The polling company Rasmussen Reports daily marked Donald Trump’s job performance at a 50 percent approval rating today, which are the highest positive numbers for the president in two months.
“Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove,” read the Rasmussen report on their poll. “The latest figures include 35% who Strongly Approve of the way Trump is performing and 41% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -6.”
While a 50 percent approval rating for Trump is certainly relatively high, there are questions over just how accurate Rasmussen Reports are, especially when polling for Republicans. Per the Real Clear Politics round up of various polls today, the Rasmussen poll has Trump’s approval rating at least five points higher than any other polling service, while his lowest numbers, the Quinnipiac poll, have the president 12 points lower.
Polling analyst and statistician Nate Silver, who runs the renowned FiveThirtyEight website, has pointed to a reason for
‘Rasmussen’s polls were quite biased, overestimating the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average,” Silver wrote in a New York Times blog from 2010. “In just 12 cases, Rasmussen’s polls overestimated the margin for the Democrat by 3 or more points. But it did so for the Republican candidate in 55 cases — that is, in more than half of the polls that it issued.”
Silver currently gives Rasmussen a C+ rating on FiveThirtyEight, which includes a Republican +1.5 mean-reverted bias. Alternatively, the Quinnipiac poll — where Trump has just a 38 percentage approval rating — has an A rating from Silver’s team with just a +.01 mean-reverted bias for Democrats.
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