My working theory is that Rasmussen only does real polls at election time so that they can do phony polls the rest of the time. Elections, after all, are the true fact-checker of polls. A polling company that continually underperforms as a predictor of election outcomes will quickly lose all credibility. But polling about stuff that people never vote on can be published without fear of contradiction. I think Rasmussen’s polling on the president’s popularity is basically made-up. I’ve stopped giving any credence to their polls on anything but elections. But, this made me laugh:
For nearly one-out-of-three voters (32%), Jimmy Carter is the living ex-president who has done the best job since leaving the White House, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Kind of a no-brainer, although Bill Clinton is doing some valuable work, too.
now granted, we have more Dem Ex-Presidents than Republican, but…
All remaining Republican Ex-Presidents are from the same family, and one that apparently doesn’t value Service to the Country, for the Country, unless they’re drafted into service (GHWB might tend toward the exception, but ya’ sure don’t see much of him these days off the olf links, do ya’?).
Maybe it has something to do with GrandPappy Prescott helping the Nazis and his buddies abortive attempt to overthrow FDR……?
68% say that Carter is the living president who has NOT done the best job since leaving the White House.
How can Americans be so crazy.
🙂
I’m still waiting for people to realize that as president, Carter was one of the greats of the 20th century. He was right, about nearly everything that really mattered, a generation before anyone else inside government or out. And like all great men ahead of their time, he was punished for it. We threw him out for a B grade movie actor who had finagled a pretty good gig playing a governor of an important state.
Carter told us hard truths that we didn’t want to hear. Reagan fed us feel-good pablum and we lapped it up. If you like to play what if with history, just imagine where we might be now if we had re-elected Carter. Imagine where we might be if we had listened to what he tried to tell us about energy, just to pick one, and if we had followed the arc he tried to set us on.
They probably misunderstood the question. Instead of “Who has done the best job since leaving the WH?”, they probably heard it as “Who has done better compared to when he was in the WH?”
How else to explain how Dubya got 9%, except to realize that doing literally nothing since leaving the WH is a better performance than when he was in the WH.