Althouse: Who's losing the shutdown?

January 10, 2019

Who's losing the shutdown?

2 charts — averaging the polls at Real Clear Politics:

66 comments:

rhhardin said...: The results are by women for women.; 1/10/19, 7:58 AM
rehajm said...: MSM almost never points out how much better Trumps approval numbers are vs Congress. With the shutdown the go to poll question has been ‘Do you approve of the shutdown?’.

Do you approve of killing puppies? Do you approve of world peace?

Ask people if they like illegal immigration..; 1/10/19, 7:59 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Here's a polling question I would like to see:

Would you favor a grand bargain -- amnesty and future enforcement -- if you knew that the future enforcement never will happen?; 1/10/19, 8:03 AM
Henry said...: The "don't care" category is taking a beating.; 1/10/19, 8:04 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: We the people are losing. Thanks Nancy.; 1/10/19, 8:05 AM
Darrell said...: So people hear nothing but negative stories about Trump put out by the Media 24/7/365--including the fevered pace of the last month. Then you ask them to rate Trump and Congress. Including the House that gave Trump the funding he wanted.

Ceteris paribus, Trump should have an approval rating somewhere near zero, and he does not.; 1/10/19, 8:08 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Here's another polling polling question I would like to see:

In regard to the families walking across our southern border, how do you feel about the speed with which the families are given housing and their children are enrolled in schools in the USA?

A. The housing and schooling should be provided faster.

B. The housing and schooling are provided at about the right speed.

C. The housing and schooling should be provided slower.; 1/10/19, 8:08 AM
tim maguire said...: These polls make it look like the shut down is playing virtually no role in the public's thinking. The Democrats are acting otherwise, suggesting better polls show they are losing.

Of course the real threat from the wall is to the Democrats' election strategy. So it makes sense that they would be more desperate.; 1/10/19, 8:11 AM
Lucid-Ideas said...: Read my lips. NO MORE POLLS.

These people are hacks. Their questions are hacks. Their methods are hacks.

Polls - all polls - are BS. All of them are political "battle-space" preparation, to be disregarded on sight.; 1/10/19, 8:13 AM
Sofa King said...: It's very misleading to present these two charts side by side for visual comparison given the scale of the Y-axis is dramatically different. An increase of disapproval of similar magnitude will show much larger on the bottom chart than the top one.; 1/10/19, 8:13 AM
Darrell said...: Trump's talk to the Nation must have had a positive effect because the only thing the Media wants to talk about now is denying Trump any future Media access.; 1/10/19, 8:15 AM
mockturtle said...: If the Dems were to win in 2020 [God forbid!] and the country becomes a real shit-hole, the MSM will somehow make Shinola out of it. I've said this before: The real enemy here is not the Dems. It's our media.; 1/10/19, 8:16 AM
iowan2 said...: Stupidity on stilts.

This is a political poll. President Trump is in the political arena. He is not bound by political realities. He refuses.
Now, the Republican Senators are forced to vote on the Democrat demanded legislation that comes from the house. Will 13 Republican Senators flip and face their voters? If they do, then, they along with 7? more vote to override the Presidential veto.Same on the house side. 56? Republicans are forced to vote with the Pelosi and against their voters at home.
President Trump has the same loyalties to the Party, as the Party has shown President Trump
President Trump owes his future to no DC denizen...That's why he has the establishment shitting down their own leg. President Trump owes no one.; 1/10/19, 8:17 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: If Trump is moving downward- it's based on fear that he will cave.

Never cave, Trump.

Nancy is in the wrong. She's an uncaring hypocrite.

Cher speaks - LOL; 1/10/19, 8:20 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Roll the tape of Chuck speaking about illegal immigration in the not so distant past.; 1/10/19, 8:22 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Here's another polling question I would like to see:

In regard to the proposal to build a wall along our Mexican border, which statement is closest to your own opinion.

A) I am for open borders, and so I oppose the wall.

B) I am against open borders. Instead of building a wall, I support flying drones over the border to watch the people walk across the border.

C) I support the wall, because I don't think people in Central America should be able to obtain permanent residency in the USA simply by walking across our border.; 1/10/19, 8:22 AM
Leland said...: I'm inclined to believe that Trump will ultimately lose this particular battle. However, I think he's already won the war. He's already set the tone for the new Congress. He's already proven to his base that he is committed to his promise. And as the poll shows, the approving base isn't backing down.

