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Do the Polls Mean Anything?

Dr. Munr Kazmir
6 min readOct 22, 2020

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Considering major pollsters would like to double their margins for error, probably not.

(Photo: Unsplash. mana5280)

Running Against Trump’s Negatives

The Democratic Party is betting the House of Representatives, and a whole lot more, on the unpopularity of Donald Trump.

That Trump is unfit for office is currently an important part of the Democratic Party platform, if not the most important part. In certain segments of the Democratic Party, hatred for Donald Trump is the only unifying factor. Without Donald Trump in the picture, the Democratic Party becomes a loose political organization in which one of the most popular and visible rising stars doesn’t think the party’s nominee for president belongs in the party with her.

Are Democrats right to put all their eggs in the basket of Donald Trump’s unpopularity? Just how unpopular is he, really?

Do the polls mean anything?

Democrats are confident because Donald Trump’s negatives are in the toilet. Well, of course they are. After four years of every major media outlet in the country calling Trump everything from a Russian agent to a White supremacist on a daily basis, where else would his negatives be?

But Trump’s approval ratings aren’t as low as they should be. In fact, Trump’s approval ratings aren’t that much lower than other modern incumbent presidents who have won reelection, and Trump approval ratings are much higher than modern incumbent presidents who have lost their reelection campaigns. Trump’s approval ratings have been on rise since July and have steadily trended upward since 2017.

Besides over-sampling Democrats, these numbers don’t tell the whole story. The last chapter is yet to be written.

Joe Biden’s negatives might not be as low as Hillary Clinton’s- yet. Donald Trump’s ratings are where they are, and have managed to stay there through all the accusations of graft, tax evasion, racism, fraud, sexual assault, and high treason.

Trump’s ratings are as high as they are in spite of the Mueller Report, impeachment, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dramatically tearing up her copy of his State of the Union address on live television. Trump’s negatives reflect his performance on COVID-19, his reaction…

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