The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

During the 35-day government shutdown, the longest in this country's history, Donald Trump saw his approval rating drop to 37% in Gallup polls. The latest round of Gallup polls were just released this week and it showed Trump's post-shutdown approval rating was up 7 points to 44%. Upon seeing this, my first reaction was, "WTF?!? Are people really this stupid?!?" Considering the fact we elected this man president at all, I suppose it should be obvious by now that answer is a resounding yes! Let's think about this for a moment. Congress passed a bipartisan, nearly unanimous budget bill which Donald Trump said he was going to sign. After receiving some heat from right-wing talking heads like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, Trump changed his mind at the last moment and decided to shut down the government until he received the money he initially wanted to build a southern border wall. The shutdown lasted a record-setting 35 days, where hundreds of thousands, if not mi...

Due to a new Monmouth poll that was released yesterday, Democrats are claiming the world is going to end, while Republicans are claiming their party has been saved. Let's all stand back, take a deep breath, and try to see the larger picture. Monmouth, which is a reputable pollster, showed Donald Trump's approval rating jumping 10 points from 32% to 42% in the past month. Trump's approval average on RealClearPolitics is 41.5%, so it's not as though Monmouth's latest poll is some kind of crazed outlier. That's not the case when it comes to their findings on the Generic Congressional Vote, however. The Monmouth poll suggests that Republicans have narrowed the gap to 2 points. In the 11 other most recently taken polls regarding the subject, that gap is an average of 8 points. So it remains to be seen if Democrats truly have anything to worry about with regard to the midterm elections. When it comes to Donald Trump's approval rating, however, let's dig a litt...

Slowly but surely, the post-convention polls are coming out, and to this point, the following conclusions can be made: 1) The DNC aided Hillary Clinton both in favorability and the general election and 2) The RNC may have had the opposite effect on Donald Trump. According to the polls, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton now has anywhere from a 5- to a 15-point lead on Republican nominee Donald Trump. Not only that, but Gallup released a first in polling on Monday. For the first time in 30 years, a convention resulted in less support from the public for a party's nominee than before the convention. Here's how those results break down: Democratic convention More likely to vote for Hillary Clinton: 45% Less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton: 41% Net: +4% Republican convention More likely to vote for Donald Trump: 36% Less likely to vote for Donald Trump: 51% Net: -15% While Hillary Clinton's post-convention favorability bounce may not have been anything to wri...

For a number of years now, I've contended that Americans are more liberal than polls have showcased. In poll after poll, when asked whether they considered themselves to be "conservative," "moderate," or "liberal," the percentage of self-described conservatives and moderates far outweighed the self-described liberals, even though these same Americans supported liberal-leaning policies such as: Increasing taxes on the rich, more gun control regulations, legalizing medical marijuana, and perhaps most recently, equal marriage rights for the LGBT community. Regardless of how liberal people's opinions on issues were, however, many such individuals still shied away from labeling themselves as liberal due to the bastardization of the term. Especially after Fox News debuted in the mid-90s and talk radio started being dominated by conservative voices such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, to many, liberal came to mean: Tax and spend, baby-killer, communist...

I once heard a person say, "I don't care if a person hates me; I just hope it's for the right reason(s)." Likewise, I don't care if Republicans hate President Obama; I just hope it's for the right reason(s), and this goes for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) as well. Unfortunately, it appears most of them are still trying to find that "right" reason to despise both as a recent poll shows. According to a recently released YouGov.com poll, just 43% of Republicans believe the Affordable Care Act has resulted in an increase in the number of people with health insurance, while 25% believe that number has remained the same, and 21% believe the ACA has actually resulted in a decrease in that very number. That's right, over 1 in 5 Republicans believe "Obamacare" has done the direct opposite of expanding healthcare coverage across the country and more believe the healthcare law has either resulted in no change or a decrease in the number of...

Just yesterday, Gallup released some rather significant findings with regard to the Medicaid expansion offered via the Affordable Care Act. According to the report, the 21 states which expanded Medicaid and established a state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership have seen their uninsured rates drop to a much greater degree than the 29 states which didn't take advantage of those options afforded to them by the new healthcare law. Based on these latest numbers, the 21 states which expanded Medicaid and established a state-based marketplace exchange or state-federal partnership have seen their uninsured rates drop by an average of 3.97%. These very states hold the top 13 rankings when it comes to a decrease in the uninsured between 2013 and 2014. The 29 states which didn't expand Medicaid and the like have seen their uninsured rates drop an average of 1.95% - less than half that of the 21 other states. These 29 states hold 20 of the bottom 27 rankings when ...

