Soccer Mom: Unplugged

raves, rants, reviews and recounts of life in middle America

2006/1/23

Approval rating reality check comin' at ya

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@ 07:34 PM (31 months, 28 days ago)

For those of you who are unaware - poll numbers and approval ratings are based on PERCEPTION.  They reflect the perception of the questioned. 

Falling poll numbers are not proof that ANY president is an idiot - they are proof that people think he is.  Big difference. 

At the turn of the 21st C, people thought, in overwhelming numbers, that they might lose financial data and other significant information in Y2K.  (Go back and look at those polls!  LOL)  During the last century, American children with AIDS were precluded from attending public schools because of what a majority of people perceived.  Japanese-Americans were interned and whites nationwide (not just in the South) refused to go to school, swim, eat, or use the same toilet as blacks.  All because of what people erroneously thought.  Pretty crazy, eh?

Approval ratings are thermometers to measure how hot or cold the political winds are blowing. Or perhaps, how hot or cold the blowhards are blowing.  They do not measure reality or truth in any way.  Facts are way too complex to be measured by the musings of a society with limited purview and access only to redacted, filtered information (my own musings included).

And that my friends, applies to both sides of the aisle!