Data Download: The Numbers You Need To Know Today
58 percent: The share of Americans who say their bigger concern is making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so, per new NBC News poll.
38 percent: The share who say their bigger concern is making sure that no one votes who is not eligible to vote.
1.6 million: The number of valid signatures collected by backers of the recall election against California Gov. Gavin Newsom, per the secretary of states office.
$400 million: How much the recall election could cost, according to the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials.
$15 an hour: The new minimum wage for federal contractors, starting in January, under an executive order that President Biden is set to sign.
89: The number of people New York fell short by in its count to retain one of its House seats.
32,276,517: The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the United States, per the most recent data from NBC News and health officials.
576,763: The number of deaths in the United States from the virus so far, per the most recent data from NBC News. (Thats 474 more than yesterday morning.
230,768,454: The number of vaccine doses administered in the U.S.
26.5 percent: The share of Americans who are fully vaccinated
2: The number of days left for Biden to reach his 100-day vaccination goal.
Sahil Kapur notes that Bidens first 100 days have been shaped in some ways by the first 100 days of his Democratic predecessor.
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Some Very Good Polling News For Donald Trump
Analysis by Lauren Dezenski, CNN
Among all-important Iowa voters, former President Donald Trump notched his highest favorability rating ever, according to the latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.
- 53% of Iowans now have a favorable view of Trump.
- 45% now have an unfavorable view of Trump.
- 2% are not sure how they feel.
To be clear,The Point: A new poll shows Iowans are bigger fans of Trump than ever. And that could fuel his ongoing flirtation with running for president again in 2024.
How The World Sees America
President Trump has repeatedly declared the US “the greatest country in the world”. But according to a recent 13-nation poll by the Pew Research Center, he hasn’t done much for its image overseas.
In many European countries, the percentage of the public with a positive view of America is at its lowest for almost 20 years. In the UK, 41% had a favourable opinion, while in France it was 31%, the lowest since 2003, and in Germany just 26%.
America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic was a major factor – only 15% of respondents felt the US had handled the virus well, according to figures from July and August.
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Be Careful With Poll Numbers
Though polls are often used to predict support for a particular candidate or policy idea, Clinton said it is important to put the results in proper context. The margin of error for a poll, for example, is actually not a statement of polling accuracy. It indicates the range within which the poll numbers would fluctuate if the poll were carried out repeatedly.
People sometimes think that just because there is a number attached that it must be precise. The reality is that there are a lot of errors that can accumulate in a single poll, based upon small decisions about what you assume about voterswhich can actually have enormous consequences within a polarized electorate. A bunch of small errors can end up producing consequential polling errorsespecially given how close recent elections are, Clinton said. One of the takeaways I hope people get from the report is that there are a lot of complexities that go into polling that are quite variable.
So how should the public interpret poll numbers?
Clinton suggested that readers should take the margin of error stated on the poll, double it, and see whether the difference between the two candidates is within the doubled margin of error. If it is, then it is hard to conclude which candidate is actually ahead in the race.
Biden Harris Best Trump On Favorability Scale
While the poll finds Trump’s personal favorability ratings underwater, the Democrats heading to the White House fare better.
Biden has a net favorability rating of +4 , while Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has a net rating of +0 .
That’s compared with Trump’s net personal rating of -13 .
Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, has a personal favorability rating of +14 . Notably, however, a majority of Republicans 59 percent give her a negative rating, a particularly high marker of antipathy for an incoming first lady from members of the opposing party.
Before Obama’s inauguration, 33 percent of Republicans gave Michelle Obama a negative personal rating. And before Trump’s inauguration, 44 percent of Democrats gave Melania Trump a similarly poor grade.
The NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters was conducted Jan. 10-13, 2021, by the Republican firm Public Opinion Strategies and the Democratic firm Hart Research. The margin of error for registered voters is +/- 3.1 percentage points.
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Trump’s Approval Rating Holding Steady At 43 Percent With 55 Percent Disapproving
The same poll found that 35 percent of voters including 74 percent of Republicans but just 30 percent of independents and 3 percent of Democrats believe President-elect Joe Biden did not win the election legitimately.
Sixty-one percent of all voters but just 21 percent of Republicans say Biden did win legitimately.
While a record 10 House Republicans broke ranks to vote for Trump’s impeachment last week, his approval rating among Republicans shows few signs that GOP voters are widely disillusioned with him.
Almost 9 in 10 Republicans 87 percent give Trump a thumbs-up, compared with 89 percent who said the same before the November election.
And even for the half of Republicans who say they prioritize the GOP in general over allegiance to Trump, his high approval remains unmoved by recent events.
Among Republicans who say their primary loyalty is to Trump over the party, 98 percent approve of his performance. For those who say they prioritize the party over the president, his approval still stands at 81 percent virtually unchanged from October.
In the NBC News survey, nearly a third of GOP voters surveyed 28 percent said Trump’s words and actions related to the violence at the Capitol reinforced their vote for Trump.
Just 5 percent said they now regretted their support for him, and two-thirds 66 percent said their feelings had not changed.
An additional 9 percent say Trump is “not as good as most.”
America’s ‘endless Wars’ And A Middle East Deal
In his February 2019 State of the Union address, President Trump pledged to withdraw US troops from Syria, declaring: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”
The numbers paint a more nuanced story. Not least because months down the line, Mr Trump decided to keep about 500 troops in Syria after all to protect oil wells. The president has scaled back the presence he inherited in Afghanistan, and to an extent in Iraq and Syria. But American forces are still everywhere they were the day he took office.
