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http://archive.is/yLGEY

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/30/the-qanon-conspiracy-movement-is-very-unpopular-our-new-poll-finds/?utm_term=.87d889fcef0f

Monkey Cage Analysis

New poll: the QAnon conspiracy movement is very unpopular

4 things to know about the QAnon conspiracy theory

By Joseph Uscinski and

Casey Klofstad

August 30 at 5:00 AM

The QAnon conspiracy theory has surged into mainstream news these past weeks. Several “Q” supporters wore T-shirts and held signs at a recent Trump rally in Florida. Last week, a prominent promoter of the QAnon theory had his photo taken with President Trump in the White House.

If you haven’t heard of the QAnon theory, you’re not alone. We just conducted a new poll of Floridians and found that a large fraction didn’t have any opinion of the QAnon movement. And among those who did, it was strikingly unpopular.

What is QAnon?

“Q” is supposedly a high-ranking official in the Energy Department with a high-level security clearance. “Q,” the theory goes, is working for Trump and against the supposed “deep state.”

“Q” provides clues to online followers who then attempt to piece together those clues to figure out when Hillary Clinton and her ilk will be arrested for sex trafficking and a host of other unspeakable crimes. There are now many versions of the theory, almost as if it were fan fiction, as it has been passed around and expanded upon in social media.

Many people don’t have an opinion of QAnon

Because Florida is where Q supporters made their presence known at the Trump rally, we surveyed 2,085 Floridians from Aug. 8 to 21 after the news coverage of this rally but before news coverage of the QAnon promoter’s White House visit. Our survey was administered online by Qualtrics and was representative of Florida adults in terms of gender, age, and income. The poll’s questionnaire is here.

In this poll, respondents rated various political figures and organizations on a “feeling thermometer” that ranges from 0 to 100, where higher scores represent more positive views. If a respondent didn’t know one of the names or organizations we provided, they were asked to skip it. This list included the “QAnon movement.” We did not attempt to define this term, preferring to see whether and how people rated it on its own.

Over 40 percent did not rate the QAnon movement at all. Twice as many as skipped rating Fidel Castro or Sen. Bill Nelson, and more than three times as many as skipped rating Trump or Clinton. This shows that despite media coverage of QAnon, a large fraction of people likely have not heard enough about it to have an opinion.

Views of QAnon are very unfavorable

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http://archive.is/yLGEY

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/08/30/the-qanon-conspiracy-movement-is-very-unpopular-our-new-poll-finds/?utm_term=.87d889fcef0f

Among those who did have an opinion, most were unfavorable toward the QAnon movement. The average score on the feeling thermometer was just above 20. This is a very negative rating, and about half of what the other political figures in the figure below enjoy. In fact, the only person in our comparison to do worse than the QAnon movement, although not by much, is Fidel Castro. (This is Florida, where people danced in the streets to celebrate the dictator’s demise.)

Interestingly, both Democrats and Republicans had unfavorable feeling thermometer ratings of QAnon; the average among Democrats was 22 and the average among Republicans was 27 (including independents who lean toward a party as partisans). Support for QAnon was similar to Castro, who had low ratings among both parties. By contrast, Republicans and Democrats differed strongly in their opinions of Trump, Clinton, Rubio, Nelson and Scott.

A better predictor of support for QAnon is whether people are prone to conspiracy thinking generally. We asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with these statements: “Much of our lives are being controlled by plots hatched in secret places,” “Even though we live in a democracy, a few people will always run things anyway,” “The people who really ‘run’ the country are not known to the voters,” and “Big events like wars, the recent recession, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us.”

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, responses to these questions were strongly correlated with positive views of QAnon, regardless of the survey respondent’s partisan leanings. If we combine these four questions into a single summary measure of conspiracy thinking, a person with the lowest level of conspiracy thinking rated QAnon less than 10, on average. A person with the highest level of conspiracy thinking rated QAnon about 40 — which is still less than favorable but clearly much higher.

It is possible, of course, that opinions might look different outside of Florida. But nevertheless, we suspect that these basic findings would hold. In short, the QAnon movement appears neither well-known nor well-liked by Floridians in either party. Those who support QAnon most strongly are people for whom conspiracies lurk behind every corner.

Joseph E. Uscinski and Casey Klofstad are associate professors of political science in the University of Miami’s College of Arts & Sciences.

can't archive this, apparently get one page and that's it w/o sub...

