What's Keeping Obama's Approval Ratings Up?

[mystery-ak]

Drudge

GALLUP: OBAMA 38% APPROVAL; LOWEST OF PRESIDENCY... DEVELOPING...

[musiclady]

Drudge

GALLUP: OBAMA 38% APPROVAL; LOWEST OF PRESIDENCY... DEVELOPING...

Excellent!

It shouldn't be above 10%, but with the bias in his favor, 38% is really, REALLY bad.

[Bigun]

Even those who "ignore" all polls as being irrelevant and unreliable have to at least recognize patterns that form with many polls from unrelated companies.

There are generally two kinds of polls. The ones for public consumption which , in general, are designed to be drivers of public opinion and the ones the public never see which are designed to find out how well the first kind are working!

If they don't publish the entire set of internals with the poll I generally don't even bother to look at it.

[MACVSOG68]

There are generally two kinds of polls. The ones for public consumption which , in general, are designed to be drivers of public opinion and the ones the public never see which are designed to find out how well the first kind are working!

If they don't publish the entire set of internals with the poll I generally don't even bother to look at it.

http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/175256/Obama_Approval_vs_Specific_Issues_140821%20.pdf

BTW, the polls also include cell-phones.

[Bigun]

http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/175256/Obama_Approval_vs_Specific_Issues_140821%20.pdf

BTW, the polls also include cell-phones.

This is the very first sentence from the document at the link you posted above.

Results are based on telephone interviews conducted August 7-10, 2014 with a random sample of –1,032—
adults, aged 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on this sample of
national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Adults! Not registered voters or likely voters but just adults over 18 years of age. Can't help but wonder what the numbers might be for either of those groups.

[MACVSOG68]

This is the very first sentence from the document at the link you posted above.

Adults! Not registered voters or likely voters but just adults over 18 years of age. Can't help but wonder what the numbers might be for either of those groups.

It's not designed to be used to measure voters' opinions, but the opinions of those living in the US.  There will be plenty of such polls out soon enough.  Whether or not you believe it has any reliability, it's been in use for a lot of years, and a lot of presidents.  Take a look at February 2009 and then the pattern over the past 5 1/2 years.  The sample size, margin of error, weighting, and confidence level seem to be legitimate. 

But if I'm voting in an election, I do want to see the surveys done with likely voters.

[jmyrlefuller]

It was just posted elsewhere that they only poll people who have land lines as opposed to cell phones.

How 'scientific' is it to create a data bank of numbers that will provide you the result you're seeking?

Any high school student...at least a private high school student...could create one.   

But landlines are more likely to be held by old people, who skew Republicans.

The young poor-- the Democrats' base-- are pretty much all on cell phones.

So even if they're only using landlines, that means they're skewing even harder to our side than reality.