Four Years Out, Some Voters Look Back at Trump's Presidency More Positively (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/14/us/politics/poll-trump-views.html

https://archive.ph/5h04e

Four Years Out, Some Voters Look Back at Trump’s Presidency More Positively
A new poll by The New York Times and Siena College finds that voters think highly of the former president’s record on the economy, but memories of his divisiveness largely remain intact.
By Lisa Lerer and Ruth Igielnik
April 14, 2024, 5:32 a.m. ET

Views of Donald J. Trump’s presidency have become more positive since he left office, bolstering his case for election and posing a risk to President Biden’s strategy of casting his opponent as unfit for the presidency, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College.

While the memories of Mr. Trump’s tumultuous and chaotic administration have not significantly faded, many voters now have a rosier picture of his handling of the economy, immigration and maintaining law and order. Ahead of the 2020 election, only 39 percent of voters said that the country was better off after Mr. Trump took office. Now, looking back, nearly half say that he improved things during his time as president.

The poll’s findings underscore the way in which a segment of voters have changed their minds about the Trump era, recalling those years as a time of economic prosperity and strong national security. The shift in views about his administration comes even as Mr. Trump faces dozens of felony counts and will appear in a New York courtroom on Monday for jury selection in one of his four criminal trials.

Many voters still remember Mr. Trump as a divisive and polarizing figure, giving him low ratings on race relations and unifying the country. Yet, a larger share of voters see Mr. Trump’s term as better for the country than the current administration, with 42 percent rating the Trump presidency as mostly good for the country compared with 25 percent who say the same about Mr. Biden’s. Nearly half say the Biden years have been mostly bad for the country.

Many of Mr. Trump’s key constituencies, such as white voters without a college degree, are particularly likely to have a fond view of his time in office. But a broad swath of the country — including Hispanic voters, voters over 30 and most lower- and middle-income voters — now see Mr. Trump’s years in office as more good than bad.

...





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TLDR: Many people say Trump made Covid fun and Jan 6 was fantastic and the genius is very stable

[thucythucy]

1. It's like Gore Vidal said:

We live in the United States of Amnesia.

[dalton99a]

2. +1. Selective amnesia

[Kid Berwyn]

3. Some Headline

For Trump. For Truth, not so much.

[Fiendish Thingy]

4. Deeply flawed poll by deeply flawed pollster says what?

Despite having their methodology (Oversampling republicans, questionable “reweighting” tactics) destroyed by critics, NYT/Siena keeps doubling down and pursuing their predetermined narrative.

FYI:

• We spoke with 1,059 registered voters from April 7 to 11, 2024.
• Our polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. More than 95 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for this poll.
• Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For this poll, we placed nearly 127,000 calls to more than 93,000 voters.
• To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of our respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the page, under “Composition of the Sample.”
• The poll’s margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When computing the difference between two values — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.

-snip-

Full Methodology
The New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,059 registered voters nationwide, including 875 who completed the full survey, was conducted in English and Spanish on cellular and landline telephones from April 7 to 11, 2024. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points for registered voters and plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the likely electorate. Among those who completed the full survey, the margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points for registered voters and plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for the likely electorate.

https://archive.ph/72rNN

So, only 875 people completed the full survey? Not sure how they get a 3.7% MOE from a sample that small - most reputable polls shoot for 1500-2000 respondents to get a similar, perhaps slightly lower, MOE. Of course it is a “qualified” 3.7% MOE, since “ many other challenges create additional sources of error”.

[dalton99a]

7. There is a long tradition e.g. Whitewater, Iraq WMDs, Hillary emails, ......

[Rebl2]

5. I have

no amnesia when it comes to tfg. I find him to be crazier and more revolting since his first day in office as president. He should be sitting in prison right now.

[Johonny]

6. He's on trial for the laws he personally broke

But he was great for law and order? Who the fuck do they poll?

[Think. Again.]

8. Another B.S. poll from times/sienna.

The last few got a LOT of attention so I assume they're gonna keep riding this trick pony all the way to November.

[DFW]

9. The poll would have us believe that 25% say Biden was mostly good and 42% say Trump was mostly good

Either my country is deeply flawed or the poll is.

It’s not going to change the fact that I will continue to keep my primary residence in Europe and my citizenship, employer, and depot of whatever meager investments I have in the USA for now. My wife remains a German citizen. My daughters and grandchildren remain citizens of both countries. I will continue to hope for whatever madness is currently prevailing to fade at some point, although I realize that much of that hinges on current palace intrigue within the Kremlin, and there isn’t a whole lot I can do about that.

[FBaggins]

17. " Either my country is deeply flawed or the poll is."

Don’t jump to conclusion

It could be both

[DFW]

19. Point taken. n/t

[MiniMe]

10. I see it on Facebook with the "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago" thing, and they say No

I answer, "Are there refrigerator morgues in the streets now?" Most of them have forgotten that.

[doc03]

11. They want to forget 2020 like it never happened.

Some even think Biden was president in 2020 and some say Biden locked everything down. They will say the stock market was booming when Trump left office. Americans have very short memories or amnesia.

[Polybius]

12. Most blame Covid for the economy crippling

Then again, Trump's Covid handling wasn't good, and likely accelerated it.

[gulliver]

13. Yet another example of polls being half media/pollster log rolling racket, half Voltaire/Vonnegut lunacy

The pollsters put together, in effect, a gossip sample. The town gossips (the media) publish the gossip. It's just a paycheck factory for pollsters and the media. For the reader, it's junk knowledge and rhetorical miasma, marketed as a quality product by "nice, well-meaning salespeople."

[NJCher]

14. was trying to recall my own Covid help/why this doesn't worry me

This person has a memory problem:

snip

Marecus Maupin, 41, said he now looked back at the Trump years as a time of economic prosperity, even though he is making more money with Mr. Biden as president. He voted for Mr. Biden and now plans to back Mr. Trump.
“We all had a little bit more money in our pockets when he was in office. I think he gave out more money than any other president that I have had in my lifetime,” he said of Mr. Trump. “It now feels like, although I’m making more, I’m not seeing it.”

snip

However, I recall getting quite a bit of money during Covid. It took me about five minutes of thinking to recall that a job that was important to me was entirely decimated and has never come back. Thus I got a fairly sizable amount.

After my difficulty in remembering, I'm not so worried. Even if this survey wasn't flawed (which it is--as a former market researcher for NBC, CBS, and ABC, I looked at the same excerpts of the methodology above and honed in on the same boldfaced sentences), we, meaning Democrats, have a sizable war chest to remind people of what an ass he was and now he's even worse.

Furthermore, these people who fall into such groups can be targeted fairly economically. Here I'm drawing on my background as a media buyer.

So to conclude, even if this survey was done to standards, I would still not be worried. We have the money and know-how to counteract these memory lapses.

[tanyev]

15. Remember the good old days when over a million people died from Covid

because of Donald Trump’s narcissism, incompetence and corruption?

[albacore]

16. Never mind the polling....but..

... it might be deadly accurate.

A large percentage of the Murikan population is very subject to marketing and advertising and media manipulation.
The constant drumbeat from the Right saying how trump's term was heaven, and Biden's is hell takes a toll.
The idea that even 20% of voters look back at trump as part of the good-old-days is an indictment of our media... and our general intelligence level.

Biden has to win. Big. More than 10 million votes....in order for the election to be "legitimate" to Those People.

[budkin]

18. Insanity

Pure insanity.

[Silent3]

20. Gee, gosh, I wonder how much media normalizing of Trump has to do with that?

For which the NYT is one of the many sources we have to thank.