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/04/24/trumps-historic-unpopularity-is-a-big-important-story/

The Plum Line Opinion

Trump’s historic unpopularity is a big, important story

President Trump (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

By Greg Sargent

Opinion writer

April 24

THE MORNING PLUM:

A new Gallup poll has some folks excitedly tweeting that President Trump’s reelection chances are similar to those of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before him — both of whom, you may recall, did get reelected — but the more important story is what Gallup concludes about the depths of Trump’s historic unpopularity.

The poll finds that a solid majority — 59 percent — of Americans say Trump does not deserve to be reelected, vs. only 37 percent who say he does. But Gallup’s headline blares: “Trump’s Re-Elect Figures Similar to Those of Obama, Clinton.” And it’s true, as Gallup says, that these numbers are “essentially identical” to those of Clinton and Obama “at the time of the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections, respectively.”

But that comparison takes the current moment, which comes a little more than six months before the 2018 midterm elections, and compares it to the Obama and Clinton polling at around the time of Election Day. And, as Gallup notes, those numbers for Obama and Clinton led to truly huge midterm losses:

Clinton and Obama both saw their party suffer huge losses in their first midterm elections, when fewer than four in 10 voters thought they deserved re-election. In 1994, Democrats lost 53 seats in the House, and in 2010, they lost 63 seats.

If we take these Gallup numbers seriously, if Trump is still hovering at such a low reelection number this fall, then we may see Republicans sustain large midterm losses this time around (though for various structural reasons, such as gerrymandering, they might not be as large). As Nate Silver has suggested, Trump’s approval ratings appear to be remarkably steady through all kinds of news events, suggesting he may well still be mired in similar doldrums this fall.

What’s more, as Gallup reminds us today, if you look at Trump’s approval ratings, as opposed to the reelect numbers, those have steadily been worse than those of his recent predecessors — by sizable margins, in fact. So not only is Trump on track to face large midterm losses — he is also substantially less popular than those predecessors.

It is just way too early to say whether Trump is likely to get reelected, as Jonathan Bernstein explains. He could very well rise in popularity; or he might not; or he could fall further. But the depth of Trump’s current unpopularity is an important story beyond what it says about Trump’s political fortunes.

Because Trump has blown through so many norms, the question of whether the American public is rejecting him is a momentous one. Trump has embraced overt racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism, in the form of regular racial provocations, assaults on our institutions and the rule of law, and an unprecedented level of self-dealing that basically constitutes a big middle finger to the country. He has married all this to orthodox GOP economic priorities — indeed, as Brian Beutler says, the three pillars of Trump-era conservatism are self-enriching plutocracy, racism and authoritarianism.

Opinion | What a presidential president would have said about Mueller's indictments

If that is so, then it is notable that majorities are rejecting all of those things. Obamacare repeal crashed and burned. The tax law passed, but it remains deeply unpopular. Majorities disapproved of Trump’s response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. Majorities sided with the “dreamers” against Trump and majorities reject Trump’s border wall and many of his demagogic arguments about immigration (though in fairness the polling is mixed on the thinly veiled Muslim ban). Majorities trust the news media, not Trump, to tell them the truth. Big majorities still want Trump to release his tax returns. Large majorities support special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of both potential collusion with Russia, dismissing Trump’s claims of a “witch hunt,” and of Trump’s finances. The public has sided with the investigation and the rule of law, and against Trump.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/04/24/trumps-historic-unpopularity-is-a-big-important-story/

Writing at Vox this week, Dylan Matthews noted that liberals and Democrats yearning for a decisive end to the Trump presidency that cleanses the country of its stain — such as impeachment — are likely to be disappointed. Instead we face a long, hard slog. But I would add an important nuance: Liberals and Dems across the country are responding to Trumpism with politics and organizing. It’s plausible that Trump’s racism and assaults on the rule of law are being widely understood as threats to the country, prompting high turnout and electoral organizing, even among normally less active voters and swing voters, that may be driven by a desire to reinvigorate our democracy against Trump’s degradation of it.

We don’t talk enough about the deep and widespread public rejection of Trumpism and what it means for the country and its future. Because so many of us got it wrong in 2016, a kind of defensive posture has set in that has rendered us reluctant to speculate on the meaning of polls indicating this rejection. By all means, caution is always in order when interpreting polling data. At the same time, this should not blind us to what is right there in plain sight at the end of our noses.

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this time with related pic