Obama one point below Eisenhower in last pre-election Gallup poll

[Bob Butler 54]

(10-25-2016, 02:58 PM)Cynic Hero Wrote: I don't see how those polls can be correct; they must be asking only long-time democrats. The administration as well as congress and the establishment in general have record low approval ratings that have persisted for the last couple of years. As for the supposed popularity of Obama's policies in his second term in particular Obamacare and his foreign policy, one can simply visit any political forum or comments thread on news articles such as yahoo or on foreign policy sites such as nationalinterest and the vast majority of the posters are overwhelmingly opposed to the current policies. Almost anytime Obamacare is mentioned the majority demand its repeal, the majority of the posters are particularly adamant against the current foreign policy and how it can lead to war with Russia or china or Both. Numerous posters openly point how Hillary supports radical free trade and globalism and support trumps moniker of "Crooked Hillary" the majority of posters state their support for trump and call for Hillary to be locked up. On Facebook and Twitter the majority of trumps statements in the debates received a large amount of likes, the majority of Hillary's received a large amount of frowns on the official debates threads.

There are many sources of news and ways of exchanging opinions.  For some reason, political talk radio has long been a dwelling place for conservatives, while during the recent Clinton - Trump campaign late night TV has been going wild attacking Trump.  There are internet forums where no matter what your beliefs are, you can find a bunch of folk that will tell you what you want to hear.  Folks with similar world views and values will gather together, build a reality that reinforces what they want to believe, and create enough noise to drown out the rest of the world.

I'm not saying the Republicans or Trump supporters are unique in their ability to live in a political cocoon.  I've been having fun watching Eric's clips from the late night TV programs, but if that's his only source of news, his cocoon is as biased and one sided as yours seems to be.

The effect of both sides confidently predicting victory was common on the old forum too.  People with different belief systems gather information from different sources and confidently predict that their own way of looking at things will triumph.  It happens every four years.

I haven't been chasing individual polls or building my own maps like others here have, but lately I've been following Nate Silver's efforts at 538.  As far as I can tell he's more concerned with his reputation as a statistical guru than he is a partisan advocating a particular candidate or partisan perspective.  He looks at every source he can get and uses the best statistical techniques rather than seeking out the method of polling that tells him what he wants to hear.  Too many of the individual polls are as partisan as the people who sponsor them.

But if you can't understand why people don't like Trump's personality and values, let alone his proposed policies, you've been spending way too much time in your cocoon.