is also where looking at separate trend lines on job approval for approve and disapprove rather than just the net value is interesting despite my preference for the net, because it looks like approve numbers are flat, while disapprove numbers are growing, which means that it isn’t so much people shifting from approve to disapprove, as folks who were undecided picking a side… the disapprove side. But I don’t think this changes the overall picture I’ve described.

 

Curmudgeon’s Corner: Two Way Split

This week on the Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast Sam is joined by guest co-hosts Ed and Bruce. Ed’s segment is mostly about the healthcare debate, with a touch of budget talk and a note on the Ides of Trump. Then Bruce joins the show to provide a Libertarian perspective on Trump’s first eight weeks in office. And even though he is out this week, Ivan wasn’t going to be left out completely, so he sent in a letter with his thoughts for the week.

Click below to listen and subscribe!

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1-Click Subscribe in iTunes
View Podcast in iTunes
View Raw Podcast Feed
Download MP3 File
Follow the podcast on Facebook
patreon-30x30 Support us on Patreon

Show Details:

Recorded 2017-03-18
Length this week – 2:35:38

  • (0:00:11-0:09:45) But First
    • Agenda
    • Letter from Ivan
    • Sam’s Guilt
  • (0:10:24-1:18:10) Ed from Pennsylvania
    • Pennsylvania Weather
    • Ides of Trump
    • Healthcare Debate
    • Trump Budget
  • (1:18:49-2:30:44) Bruce from Washington
    • Television Woes
    • Election Night Schadenfreude
    • A Libertarian view of Trump
    • Better than Hillary?
    • Ineffective vs Dangerous Trump?
    • Russia Hype
    • Surveillance
  • (2:32:26-2:35:17) Wrap Up

 

The Curmudgeon’s Corner theme music is generously provided by Ray Lynch.

Our intro is “The Oh of Pleasure” (Amazon MP3 link)

Our outro is “Celestial Soda Pop” (Amazon MP3 link)

Both are from the album “Deep Breakfast” (iTunes link)

Please buy his music and support his GoFundMe.

@abulsme tweets from 2017-03-17 (UTC)