According to Chris Moody of Yahoo   News , Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed recently made the following comments during the group's "Road to Majority" conference in Washington, D.C.: "The battle looked like it was lost, but it really wasn't (the battle against slavery). And that's kind of like where we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we're losing the marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some similarities? I'm not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK? I'm just pointing out that when you have these fights, what's interesting is that if you look at same-sex marriage, it's now legal in 17 states. Only six out of those 17, six out of 50 states, had done it by referendum or by state legislature. In every other case, it was imposed by courts. Just like the courts had to impose Dred Scott. Because they couldn't do it on the country because the country didn't agree with it. The country, by t...

For as consistently negative as the media was with regard to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) toward the tail-end of last year (and deservedly so), they've been just as consistently positive with regard to it in the past 2-3 weeks (with the exception being Fox News, of course...). Well, the good news continued to pour in yesterday with the release of the latest Gallup poll. This very poll released the following results: - "There has been a statistically significant and meaningfully large decline in the percentage of uninsured U.S. adults. The uninsured rate peaked at 18.0% in the third quarter of 2013, the highest rate measured since Gallup Healthways began tracking in 2008. The uninsured rate has been consistently trending downward since then, falling to 15.0% in March and further to 12.9% for April 1-14 polling. If the rate for the first half of April holds throughout the month, it will be the lowest monthly uninsured rate in 76 months of tracking." - "The...

Just a month ago, Gallup reported that 47% of the public viewed the Democratic Party favorably, while 38% viewed the Republican Party favorably. In light of the government shutdown, those numbers have taken somewhat of a hit, as Democrats' favorable rating is down to 43% and Republicans' favorable rating is all the way down to 28% - its lowest rating for either party since Gallup starting asking that question in 1992. As far as unfavorables go, Democrats are at 49% and Republicans are at 62%. House Republicans may want to look at this before sending this country to default over Obamacare. Let's look at these numbers again: Democrats: 43% favorable/49% unfavorable (net -6%) Republicans: 28% favorable/62% unfavorable (net -34%) Looking at those numbers, the Democratic Party is like the Houston Texans - 2-3, disappointed, but cognizant they still have a shot, and extremely grateful they're not the 0-5 New York Giants (the Republican Party). We'll have to wait a...

A big story is being made about a new Gallup poll which shows that more people now have a favorable view (49%) than an unfavorable view (46%) of former President George W. Bush. It's the first time since 2005 that this has occurred. In my opinion, this is about as big of a story as the fact I wrote with a pen at one point today. First thing's first, Gallup has about as solid a reputation over the past year as Mitt Romney does of smooth-talking women. Secondly, toward the end of his presidency, Gallup had then President Bush at 32% approval. Other polls had him even lower than that. Lastly, Bush has been out of office now for 4.5 years. Given the fact less than one-third of the people in this country approved of the job he was doing as president toward the very end of his tenure, I'm sure there are a great number of people, myself included, whom have a much more favorable view of him out of the Oval Office than in it. How much easier is it to compliment a person who ...

It's been known for quite some time that Americans don't like Congress very much, but according to a brand new poll, it appears as if Congress has reached such a low point, the experience of receiving a root canal while listening to Nickelback may now be more popular. According to a new Rasmussen poll, just 6% of the American public have a positive view of Congress, where 1% feel its doing an excellent job and 5% think its doing a good job. To place this into a bit of perspective, via other polls, Americans view the following more favorably than Congress: - Iraq (25%) - Justin Bieber (20%) - Rap (19%) - Hipsters (16%) - Afghanistan (14%) - Chris Brown (14%) - North Korea (11%) - Iran (10%) Yeah, nations we've gone to war with, other nations who've threatened us at one time or another, a man who is notorious for beating up women, along with rap, hipsters, and whatever Justin Bieber is, are all more popular than Congress. Like I said, Congress may so...

When I checked my e-mail this morning, imagine my surprise to see I received a comment about a blog of mine from a radio show host, and not only that, he shared my work on his web, Facebook, and Twitter pages due to how much he seemed to enjoy it. If any of my regular readers are curious to check this out for themselves, you can do so at the following links, in the order I wrote them in the previous paragraph: http://www.normangoldman.com/blog/ http://www.facebook.com/normangoldman?ref=ts&fref=ts https://twitter.com/normangoldman

I've discussed this subject before, but in more of a general sense than I will be doing today. Why is it that Democrats have won 4 of the past 6 presidential elections (more like five), are expanding the blue area of the electoral map, and it appears as if the younger generations are becoming more and more liberal, yet when polled, many more Americans identify themselves as conservatives rather than liberals? A Gallup poll, which was released last year, showed that 40% of Americans consider themselves to be conservative, 35% consider themselves to be moderate, and 21% consider themselves to be liberal. How can this be? Many Republican politicians and conservative talking heads alike point to such polls and say, "This is a center-right country. These numbers show if either party should be compromising, it's the Democrats." I've held the belief that this country is actually more liberal than these polls lead us to believe, but that due to the bastardization of...

