COOL POLLS

 

Why Opinion Polls Have Let Us Down

 

 

 

We've just inaugurated Donald Trump as President.   Much of the media is reporting on the first day of his presidency, that his "Approval rating" is just over 40% and about 55% disapprove of him.  One has to wonder if something is wrong with the polls.  How could he have won such a decisive victory in the Electoral College if just over 40% approved of him?

 

Some would argue that he didn't win the popular vote.  He didn't campaign to win the popular vote!  Any capable observer would seen that his strategy was to win the Electoral College...and he did with a significant advantage.  If he wanted to win the popular vote, he could have used a much different strategy and would have probably won significantly as well.  But, in our system, the Electoral College is how we determine the winner.

 

So, how could the polls be so skewed.  The answer is that the media's polls are "Cool Polls".  Democrats decided to defeat Trump by making it "Uncool" to vote for him.  Hillary labeled Trump supporters "Deplorables".  She painted his supporters as the scum of the earth.  Her campaign flooded the media with propaganda that Trump was a "Racist, Womanhater, Bigot, Homophobe, etc."  The Democrats have used the same negative labels against their opponents for as long as I can remember.  If Mother Teresa was running against them, they would label her with the same terms.  They recruited show biz stars to parrot their labels.  Anyone who didn't fall in line against Trump was crushed, threatened, and denigrated mercilessly.  It quickly became "Uncool" or "Deplorable" to support Trump.  After all, cool people hate Trump-or so they would have us think.

 

Some of the "Deplorables" relished the label and wore it as a badge of honor.  But, many just kept their support of Trump private, voted for Trump, and went home hoping nobody would know.  They didn't attend his events, wear his red hat, put up his yard signs, or put his bumper sticker on their cars.  They just concluded that he was superior to Hillary.  They didn't respond to pollsters.  Nobody knew how many people supported Trump until the election because so many kept it to themselves to avoid being labeled.  Even after the victory and after the inauguration, the silence continues.  They just smile and remember January 20, 2017 and say, "That was cool".