There are ways to impact on the Middle East without troops, of course. President Trump overturned the objections of previous presidents by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, and recognising the city, including its occupied East, as Israel’s capital. Last month he hailed the “dawn of a new Middle East” when the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed agreements normalising relations with Israel – a move the US helped broker.
Rhetoric aside, this was perhaps the most significant diplomatic achievement of the Trump administration. The two Gulf states are just the third and fourth Arab nations in the Middle East to recognise Israel since it declared independence in 1948.
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How Did This Happen
Though the exact causes of the discrepancy are still being determined by the task force and other researchers, the analysis pointed toward several possible explanations. An unexpectedly large voter turnout may have contributed to polling error, given the historical level of turnout and the perfect storm of current eventsa worldwide pandemic that caused a flagging economy and record levels of unemployment, a wide assortment of new voting methods, and increasing polarization in the political sphere. As a result, in 2020, in addition to the usual voters and newly eligible voters , there were many non-regular voters who cast ballots.
Another possible source of polling error may be the reluctance of Trump supporters to participate in polling. Leading up to the 2020 election, Trump had characterized polling as fake and biased against his campaign, which may have led his supporters to decline participation in polling. Thus the size of Trumps support was not captured in pre-election polls, so the eventual number of voters who cast their ballot for Trump was larger than polls indicated. The task forces analysis showed that the greatest errors occurred where Trump support was largest.
How Did Donald Trump Do So Well At The Polls
It didnt take long after polls began to close in the United States on Nov. 3rd for hopes of a Blue Wave to crash against reality. President Trump was doing better than predicted, even as challenger Joe Biden accumulated more votes than any presidential hopeful in American history. Nonetheless, by Thursday, as Donald Trump tried desperately, and without good legal reason, to stop ballots from being counted in states where he held a lead, the presidents path to re-election had all but disappeared and Biden stood poised to win.
Even if Biden wins, and it seems he will, the question remains: How did Trump manage to do so well?
When you add class and education to the mix, things get even more complicated in some ways, but simpler in others. For instance, college graduates broke Bidens way on balance, but far more among racialized folks than white voters . Those who made $100,000 or more broke for Trump 54 to 43, and those who cite their familys financial situation as better today than four years ago overwhelmingly voted Trump 72 to 25.
Voters have class and economic interests and they tend to protect them. That should not be news, but it is a point often lost in election coverage and breakdowns of the aftermath. A central part of understanding political behaviour and elections is understanding economic interests and class solidarity. But the economic and class lenses tell only part of the story.
Washington Post
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Trump Approval Remains Stable In New Nbc Poll With Republicans Unmoved After Capitol Violence
WASHINGTON Donald Trump is the only president in history to be impeached twice this time for his role in encouraging a deadly assault on the Capitol by his supporters but he is poised to leave office with a job approval rating that is fairly typical of his entire time in office.
A new NBC News poll found that 43 percent of voters nationwide gave Trump a positive job approval rating, just barely down from 45 percent who said the same before the November election and the 44 percent who approved of his performance shortly after he took office in 2017.
Closed Borders For Some
President Trump set out his stall on immigration just a week after his inauguration, closing US borders to travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. Currently 13 nations are subject to tight travel restrictions.
The number of foreign-born people living in the US was about 3% higher in 2019 than in 2016, President Obama’s last year in office. But who those immigrants are has changed.
The percentage of US residents born in Mexico has fallen steadily during Mr Trump’s term, while the number who moved from elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased. There has also been a general tightening of the number of visas enabling people to settle permanently in the US – particularly for relatives of those already living there.
If there’s an emblem of President Trump’s immigration policy, it’s surely the “big, beautiful wall” he swore to build on the border with Mexico. As of 19 October, US Customs and Border Protection says 371 miles of wall have been constructed – almost all of it replacement fencing where barriers already existed.
The work did not deter those desperate to reach America.
The number of migrants detained at the US-Mexico border hit its highest level for 12 years in 2019, spurred by a peak in arrivals during the spring. More than half were families, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, where violence and poverty are driving people to seek asylum and a new life elsewhere.
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National Polls Are Absolutely Utterly Useless: Do Donald Trumps Abysmal Numbers Matter
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Going by polls alone, the race for the White House is a done deal. Released over the weekend, a postdebate poll from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal had Joe Biden up by 14 points. If you ask CNN, hes ahead . At FiveThirtyEight its 51 Biden, 42 Donald Trump, and essentially has been for months. Which is all to say: We might have learned nothing from 2016.
Chris Kofinis is a Democratic strategist and the head of messaging and research firm Park Street Strategies, which does polling and quantitative and qualitative research around elections. In his view, pollsters are still making the same tired mistakes that they did four years ago. When we all say there is no possible way that anyone can win under these circumstances, were right, he told me, except for one problem: Trump has the highest negatives from any candidate I have ever seen in history, and he figured out how to win in 2016. In the run-up to the election, he said, we should focus on battleground states, ignore the national polls, and never ever take good news from the Democratic side without a grain of salt. I spoke with him to find out whats really going on with the polls, and whether Trump is going to pull off another upset on November 3, COVID infection and all.
Vanity Fair:What a weekend! How much has Trump getting COVID changed the election?
Vanity Fair