I was often very critical of Gallup polling during the run-up to the election. Their polls appeared to be major outliers and while many in conservative circles loves the numbers, it seemed highly unlikely that Gallup was right and everyone else was wrong. With their drastically different numbers, Gallup was either going to be the genius of pollsters, with all others falling short of their accuracy, or the biggest joke in the polling community. Upon seeing the actual election numbers, it became quite obvious that Gallup was the latter. Just how awful was Gallup? Let me provide a few numbers. Most of the pollsters were conservatively biased to some extent this election cycle. Out of 23 pollsters that provided at least one likely-voter poll in the final three weeks of the campaigns, only 4 were biased in favor of Obama - 19 out of 23 were biased in favor of Romney. Rasmussen Reports is notorious for their conservative-bias in their polls. The same was true throughout this election sea...

I don't typically like to brag, but I have to say that with regard to my predictions during this election season, I've been closer to perfect than Halle Berry with a British accent. As I mentioned in an earlier post today, I called 50 of the 51 states (including D.C.) correctly in the election last night and guessed 46 of the 51 accurately when it came to specific margin of victory. Florida was my only hiccup, as I gave Romney an ever so slight edge and it appears as if Obama is going to carry the state. I predicted the winner of all four debates accurately and guessed the margin of victory correctly on three of the four. In the fourth and final debate, I gave the president a slight edge, but thought that the CBS snap poll would only show him winning by a score which was in the margin of error and that wasn't the case, as according to that poll, it was his most dominating performance of the three presidential debates. I also correctly called out the Gallup tracking po...

Initially, many liberals panicked at the sight of the Gallup presidential election tracking poll and many conservatives jumped with glee. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has held a steady lead in the Gallup poll and has been shown to lead President Barack Obama by as many as 7 points (52-45) within the past week or so. He's led the president by between roughly 3 and 7 points for quite some time. Of course the media has loved this poll for story, controversy, argument and ratings purposes - especially when Romney's lead was 7. However, as some began to wonder and then notice, it appeared as if, along with Rasmussen, Gallup's poll results didn't quite fit in with all the others, which have had the two candidates essentially tied. Numbers geeks such as Nate Silver began dismissing the Gallup poll as an outlier. This may have prompted Gallup to release more detailed information regarding their sample and they recently did just that. Pretty much all the numbe...

Many Republicans are elated of the news that the Gallup tracking poll today has Mitt Romney ahead of Barack Obama by 7 points - 52 to 45. It's over, right? I'm sorry to disappoint some of my Republican friends, but I wouldn't get overly excited about that poll result just yet. It is true that as of today, according to Gallup, Romney leads Obama by 7 points among likely voters - 52% to 45%. However, even in light of this, stats nerd Nate Silver gives the president a 65.7% chance of winning the election, compared to just a 34.3% chance for Romney. He bases these numbers on all the polls, trends, weighting for biases, history, along with other numbers with regard to the economy. Including this Gallup poll, he still gives President Obama close to a two-thirds chance of winning the election in close to three weeks. So, Gallup has Romney in a commanding lead, yet a stats expert only gives the Republican nominee about a one-thirds chance of winning on November 6th. What gives? ...

Unless he's placing all his stock in the uber-conservatively biased Rasmussen Polls, Mitt Romney has to be rather disappointed with his "post-convention bounce". In fact, in a very recent Gallup Poll (which has also been kind to the Republican nominee), it was showcased that this may be the worst post-convention bounce since Gallup started tracking it in 1984. Of all respondents, 40% said they were more likely to vote for Romney following the Republican National Convention, while 38% said they were less likely - a net impact of just +2%. The previous low was following the 2004 GOP convention, where 41% responded they were more likely to vote for George W. Bush, while 38% said they were less likely to vote for him - a net impact of +3%. The average post-convention net impact for the Republican Party has been 10.8% over the past five conventions (including this year's) - 8.8% greater than the result this year. Outside of the before-mentioned Rasmussen, no post-convent...