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‘He’s underwater on everything:’ Fox News host breaks down Trump approval polling
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2025
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So half of the people still approve of what he's doing? How does such a small percentage even justify a news article with such a ridiculous headline? The US are so cooked it's not even funny. Wake me when it's at 90% disapproval.
What stands out to me is that they are making a big deal out if a small change...to a Republican approval rating. This is exactly the type of data they'd be holding up while screaming about how bad Obama is, for instance. Did feel odd using the tactic against their own, let alone god emperor Cheeto.
They're probably trying to take control of the party back from Trump. They did push back against him during his first term, but fell flat on their faces and started losing viewers to Newsmax. Now they're trying to back it with data. They've spent the last few decades training their viewers to ignore data, though, so we'll see how that goes.
I've never heard of that polling agency in my life before. I had to look it up, it's a private university in Connecticut.
I sure didn't get polled about any of this.
So no, more precisely, half of all people polled by this one school in a state that nobody talks about approve of what he's doing. I'm willing to bet half of those people have no idea what's going on.
I have a very hard time believing that half of all Americans are happy and content with current events. I live here, I hear people complain.
Do you honestly believe good polls call everyone for a poll, or that they need to to get good results?
I do think they need to have a good sample size to get results that make sense, yes.
Doing some research on it, seems like Quinnipiac's standard polling is conducted "in more than 20 states and cities as well as nationally" (particular locations not specified) and has typically 1,000+ respondents using random digit dialing. Meaning they just slap random numbers into the phone and see who picks up.
I can't say I can immediately come up with a better solution right off the top of my head right now, but I can identify several problems with their approach, namely being actual size of sample (1000 respondents is 0.000003% of the population) and the way they gather their responses (when was the last time you answered the phone for an unknown caller? Now when was the last time your grandmother did?).
You are still showing your lack of understanding of statistics. It requires a large sample size, yes, and the larger it is the more accurate it will be, but the proportion of the total population doesn't have to be large at all. Margin of error and confidence are both controlled by the absolute sample size (assuming a random sampling). Here's a link that covers the basics. Most serious polls use a sample size of about 5000. Now, 1000 isn't terrible, but it isn't good, but not because it's such a tiny fraction of the population.
As for the methodology, which is also critical, I don't know what method for phone surveys is considered adequate, and it is well known that phone surveys are becoming less relevant even if they are more accurate than polls where the respondents are self-selected.
From what I remember from university stats, 1000 is the standard sample size for these types of things and accurate to a reasonable margin of error (±3% iirc).
This is assuming that it's truly a representative sample though, and frankly I'm with you that I do have my doubts that over-the-phone surveys sufficiently represent the youth.