I believe this comment reflects that white supremacists and nazi's use 88 as code for "h[eil] h[itler]" because H is the 8th letter in the english alphabet.
Though the current admin is clearly (very) white supremacist, I think this one is a coincidence.
Is Gallup nonpartisan, or does it have connections/affinity to the Republican party? I vaguely recall some of the famous pollsters have political affinities that aren't very clear.
As far as I know they've always been considered to be very objective with high standards.
Doesn't mean their methodologies always correctly predict outcomes or anything, just that I've never seen a serious case made that they're intentionally skewing results to influence outcomes.
Think of it more like the original poll. They originated the census weighting methodology. In statistics classes about methodologies and survey design, it ALWAYS starts with a reference to the Literary Digest poll being wrong about Alf Landon beating FDR and Gallup, a new poll, being dead right with only like a sample size of over 1000 while Literary Digest sampled all their readers.
I don't recall them doing polls for commission like almost every other poll does.
> When asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from the White House or anyone in the current administration before making the decision, the spokesperson said, “this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”
Why bury the lede? Why not just say “it’s got nothing to do with Trump, we’re doing this because X isn’t a priority for Gallup anymore.”
if trump threatens them for making him look bad, and they cancel the polls and then say it was because of pressure, then they lose both the poll and make trump mad
Because there's a good chance it does have something to do with Trump? Gallup has Federal contracts, which means that a vindictive administration could potentially hold them hostage for reporting bad approval numbers. Eliminating their famous (yet inconvenient) poll removes that threat. This is more or less why the Washington Post is being destroyed, as well.
The company's own explanation is a pile of Gish gallop.
Because this is obviously the Trump administration putting political pressure on Gallup because Trump's poll numbers are among the lowest ever recorded?
>Trump’s Gallup approval rating as of last December was among the lowest the organization had found since it began taking the poll in the 1930s.
They cut down the sample size about 5-7 years ago, anyway, by like 90%. I learned this not through a press release, but by going through their metadata. This was a long time coming. Their business model just isn't very profitable. I wish, instead, they just sold it off to another company to continue the same methodology and maintain the prior data. This frequently happens. There's value in having a poll that has been running for at least 5 years. Much value in a poll that has been running for like 100 years.
Trump has been threatening pollsters repeatedly. So this is probably a way to avoid a lawsuit, where the inevitable outcome is a smaller company having to pay a settlement. But it is disturbing that this is the state of America’s legal system, which historically has been viewed as (relatively) trustworthy.
Cowards. I maintain my position that all political polls are either useless or actually detrimental to democracy though - how many didn't vote for Hillary because the polls said she'd win? How many more might have turned out if they hadn't seen that? Only the election matters and the rest is noise
Does Gallup want to keep their government contracts?
* https://www.gallup.com/analytics/647639/federal-government-s...
* https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_1305M323FNFFK0004...
* https://govtribe.com/vendors/gallup-inc-dot-the-gallup-organ...
I guess they've been warned they'd end up like the Des Moines Register if they provide any data that seems critical of the administration.
It's all just gonna keep getting worse huh
Isn't that "88" a little too on-point?
I believe this comment reflects that white supremacists and nazi's use 88 as code for "h[eil] h[itler]" because H is the 8th letter in the english alphabet.
Though the current admin is clearly (very) white supremacist, I think this one is a coincidence.
The decimal code for capital X in the ASCII table is probably also a coincidence.
Anticipatory compliance.
Great leader may sic the government on your subversive corporation if the poll numbers are too bad.
They could just sharpie a few zeros onto the figures.
Is Gallup nonpartisan, or does it have connections/affinity to the Republican party? I vaguely recall some of the famous pollsters have political affinities that aren't very clear.
As far as I know they've always been considered to be very objective with high standards.
Doesn't mean their methodologies always correctly predict outcomes or anything, just that I've never seen a serious case made that they're intentionally skewing results to influence outcomes.
Think of it more like the original poll. They originated the census weighting methodology. In statistics classes about methodologies and survey design, it ALWAYS starts with a reference to the Literary Digest poll being wrong about Alf Landon beating FDR and Gallup, a new poll, being dead right with only like a sample size of over 1000 while Literary Digest sampled all their readers.
I don't recall them doing polls for commission like almost every other poll does.
That’s definitely not suspicious timing
> When asked by The Hill if Gallup had received any feedback from the White House or anyone in the current administration before making the decision, the spokesperson said, “this is a strategic shift solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities.”
Why bury the lede? Why not just say “it’s got nothing to do with Trump, we’re doing this because X isn’t a priority for Gallup anymore.”
One of Gallup's priorities is probably to not piss Trump off.
if trump threatens them for making him look bad, and they cancel the polls and then say it was because of pressure, then they lose both the poll and make trump mad
That is a PR non-answer
Because there's a good chance it does have something to do with Trump? Gallup has Federal contracts, which means that a vindictive administration could potentially hold them hostage for reporting bad approval numbers. Eliminating their famous (yet inconvenient) poll removes that threat. This is more or less why the Washington Post is being destroyed, as well.
The company's own explanation is a pile of Gish gallop.
Because this is obviously the Trump administration putting political pressure on Gallup because Trump's poll numbers are among the lowest ever recorded?
>Trump’s Gallup approval rating as of last December was among the lowest the organization had found since it began taking the poll in the 1930s.
Wow! It's only 9 years older than the guy that requested this change!
It will be interesting to see if they return to doing them after Trump is out of office
They cut down the sample size about 5-7 years ago, anyway, by like 90%. I learned this not through a press release, but by going through their metadata. This was a long time coming. Their business model just isn't very profitable. I wish, instead, they just sold it off to another company to continue the same methodology and maintain the prior data. This frequently happens. There's value in having a poll that has been running for at least 5 years. Much value in a poll that has been running for like 100 years.
Trump has been threatening pollsters repeatedly. So this is probably a way to avoid a lawsuit, where the inevitable outcome is a smaller company having to pay a settlement. But it is disturbing that this is the state of America’s legal system, which historically has been viewed as (relatively) trustworthy.
Trump is so unpopular they have to stop polling on it because they're afraid of retribution? What in the Schutzstaffel is this nonsense?
There is a Soviet Russia joke burried here somewhere.
On blue sky there is a woman who is somewhat famous for analysis of russian train loading numbers.
Anything like that which can be used as an indicator for how bad your economy is which can't be obfuscated by your adminiation?
The rates are so low that they don't need to measure anymore. That's what they were told, probably.
Cowards. I maintain my position that all political polls are either useless or actually detrimental to democracy though - how many didn't vote for Hillary because the polls said she'd win? How many more might have turned out if they hadn't seen that? Only the election matters and the rest is noise