Most Americans are unhappy with their country. Many voters aren’t too happy with the GOP.. And backers of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump aren’t likely to their minds. This is HuffPollster for Friday, July 22, 2016.
PUBLIC SATISFACTION WITH THE U.S. DROPS ‘SHARPLY’ - Art Swift: “Americans’ satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. dropped 12 percentage points in the past month, amid high-profile police killings of black men and mass shootings of police. Currently, 17% of Americans are satisfied with the state of affairs in the U.S. Satisfaction is the lowest it has been nationwide since October 2013, when Republican members in Congress led a federal government shutdown. For the past two years, satisfaction has been in the 20s and 30s, with low points of 20% in December 2015 and November 2014.This 12-point drop in one month is tied for the largest decrease in satisfaction since Gallup started asking satisfaction monthly in 2001….The decline in Americans’ satisfaction this month includes a particularly sharp drop among Democrats, whose satisfaction levels ― after registering 51% last month ― dropped 22 points to 29% in July….Racial strife, epitomized in the recent police shootings and shootings of police, and highlighted in ongoing protests, appears to have ignited new concerns about the state of the U.S.” [Gallup]
AMERICANS HAVE MIXED OPINIONS ON ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ - Samantha Neal: “Although more American voters see racial discrimination as a major problem than they did a little over a year ago, voters are divided as to whether or not the Black Lives Matter movement has made things better, according to a new poll by Monmouth University. This sentiment persists in the aftermath of multiple police shootings of black civilians….Only 10 percent of all nationwide voters say that the Black Lives Matter movement has made racial issues in the United States better, while 48 percent say it has made things worse. Fifty-five percent of white voters say the movement has made race relations worse, whereas 51 percent of black voters say it hasn’t had much impact….Other polls released earlier this month also point to the notion that race relations are worsening. Nearly 3 in 4 American voters say that race relations in the United States are bad, including 32 percent who characterize them as “very bad,” according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. This statistic reflects a similar level of pessimism that was evident after the Rodney King verdict 24 years ago. A recent New York Times/CBS poll shows that racial discontent is at its highest point in the Obama presidency.” [HuffPost]
2016 PRIMARY LEFT VOTERS FEELING WORSE ABOUT THE GOP - HuffPollster: “In a HuffPost/YouGov survey conducted Tuesday and Wednesday, 48 percent of Republican voters said that Donald Trump was the best option for a nominee this year, while 40 percent said the party could have done better. By a 4-point margin, 32 percent to 28 percent, Republican voters say that this year’s election has made them feel worse, not better, about their party. Another 36 percent say their feelings haven’t changed….Sixty-two percent of the electorate as a whole, including a 56 percent majority of independent voters, say that Trump was not the Republicans’ best option. Half of all voters, including 48 percent of independents, say this year’s primary election has left them feeling worse about the GOP.” [HuffPost]
MOST CLINTON AND TRUMP SUPPORTERS WON’T CHANGE THEIR MINDS - Christie Aschwanden: “We hold beliefs about how the world works and tend to force new information to fit within these pre-existing narratives. Psychologists call this motivated reasoning, and it means that once people have thrown their support behind Trump or Clinton, they will tend to downplay or ignore things that paint their candidate in a bad light….In a study conducted in October, researchers presented 507 self-identified Republicans and 986 self-identified Democrats with actual things that Trump had said — some of which were true and some of which were false….’If we told participants that it was Trump that said the misinformation, Republicans were much more likely to believe it and Democrats were much less likely to believe it,’ said Briony Swire, a Ph.D. candidate in cognitive psychology at the University of Western Australia, who conducted the study with colleagues at MIT and the University of Bristol….People whose support for Trump arises from animosity toward Clinton or discontent with the status quo are unlikely to be swayed by facts or revelations about Trump’s truthfulness or policy, and the same goes for Clinton supporters who loathe Trump.” [538]
THE LARGEST COUNTIES IN THE U.S. ARE GETTING BLUER - Drew DeSilver: “Democrats tend to do best in the nation’s urban areas, while Republicans find their strongest support in more rural areas. Now, a new Pew Research Center analysis of county-level presidential-voting data quantifies just how dominant Democrats are in big cities – and analysts say this dominance will present a tough challenge to Donald Trump this November.….The last time a GOP presidential candidate won more than a third of the 100 largest counties was 1988, when George H.W. Bush took 57 of them….We took a closer look at vote patterns in the 83 counties that were among the 100 most populous in both 1976 and 2012. In more than half (46 counties), the Democratic-Republican split shifted in the Democrats’ favor by more than 20 percentage points; only nine became less Democratic to any degree.” [Pew]
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FRIDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:
-Lazaro Gamio and Callum Borchers chart Donald Trump’s dominance of the headlines since he announced his candidacy. [WashPost]
-Samantha Neal explains how Mike Pence played to his strengths in his convention speech. [HuffPost]
-White evangelical Christians’ support for Donald Trump is currently higher than their support for Mitt Romney at this point in 2012. [USA Today]
-Carl Bialik explores why black Americans are more likely to be killed by police. [538]
-Kathleen Weldon reviews polling on topics related to Star Trek. [HuffPost]
Friday’s Trivia:
Which of the following books was written about the 1968 conventions?