As long as we're on the subject of fake news... Nate Cohn is NYTimes polling expert.
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/policies
Is Trump Stronger Than He Seems?
Nate Cohn @Nate_Cohn JAN. 20, 2017
Some of Mr. Trump’s polling weakness can also be attributed to the difference between adults and likely voters. The adult population is much younger, more diverse and likelier to have been born outside the United States than the voting electorate. Most of the recent polls have measured Mr. Trump’s ratings among all American adults, not registered or likely voters.
This can make a sizable difference. Mr. Trump’s favorability rating was seven points higher (his net-favorability rating was nine points higher) among likely voters than adults in New York Times/CBS News surveys last summer that asked all adults whether they had a favorable impression of Mr. Trump. If the gap between adults and likely voters is as large as it was in those surveys, it would bring Mr. Trump’s ratings pretty close to his 46 percent share of the national popular vote.
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It would be easy enough to say that Mr. Trump enters as an unprecedentedly unpopular president. But how many times over the last year and a half were the polls cited as evidence that Mr. Trump was historically unpopular? I don’t mean the horse race numbers, which generally showed Mr. Trump competitive for the nomination and the presidency. I mean the questions about character, which painted a far more pessimistic picture of his chances.
One could brush all this aside by attributing his victory to the weakness of his opposition. From this point of view, Mr. Trump is a historically weak political figure who benefited from historically weak opposition.
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The other possibility is that there’s something about Mr. Trump’s appeal that’s not captured in the traditional approval ratings or the character questions.
One piece of evidence seems consistent with this possibility: the seeming optimism about his presidency.
Take the most recent Quinnipiac poll. At first glance, it’s bleak for Mr. Trump. Just 37 percent of registered voters — a narrower group than the adult population — view him favorably or approve of his performance. But just about every other question is better for Mr. Trump: 45 percent think he’ll take the nation in the right direction, and 52 percent of registered voters are optimistic about the next four years with Mr. Trump as president.
Just about every new poll tells a similar story. The most recent CNN poll says that just 40 percent of adults approve of his performance, but 48 percent say they think he’ll do a “very good” or “fairly good” job as president. And 48 percent say his policies will move the country in the right direction. An even larger 61 percent say that he’ll bring back well-paying jobs to economically depressed areas.
An ABC/Washington Post poll found that a majority of Americans expect he’ll do a good or excellent job handling the economy, jobs, terrorism, the budget deficit, and in helping the middle class.
I don’t have a brilliant explanation for the disconnect between these numbers and his approval ratings. Maybe his postelection honeymoon has made people more optimistic about the next four years, but it hasn’t led people to reassess their deeply held views of his character and ability.
(But all you hear about is his approval numbers, not a peep, except by Cohn, about the optimism)