But Pelosi has everything to lose. If she caves, the crazies on the left may actually visit places where she lives and eats. That's a threat that will come after a vote of no confidence strips her title of Speaker of the House. For this reason, I think Trump might have got his funding had he done the shutdown prior to the election, as he thought he should do but then deferred to the GOP.

Trump has earned my vote. Dan Crenshaw is my congressman, so we're good there. John Cornyn has some work to do. He doesn't have a straight ticket to ride Trump's coattails.; 1/10/19, 8:30 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Democrats are inviting illegals. When a new governor openly states that CA is one giant sanctuary city - that is an open invitation to cross into our nation illegally.; 1/10/19, 8:31 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Make.
Nancy.
Suffer.; 1/10/19, 8:33 AM
Roy Lofquist said...: Blogger iowan2 said...
... President Trump owes no one.

Hear, hear! There have been two Presidents in my lifetime who were not owned - Eisenhower and Trump. Ike done good and the rookie is tearing up the league.; 1/10/19, 8:34 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Stacy McCain:
The anti-American media have responded by publishing “fact checks” full of Democrat talking points and polls claiming that the president’s position is unpopular. The real question is: Who will Americans believe?

President Trump is taking the side of ICE agents; Democrats are taking the side of the drug dealers and human traffickers.

Democrat party and the Democrat Party Press. Arm in arm.; 1/10/19, 8:36 AM
WisRich said...: Darrell said...
Trump's talk to the Nation must have had a positive effect because the only thing the Media wants to talk about now is denying Trump any future Media access.

1/10/19, 8:15 AM
-------

This.; 1/10/19, 8:41 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Could our hack press be any more ridiculous?; 1/10/19, 8:46 AM
Lucid-Ideas said...: Cher just came out and told Nancy to end the shutdown and not to "die on this particular hill."

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/cher-demands-pelosi-end-partial-government-shutdown-fund-border-wall-dont-die-on-this-hill?fbclid=IwAR2bs08Gbx-VeKNbZIZ1jjWiVyiQ9KHRontC-sYLs0NXk-FfI6zuZOKGVEI

When you've lost Cher...; 1/10/19, 8:47 AM
walter said...: Dickin'Bimbos@Home said...Roll the tape of Chuck speaking about illegal immigration in the not so distant past.
--
I guess it would have broke with the traditional presentation..but how cool would it be if Trump rolled that footage into his speech instead of merely alluding to it?
I remember Obama had his own little media dept. minions making videos to sway opinions ("Life of Julia" etc).
Does Trump?; 1/10/19, 8:47 AM
walter said...: And..Trump could have played Cher's Turn back time" as the tv screen rose up from behind.; 1/10/19, 8:49 AM
Static Ping said...: So basically nothing and noise. So nothing.; 1/10/19, 8:54 AM
iowan2 said...: I'm tired of the game playing and backroom deals. Mitch has a House bill. Put it up to a vote and start attaching votes to politicians. Get this going. Someone is going to blink. No one knows who. It's past time to find out. Those Republicans that say they will vote the bill forward have never been put to the test of having their words recorded by their vote.; 1/10/19, 8:54 AM
Darrell said...: Chuck and Nancy are going to be revealed as the main couple in Mars Attacks!
Mark my words.; 1/10/19, 8:56 AM
stevew said...: Am I the only one surprised at how bad Congress's Approve/Disapprove numbers are compared to Trump's?; 1/10/19, 9:04 AM
Fernandinande said...: Who's losing the shutdown?"

Canada!

"Because I chose not to disavow Peterson’s views before airing the clip, I was brought into a subsequent disciplinary meeting. The supervisor for the course in question, Nathan Rambukkana, as well as the coordinator for my M.A. program, Herbert Pimlott (also known, at times, as “Hillary X Plimsoll”), and Gendered Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention manager Adria Joel accused me of breaking the law by airing a clip of Peterson in a classroom, as well as threatening and targeting trans people, thereby creating a toxic environment. All of this is well-known because I taped the whole meeting."; 1/10/19, 9:10 AM
chickelit said...: stevew said...Am I the only one surprised at how bad Congress's Approve/Disapprove numbers are compared to Trump's?

Haven't they been low for several years, through a few Administrations?; 1/10/19, 9:15 AM
Temujin said...: Congress has always polled about the same as "cockroaches for lunch". They were at 19% well before the shut down. They are still at, or around, 19%. Why, they could probably take a month off and no one would even notice.; 1/10/19, 9:19 AM
Wince said...: As Sofa King points out, those two charts with varying scales is a classic example from Darrell Huff's "How To Lie with Statistcs".; 1/10/19, 9:20 AM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: Exactly.

