I was wasting time looking through the Rasmussen site earlier and came across their survey about whether the country is headed in the right direction or on the wrong track. Surprisingly, the numbers look pretty good right now, especially when compared to the entire Obama regime. The trend for right direction has been positive since the election, reaching values unseen in the entire tenure of Mr. Obama.
Since there are fluctuations in this statistic, I’ve also plotted a four-week moving average along with a polynomial fit. Not to make too much of this but clearly the trend is favorable. Even discounting the rececnt spike as anomalous, the numbers for the early Trump administration rival or exceed those for the early Obama administration.
Thanks Doctor. Especially smoothing the data into something coherent.
Am I reading it correctly, though, that we have yet to get over 50% of the people polled saying we are heading in the right direction?
Maybe half the country is just clinically pessimistic.
“Am I reading it correctly, though, that we have yet to get over 50% of the people polled saying we are heading in the right direction?”
Correct. Or, to look at it another way, the “right direction” was below 20% for a nontrivial period of Obama’s tenure. Surprising, huh?
During Obama’s 8 years I was one of the ones stomping ‘right direction’ into the gutter, at least on the few survey calls I received. I keep forgetting it’s barely 3 months that Trump’s been working for us – the upward trend is really encouraging!
I remember some folks wanted Bill Clinton back. I do not hear the clamor even among progressives to bring back Obama.
Obama will go down as the guilt trip we had to endure, not a leader.
I see a sense of confidence, of future rising out there. We talk of going to Mars, self driving cars, of cures and places to go.
Pickup trucks and SUVs are outselling cars at a rapid pace. Gasoline is not a scarce fuel. People with kids are finding cars with space make life easier.
Companies are finding keeping people is the challenge. That jackass millennial who finally learned the ropes after three years is now desperately needed to stay.
Americans know the world is dangerous , they hate looking foolish and cowardly. It does not come easy.
Pay is rising , especially for those who show up, work hard and learn.
Even the addicts in the halfway house are motivated to kick it more than I have seen in a while.
It all may crash in some monetary fiasco, but faith in the future is growing by the day.
I still have this weird belief that if the private sector is doing well and is fiscally solid, the government being a financial disaster is less of a problem. More private wealth generation is better than more federal employees and more people on food stamps.
Oh well, end rant.
Never end the rant! This was a most excellent and astute observation.
WHen results like these are even reported, they’re frequently not reported correctly. For example, dissatisfaction with GW Bush’s prosecution of the GWOT was not limited to one politica side, but that’s how it was reported.
Also, DL, why would you use a polynomial fit?
A polynomial fit is just a way of smoothing and finding local trends in the data. There is no underlying model for the data, hence there is no way to choose an appropriate functional form. The ups and downs presumably correspond to major events in the news, which occur randomly to a first approximation. One could attempt to correlate the data with economic indicators such as unemployment or GDP growth. It’s just not worth that much effort for so little reward.
What kind of fit would you suggest?
Regarding the model, I agree, and use arbitrarily long moving averages to smooth volatile time series.
A polynomial fit will whip around at the ends based degree and time. For example, if this chart ended on 1/1/13, it would have the same shocking increase at the end, but because the chart continues, it settles down. With a moving average, the thing is the thing, no matter what comes after.
I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. I’m just whining.
Yes, you’re absolutely right. The polynomial model has such artifacts. I didn’t want to make too much of the spike at the end. Besides, I’m too lazy to do much more work on this.
Nevertheless, it is true that higher values have been attained in the first few months of the current administration than at any time in the previous one, even in the four-week moving average. By any reasonable criterion, this statistic is more favorable for Mr. Trump so far than it was for Mr. Obama.
I find it interesting that Mr. Obama enjoyed very high job approval ratings early in his first term while, simultaneously, the public perception of the direction of the country was quite negative. Now, the situation is reversed. This makes little sense.
I conclude from all this that results from these kinds of “how do you feel” questions are not very meaningful. Mr. Trump’s unusually low approval ratings for early in his term are balanced by the unusually high degree of optimism expressed about the future in the financial markets, the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index, and in this ‘direction’ statistic. The media have succeeded in smearing Mr Trump’s name but have not succeeded in damping public optimism.
Dr. L. Is polynomial moving average synonymous or similar to exponential moving average?
I see that I’ve caused confusion, which I hope to clear up.
The first graph is the raw data from Rasmussen, which is a weekly poll, i.e., conducted over the course of one week. There’s one data point for each week for some 400 or so weeks. It includes both “right” an “wrong” answers. Since there aren’t too many “don’t knows” the top (blue) line is mostly redundant so I subsequently dropped it.
The second graph contains a four-week, simple moving average of the raw data (red). It’s unweighted: just average four adjacent values because, as I noted, I’m lazy. Weighting it wouldn’t make much difference. The smooth black curve is a polynomial fit, meaning a fit to a 5th order polynomial function.
As TheKraken explained, polynomial fits can lead to misleading artifacts. For that reason, you should *never* extrapolate from such a fit. My only purpose for including it was as guide to the eye in spotting local trends. In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea. In my own defense, I did discount the spike at the end in the OP.
I didn’t mean for this to get so nerdy. Part of my problem is that I’ve been on a reading jag of Nassim Taleb’s books and other writings that has hypersensitized me to such technical matters. I was thinking about writing something about Taleb when I’m done with my binge.
**
This is a nerdy crowd. My comments were written in Links under emacs. (By the way, TheKraken is also me).
I shouldn’t be cruising about as admin all the time, really. As it is, I use TheKraken when I can’t get https.
I have been advised that by the PTB at another place that the GOP is doomed. From the same crystal ball that’s been fogged up since February of last year.
Well, we’ll get you right and truly doomed on the phone call, God-willin’ and the crick don’t rise.
Doom! Despair! And that’s the Gee Oh Peeeee…
Never take advice from the deranged. All they need is a good Vichy head-shaving, and they’ll be fine. Guilt can destroy anybody, but it destroys losers fastest.
Fortunately they know where to get some good razors to shave their heads, from Harry, now also available at Target.
“Never take advice from the deranged.”
“Never” I have heard that word before. What does it mean now?
*
EJHill, maybe they should leave the projecting* to Bell and Howl.
*both senses of the word
“I have been advised that by the PTB at another place that the GOP is doomed. From the same crystal ball that’s been fogged up since February of last year.”
Random thought, after two days of pondering- if you believe the gop is and should be a vehicle for imposing globalism and open borders upon an unwilling nation, then the gop IS and SHOULD BE doomed.
If you don’t, then you should enjoy the pathetic, hand-wringing angst of the fools who destroyed the old Republican party so thoroughly that they made Donald freakin’ Trump president.
I know I am.