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“The Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance commissioned a poll of 503 likely voters in late August, conducted by the Oklahoma City firm WPA Intelligence.”

Read more here.

“No Winner In Debate Over Data Analytics and Traditional Polling,” by WPA Intelligence’s Chris Willson in Campaigns and Elections: “Polling can tell you what some of those issues are, but it can’t tell you with the same precision whom to target. That’s where data analytics comes in. Survey research and predictive analytics are complementary tools, not competitors. Traditional polls allow any campaign to make a few big decisions well. Predictive analytics tools allow them to make many small decisions well. When both tools are used to their fullest, a campaign maximizes its chances at victory.”

Read more here.

Just as national polls were a poor indicator of the 2016 outcome, they’re a poor indicator of what the politically meaningful numbers are today.

A typical national poll will have a lot of interviews in deep blue states with high populations — states like California and New York — the fact that those voters are negative toward Trump isn’t all that important because they’d be negative toward any Republican, they’re just slightly more negative toward Trump and it drive his numbers down.

The truth is Trump is still doing well among Trump voters, the ones who elected him and gave Republicans majorities in both houses of Congress.

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, and it’s one of the more negative toward him so I’m not cherry-picking here, 81% of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing. A majority (50%) of whites without college degrees approve.

What we’re really seeing in these approval numbers is a shocking and somewhat unprecedented polarization among Democrats. Only six percent of Democrats in that Quinnipiac poll approve of Trump’s performance. If you look back at Obama, even when his numbers where at his lowest he still had double-digit approval among Republicans.

Just like last November, when people failed to look beyond the national topline numbers and really understand what the data meant, we’re seeing a lot of crowing about Trump’s topline approval rating and not a lot of thinking about what’s going on to make these numbers.

Right now the voters who elected him are still with him and attempts to paint him as a failed President are about as useful as the sad bleating about Clinton having won the national popular vote. That’s just not how our system works and we’re not a country governed by the opinions of California and New York leftists.

Watch the full interview here

One, Nunes should see this investigation to its end before talking publicly about it. There are still too many questions and it is only creating unnecessary speculation about what went on. The committee members should do their work and then report what they can when they know exactly what happened.

Two, we can’t overlook the fact that the Obama administration did use secret surveillance to spy on the Trump campaign. That is alarming, as are the efforts of others inside the government to “unmask” and leak the various sources. That itself should be investigated and those responsible should be held accountable.

And finally, it is imperative that the Trump administration cooperate fully and as quickly as possible move past this.

It is dragging the administration down and forcing them to focus on other things besides their agenda. They need to get back to messaging about tax reform, rebuilding the military, cutting spending and keeping the promises he made during the election.

Watch the full interview here

Oh hi there imaginary readers, it’s me again.

I know I haven’t done one of these since before the Election, but then it’s hard to summon fun and frivolity when we’re facing a choice between {31 words deleted due to our need to have clients and in the interest of basic human decency, really, Ed.}.

But now that we have a new President and things are settling down into the usual pattern of leftist over-reaction and melodrama that accompanies a Republican Administration I feel like the time has come to once again throw a few bad jokes out there and laugh at them myself, because no one else is reading this or would laugh if they did.

So with that rambling preliminary, let’s talk about last week…

• Sunday was the Oscars, in which Hollywood liberals said Hollywood liberal things while I barely paid attention to what my wife was watching, which is about how I handle their actual movies too.
  • Then they apparently botched the big award and had to change the result once La La Land was giving its victory speech. I think I saw Katherine Harris on stage during the chaos, but I could be mistaken.
  • And this just in, La La Land spokesman Al Gore says they still have not conceded.
  • Hey, at least my bad election joke was about 2000 which is better than most of the tweets Sunday night and Monday morning.

• Former Attorney General Eric Holder, who I believe is living in Obama’s pool house Kato Kaelin-style, emerged earlier this week to announce that Obama would be hitting the road to fight the evils of political gerrymandering.
  • When asked whether he might not start with his home state of Illinois, Obama responded “where’s that? new phone.”

• While sitting in on a meeting with the leaders of historically black colleges and universities, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway was spotted with her feet on the couch.
  • Somehow this became a story as at least half of conservative twitter morphed instantly into my grandmother and bemoaned the evils of feet on the furniture.
  • No word yet on if conservative twitter then complained about her haircut and clothing choices as well and demanded that we all eat dinner at Luby’s.

• On Tuesday, President Trump addressed Congress and said the magic words “klaatu barada nikto” thus instantly making America Great Again.

• Correction, the three magic words he actually said were “radical Islamic terrorism,” sorry about that.
  • So that’s it, either the war on terrorism is over and we won or the terrorists (who have been strangely holding back this whole time because we didn’t say those three words) will suddenly be popping out of our mail boxes and refrigerators to kill us. Depends on who you ask.

• At Trump’s address to Congress, many Democratic Members of Congress dressed in white in a show of solidarity with women’s issues.
  • Then they left in the third quarter and all headed to South Beach for mojitos and empanadas.

• Amazon S3 was borked for a while last Tuesday due to a typo.
  • While for most of America this meant no giphy, hundreds of data scientists found themselves unable to work and emerged blindingly into the sun for the first time in years.
  • Within hours of the event, Hadley Wickham added a geom_evil_yellow_ball geometry to ggplot2 to help us all process this strange phenomenon.

• On Thursday it came out that Jeff Sessions met with Russia’s ambassador while serving as a U.S. Senator.
  • A number of Republican Senators came to Sessions’ defense saying it’s common for Senators to meet with foreign diplomats.
  • A number of Democratic Senators said that they have never ever met with foreign diplomats.
  • A number of foreign diplomats responded that most Democratic Senators just aren’t that fun to hang out with.
  • Reached for comment, Joe Biden said, “dude, check out the new eight track player I just put in my Trans Am.”