okie wrote:I think something needs to be clarified. nimh quoted polls with approval ratings of Democrats and Republicans in Congress. That is different than the approval rating of Congress as a body, in terms of its performance, and that has hit historical lows.
That is correct.
okie wrote:Someone could approve of a Congressmen, but highly disapprove of the job that Congress as a whole is doing. [A]gain, to evaluate approval ratings of individual congressmen, I would need to look at who is being polled in each poll. In the overall poll, it doesn't matter as much because it is finding an overall picture from the population, but for evaluating individuals, if more Democrats are asked, then they will naturally approve of Democrats at a higher rate. Figures don't lie, but liars will figure.
Here you're off. For two reasons - one specific and factual, the other more general.
1. The polls I quoted do not ask about "individual Congressmen".
They do not ask, Do you like Congressman X, or Congresswoman Y.
The wording (and I gave the links where it could be found) is simple:
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Republicans in Congress are doing their job?"
Then the same for "the Democrats in Congress".
That's the wording of the ABC News/WaPo poll. The wordings used by the Fox News poll and the USA Today/Gallup poll are almost identical. The CBS poll asks, "In general, is your opinion of the Republicans [resp. "Democrats"] in Congress favorable or not favorable?" Only the Harris poll asks a slightly different question (see the overview
here).
So no, these are not "approval ratings of individual congressmen". They are approval ratings of THE Republicans in Congress, and THE Democrats in Congress.
And in every single poll that's come out this year, THE Republicans in Congress are judged more harshly than THE Democrats in Congress.
Every single poll. And thats where number 2. comes in:
2. We're not talking about just the one poll here, that could easily be off this way or that.
You write, "if more Democrats are asked, then they will naturally approve of Democrats at a higher rate". But I already answered this bit, and note the bolded bit in particular:
Quote:professional polling agencies, and Gallup etc certainly are, take into account the balance of party affiliation. They [..] either try to assure a representative sample by making sure there's a good regional, age etc. spread, or they actively apply weighting to the data they gather: if the raw data includes disproportional numbers of Democrats or Republicans, they weigh the data to fit the national numbers on party affiliation etc. instead. Even without weighing, however, it would be unlikely for twelve polls in a row, without exception, done by different polling agencies, to all be overrepresenting Democrats.
You would be entirely right to question the specifics of one poll, especially if its results diverge from what other pollsters are finding. But are you really suggesting that ALL twelve polls, by FIVE different polling agencies, must have oversampled Democrats? Although they all use random sampling techniques? (And at the same time you're willing to take their word for it when it comes to the overall approval ratings for Congress?)
