{"id":3028,"date":"2009-11-24T02:19:29","date_gmt":"2009-11-24T10:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=3028"},"modified":"2009-11-24T05:33:31","modified_gmt":"2009-11-24T13:33:31","slug":"perturbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=3028","title":{"rendered":"Perturbing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The news noted a few days ago that, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/122627\/Obama-Job-Approval-Down-49.aspx\">according to the Gallup Organization, the approval rating for President Obama had fallen below 50%.<\/a><\/p> <p>I've been watching <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/113980\/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx\">the Gallup poll<\/a> (along with other polls) for some time now, and had become increasingly doubtful of its reports.  As the rating approached the 50% line, an apparent asymmetry developed in the perturbations, to which I refer as <q>skating<\/q>.  This <em>skating<\/em> was at its most pronounced when the rating would hit the 50% line; it might <em>blip<\/em> up, but it would not <em>blip<\/em> down. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/113980\/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/approval.gif\" width=\"450\" height=\"100\" alt=\"\" style=\"display: block ; border: 0 ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ;\" \/><\/a><\/p> <p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/122627\/Obama-Job-Approval-Down-49.aspx\">The Gallup Organization has referred to the President's drop below the 50% line as <q>symbolic<\/q><\/a>, but in a nation that likes its decisions made by <em>majorities<\/em> or by <em>super<\/em>-majorities, and with the President being of a party that named itself for <em>democracy<\/em>, having less than majority approval is more than merely <em>symbolic<\/em>.<\/p> <p>The next milestone comes if-and-when the reported share of the population who <em>dis<\/em>approve of the President's performance exceed those who approve.  The Gallup Organization has reported the disapproval rating being as high as 44%, and as generally climbing.  But, guess what?  For the last few days, even as the President's approval rating has been admitted to have dropped below 50%, the disapproval rating has been reported as <em>plateau<\/em>ing, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gallup.com\/poll\/113980\/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/disapproval.gif\" width=\"200\" height=\"100\" alt=\"\" style=\"display: block ; border: 0 ; margin-left: auto ; margin-right: auto ;\" \/><\/a> as if the loss of approval <em>completely<\/em> translated into indifference or indecision.  Perhaps we are now going to see a sort of complementary asymmetry of reported perturbations for disapproval.<\/p> <p>(The third milestone would be when the disapproval rating climbed above 50%.)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The news noted a few days ago that, according to the Gallup Organization, the approval rating for President Obama had fallen below 50%. I've been watching the Gallup poll (along with other polls) for some time now, and had become increasingly doubtful of its reports. As the rating approached the 50% line, an apparent asymmetry [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,104,4],"tags":[135,738,45,210],"class_list":["post-3028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-news","category-public","tag-barack-obama","tag-gallup","tag-obama","tag-polls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}