Trump should call another press conference and simply read Chuck's 2009 speech.

Brilliant.; 1/10/19, 9:25 AM
mezzrow said...: It comes down to which side has the higher threshold of pain.

That's been Trump's secret from the start. Don't listen to the whining coming out of his mouth. That's just a distraction. Everybody is focused on pain avoidance. This guy is focused on setting goals and achieving them. They may not be your goals, but they are his goals.

The problem with the GOP establishment is that they always overreact to the pain their opposition sends their way. Man up.

That said, if men had to have the babies we'd have a hell of a lot fewer people walking around.; 1/10/19, 9:35 AM
n.n said...: People like quick fixes, which is why we have the wicked solution to relieve our "burdens", labor arbitrage for cheap things, environmental arbitrage for green things, Obamacare for progressive price of living, and immigration reform for democratic leverage and social justice adventure cover-ups.; 1/10/19, 10:04 AM
Ken B said...: Public polls in America are always juiced. Private ones are not. Both parties have private polls. You can only infer what they say from the behavior of the parties. I think the inference is that Trump is winning, but it’s an inference. YMMV.; 1/10/19, 10:09 AM
bagoh20 said...: Congressional approval polls are useless. Which Congress people? Both sides dislike half of them, and tolerate the rest, so you are not going to get high approval ever, and it doesn't tell you what people actually want. It's as useless as the "Nation going the right direction" polls. People can answer negative who have exactly opposite metrics for what "the right direction is".; 1/10/19, 10:09 AM
bagoh20 said...: The poll should be something like: Do you approve of $5.7B in funding to reduce illegal immigration by 250,000 per year that would be spent according to what the Border enforcement community says will work best? I bet a super majority of legal immigrants agree with that, and a good number of illegal ones too. Even the illegals don't want more competition for resources.; 1/10/19, 10:20 AM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: that bottom graph got me fumbling for my pack of Marlboro's; 1/10/19, 10:21 AM
rehajm said...: People can answer negative who have exactly opposite metrics for what "the right direction is".

True of the Presidential poll as well.; 1/10/19, 10:25 AM
Brian said...: Donald Trump doesn't care about polls.; 1/10/19, 10:29 AM
Skeptical Voter said...: My old drill Sergeant used to talk about things being lower than whale poop on the bottom of the Marianas Trench. (Well he said "ocean"--he was not that geographically aware.) I think he was anticipating current Congressional approval ratings.; 1/10/19, 10:36 AM
wholelottasplainin said...: Sofa King is astute to notice the jiggery-pokery going on with the Y-axis of those graphs.

Didja notice?? You're not supposed to.; 1/10/19, 10:41 AM
Murph said...: It's as useless as the "Nation going the right direction" polls. People can answer negative who have exactly opposite metrics for what "the right direction is".

A friend threw that "right / wrong direction" stuff at me a day or so ago, and I responded with exactly that point. Those polls are completely useless, except that each reader will assume reinforcement of his personal preconceptions. So, really, they are worse than useless.; 1/10/19, 10:45 AM
Bill Peschel said...: We'd have a better government if the media would focus on the merits of the issues and not on easily manipulated polls.

Or in this case ask Democrats why they want open borders. Or why they're against enforcing the laws on the books. Either way.; 1/10/19, 11:01 AM
jeremyabrams said...: The issue is how are the freshman democrat Congresspeople polling. They were elected as moderates, and they won't get re-elected without a compromise on this issue. Do they want to be the second generation of Pelosi's crash dummies, who at least got the ACA?; 1/10/19, 11:03 AM
gilbar said...: how many hundreds of people have died in the desert trying to cross our borders?

My Modest proposal to save lives
a fence at the border, with signs on it, saying: "No Access. Warning! Deadly Force Authorized"

I REALLY doubt we'd have to terminate more than 50 people, before border crosses would cease. See what i'm doing? I'm SAVING LIVES.

{of course, it would never Ever Happen, on account of because people would clutch their pearls and say: 'oh, that's SO CRUEL!' So, instead; hundreds and hundreds More will die in the desert. As the wise sage wrote: You have to be Cruel to be Kind}; 1/10/19, 11:06 AM
gilbar said...: oh, some people will say; 'you'll need more than a sign! people will still sneak through!!'

