Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website

Rasmussen’s current daily presidential tracking poll:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 27% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-five percent (45%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -18 (see trends).

What is remarkable is how consistent this poll has been—and how gradual the change, beyond the daily fluctuations (and rapid change at the beginning of 2009, which must be taken as an anomaly by any historical standards).

Rasmussen’s justification for polling strong disapproval and approval (dubbed “passion index” by Ed Morrissey of Hot Air) has been that this is the strongest indicator of future trends—and I believe this is the proper point of view in which to judge Rasmussen’s performance, not by a snapshot comparison of his last poll before the election with the result of the election, the traditional metric used by all other pollsters.

A pollster’s performance metric should not simply be a function of his accuracy—it’s a function of how quickly he reaches his final assessment. This is the same view taken by market traders and (sometimes) investors. Taking an accurate current snapshot of general sentiment is easy—it’s called the market price—and there is little benefit to be derived from knowing the current snapshot. Much more efforts are usually spent divining future trends—and there is much profit (and benefit) to be derived from that.

For this reason, investors look for “leading indicators” in timing (if they do it) their securities purchases, such as consumer spending, manufacturing output, inventory levels, etc. etc. When they make their purchase, the current price is only one of the factors in the consideration, and for many (some would say too many) expectation of the price change is a bigger factor.

The same reasoning can be applied to the political and demographic appraisals. In planning for the future (e.g. businesses deciding where to invest in, or which politicians/party to curry favor with), knowing current public sentiment is not good enough—it is important to know it well ahead of time; otherwise one risks being seen as a flip-flopper like Charlie Crist, swaying as political winds blow.

This isn’t the view taken by most pollsters—or judges of pollsters like Nate Silver—as they put all their emphasis on the accuracy of the final polling of a given election cycle. Perhaps their view has some legitimacy; after all, political world differs from economic world in that actual, real changes can happen only every 2 years or so, not on daily basis as it does in the market.

But one can’t deny the value of carrying the reputation as a reliable pollster in the off years—unlike the traditional pollsters, who, in their refusal to use likely voter model at all before the Labor Day in the election year, cannot be trusted before the Labor Day in the election year.

Here’s an interesting tidbit from Rasmussen today:

Forty-eight percent (48%) of voters nationwide now expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just nine percent (9%) expect their own taxes to go down.

Given how many people pay no income tax (I’ve heard figures around half, which is why it’s so easy to get support for increasing income tax: the half that do not pay tax vote to increase the tax on the other half that do!), it’s … interesting that so many people expect their tax to go up.

Granted, Rasmussen polls likely voters, not all adults or even registered voters, which probably means higher percentage of people polled by Rasmussen is likely to be paying tax, compared to the general population. But, even so, even the people in the lowest income bracket must be expecting some sort of tax increase to get that sort of poll results.

Well, let’s just hope that they are wrong. Or that they were thinking of increased taxes like cigarette tax (raised earlier this year) or that they have in mind things like VAT that Pelosi and her minions are thinking of (um, not that VAT is any better than increased income tax).

This is why I follow polls:

Is Daylight Savings Time worth the hassle? Forty-seven percent (47%) of adults say yes. That’s down slightly from early March when this year’s Daylight Savings Times began but is fairly consistent with previous years. Forty percent (40%) say it’s not worth the hassle, and 12% aren’t sure.

I guess this explains why we haven’t repealed the daylight savings time yet, despite all the academic and elitist snobbery about how daylight savings time was for WWII (we won, right?) and how it is unnecessary and it hurts agriculture than helps.

Well, all of that may be true, but the fact is, I suppose, daylight savings time is part of American culture, and at least as the polls stand today, it’s here to stay. Maybe in 10 years the opinions will shift, but that’s then.

This is just amazing:

Most voters trust themselves more than either Congress or President Obama when it comes to the economy, but they have way more confidence in themselves when it comes to the news media.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 85% of U.S. voters trust their own judgment more than the average reporter when it comes to the important issues affecting the nation. Only four percent (4%) trust the average reporter more. Eleven percent (11%) aren’t sure.

To me, this says two things: (1) Despite all the slander and misinformation spread by the media, Americans are not stupid—they know when someone is trying to push and nudge them in a direction they don’t want to go, and they resent it; (2) This is how a once respectable profession gets destroyed—through politicization and injection of overt bias in what is supposed to be professional work.

The collapse of mainstream journalism is something scientists should take notice from—it could happen to us. Some scientists think they know better than the John Q. Public. They think that they need “scare” the public into action, “for their own good.” They think they need to misrepresent their own work (you know, tweak a point here, hide some data there, to make, e.g. global warming seem more dire than it actually is, etc. etc.) so that the public will be duped into doing the “right thing”.

They are playing with fire, and its their reputation and credibility that’s going to burn, much as that of journalists has.

At least for the moment, the public trusts scientists in generic terms. Perhaps they take a step back on specific issues such as evolution or global warming, but in general, when a scientist speaks, they listen and trust. This should be more a note of caution than jubilee and abandon, for with great trust comes great responsibility—not to betray that trust.

But will scientists listen to this warning (I’m sure others have said this many times; at least Prof. Muller said a similar version at the colloquium earlier this semester), or will their ego make them hear without listening?

And a Rasmussen poll finds that a plurality of American voters agree with me:

Forty-eight percent (48%) of Americans nationwide believe that it is the responsibility of American Muslims to speak out against terrorist attacks on the United States.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 27% do not think American Muslims have that responsibility. Twenty-six percent (26%) of adults are not sure.

To the degree that some terrorists (I am not talking about Ireland here) claim to be adherents of the Muslim faith, those who do follow the teachings of Muhammad need to speak against and absolutely condemn those who besmirch their faith with senseless violence—that is, if Muslim indeed is a religion of peace.

In an ideal society, no man would need to speak for or against another man’s action. After all, each individual is independent and has no obligation—beyond what is specified in a contract—with regard to another man’s action. But, we don’t live in an ideal, free society, and instead, we live in a collectivist one, where identifications are made by group of people sharing same religion, ethnicity, profession, etc. As long as we live in a collectivist society, the group has a responsibility to police and condemn its own members when they sin—such as by suicide bombing a train.

And this is the exact way I feel when some naturalized American citizen commits treason against this country, most commonly by espionage or illegal munitions export. I am positively outraged when that happens and only the constitutional clause regarding due process stops me from suggesting that we just lynch the guy.

Can anyone tell me that American Muslims don’t feel the same way when Muslim terrorists attack America?