I'm not thinking a moat, with sharks, with laser beams coming out of their mouths (though cool). I'm thinking armed drones, along the lines of HK-Aerials. Just let Skynet handle it; 1/10/19, 11:13 AM
Dave said...: Sofa King's spot of that Y axis distortion is so strong I'm considering changing my nic to Sauna Beach.; 1/10/19, 12:12 PM
Dave said...: Sorry to double, but I'm just guessing taht Sofa King maintains some interest in climate science.; 1/10/19, 12:14 PM
FIDO said...: Trump polls 8 points higher than Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer; 1/10/19, 12:15 PM
Biff said...: Mike Sylwester said..."Would you favor a grand bargain -- amnesty and future enforcement -- if you knew that the future enforcement never will happen?"

That really gets to the heart of the matter. The only reason we are talking about a literal wall today is that politicians of both parties have spent decades losing their credibility over border enforcement.

Trump, to his credit, recognized the opportunity that focusing so heavily on visible enforcement would provide, while all the other politicians continued to talk about "comprehensive immigration reform," at a moment when many, if not most, voters began to view "comprehensive immigration reform" as a nothing more than an anti-enforcement shell game encouraging more immigration.

The focus on the wall is entirely the fault of feckless, arrogant politicians who were on the scene years before Trump started his campaign.; 1/10/19, 1:05 PM
hstad said...: Mike Sylwester said..."Would you favor a grand bargain -- amnesty and future enforcement -- if you knew that the future enforcement never will happen?"

That's exactly how Reagan got snookered by Tip O'Neal during the '80s Amnesty hoax by the Democrats.; 1/10/19, 2:45 PM
Rabel said...: All of the polling shown on the chart took place before the Tuesday Oval Office address.; 1/10/19, 2:45 PM
Rabel said...: The y-axis distortion is common to all of the RCP graphs. They plot the results in a way that sets the highs and lows so that they take up the full graph. The side by side comparison that makes the different y-axes appear to be deliberate distortion was chosen by Althouse, not RCP.; 1/10/19, 2:49 PM
alanc709 said...: As a conservative, I only vote Republican because the alternative is worse. Republicans don't represent me, any more than Democrats do. When your options are far left lunatics and MOTR cowards, there's not much from which to choose. I'd give anything for an actual conservative political party and news medium.; 1/10/19, 2:54 PM
Unknown said...: If the shutdown last for longer than 30 days, Reduction In Force comes into play. Keep it shut down. From the outside, it will be amusing; from the inside, it will be Armageddon.; 1/10/19, 3:17 PM
Achilles said...: alanc709 said...
As a conservative, I only vote Republican because the alternative is worse. Republicans don't represent me, any more than Democrats do. When your options are far left lunatics and MOTR cowards, there's not much from which to choose. I'd give anything for an actual conservative political party and news medium.

This used to be the choice: enemies or traitors.

Now Trump has pulled the republican party kicking and screaming into doing what their voters want. The globalists no longer have cover. Their traitors in the republican party are outed.

The democrats are alone and have to own their support for open borders.

And Trump is crushing them.; 1/10/19, 3:29 PM
Robert Cook said...: "We the people are losing. Thanks Nancy."

You can give the credit to Trump.; 1/10/19, 3:41 PM
Lydia said...: All of the polling shown on the chart took place before the Tuesday Oval Office address.

Latest figures from Rasmussen's daily presidential tracking poll show 45% approve and 53% disapprove of the president's job performance. The survey "includes the first full night of surveying after the president’s Oval Office address about the border crisis".; 1/10/19, 3:47 PM
Michael said...: Robert Cook
Congress is in charge of the money honey.; 1/10/19, 3:48 PM
Howard said...: "the buck stops with everybody". President Bone Spurs @ the southern border today.; 1/10/19, 5:07 PM
Birkel said...: What action has Trump taken that he deserves blame?
Did I miss a veto?; 1/10/19, 5:52 PM
cyrus83 said...: RCP's poll series for Congress is averaging polls going all the way back to October because they aren't done very often. Only 2 of the 8 polls in the RCP series have been done post-shutdown, and those 2 polls aren't in the same ballpark. One is of adults and shows 23/66 (although it was begun before Democrats took over the House), the other is of registered voters and shows 12/70 (the only poll done fully after Democrats took over the House). If that latter poll reflects reality, Congressional approval has collapsed significantly compared to every other poll in the series.

Trump's poll series only goes back to December 11, and 4 of the 7 polls are post-shutdown. Note however that the 2 most recent polls show higher approval than his RCP average and lower disapproval than his RCP average.

Calling fake news shenanigans on this apples to oranges graph comparison.; 1/10/19, 7:44 PM