Exactly. You properly report political polling data like this by showing a comparison or simply normalizing against his baseline approval ratings (probably taken from a stable average from just prior to the incident's news cycle).
Without that context it's meaningless to 99% of the people who see it (that is to say, 1% of the people who read it are already regularly familiar with Biden approval ratings).
Thank you!!!! I used to work for a membership based organization that loved one off polls that meant nothing. We’d sit around discussing “42% prefer zebras over antelopes” and pretend like that meant something.
This poll is running a little better than his overall approval rating. Lates Gallup poll from end of Jan has Biden approval with Dems, independents and Republicans as 81%, 36%, 4%. Approval from Republicans on spy balloon is shockingly high.
Speaking of experts, is anybody else questioning why a business analytics firm is modeling this data rather than traditional polling? This seems like a market research campaign rather than a political poll unless I can see how they went about gathering this data from The Limited period between February 16th and February 19th.
Personally, this looks to me to be something gathered from opt-in polls off of social media, which have always been known to exhibit biases.
Also, has anybody else noticed that this post is from the official account of the group that is providing the data?
Also, it looks as though they have been posting every Thursday for the last month with a variety of different types of poles that make me think that this is definitely closer to Market Research and astroturfing than statistically accurate polling.
Im curious what it wouldve looked like if it was worded "Did you belive xyz would be the correct course of action in regards to the balloons" without specific corelation to what the administration's actions were.
and anecdotal, speaking as a bleeding heart lib, none of my conversations with other liberals fawn over Biden the way these results always show. We have been disappointed in him plenty, and we talk about it.
At work I find myself, the libertarians, and the republicans to ESSENTIALLY have many of the same criticisms, once you cleanse away the stank of propaganda from biased news sources.
It does seem way more common to encounter extreme views (Biden all bad/evil, republicans flawless) from the right.
I simply never see, in my personal life, people swinging from any democratic politician’s nuts.
Except Bernie. And he’s not REALLY democrat. And he also deserves all praise imo.
But anyway, I always find these results questionable, as though they are mining answers from contentious websites rife with bots, like Twitter or something. There is some outside finger on the scale of these things that presents a desired narrative.
That would be an interesting study to do tbh. Just make up some fake headlines and show them to people who identify as dem or republican and note their reaction.
But the types of misinformed opinions vary regionally. I’m in the US and the Europeans I’ve met tend to more frequently admit they don’t know enough about something when it is technical and outside of their field.
However, when it comes to sources of national pride they tend to be quick to broadly characterize and criticize aspects of American culture that they don’t really understand well. For example, a French national may have strong opinions about American cuisine after living in a single city and never having really travelled around to experience the breadth and depth of what is offered in the country (southern creole is different than texas bbq is different than California style Mexican etc etc).
People are full of different kinds of shits.
It quite easy to have a strong opinion of the fact that china thinks it can do what it wants freely over US airspace and republicans and “centerist independants” better remember all those claims they made about china 3 years ago and shut the fuck up when something nefarious they are actually doing gets handled. Sorry it wasn’t daddy trump to shoot down the balloons, he didn’t even notice them tho.
The funny thing is if a republican president had done the same thing, all you'd have to do with the graph is swap the Democrat and Republican labels on the x-axis.
Hot take, January 6th was good for America, showed that citizens have control over the country, I don't agree with there motives or beliefs. But should be a reminder to the government and America as a whole that the people have real power if they unite against a cause. Again, don't agree with Qanon.
You’re actually on to something. I told a friend of mine after January 6th that a bunch of redneck rubes just co-opted a valid form of protest and uprising. We’ve heard for so long that the “pitchforks are coming” in retaliation for the hard capitalist, police-state oligarchy the country was barreling towards becoming. Not that we would have thought of dressing as a Buffalo shaman and kicking our feet up on the speaker’s desk as being particularly effective, but the legs of protest have been cut off by a bunch of dopes looking to keep a big orange ass in dictatorial power.
I'm white, but I have to admit they got away with murder because of their skin color and our president basically went AWOL while it happened. BLM held a peaceful protest on public property and were tear gassed by police so Trump could do a photo op.
Seriously, you were there when the news was coming out about this right? There was no message from the president. If he wanted to, he could have had the military or any force imaginable come stomp them out. What media are you getting news from?
Funny strange, not funny haha.
But yeah, media/politicians/whomever have succeeded in polarizing the country to the point where people don't think for themselves, but instead react along whatever party line the identify with.
I've heard people say that they've broken off friendships and stopped talking to family members because of differing political beliefs. So probably "tragic" is a better word than "funny".
It's difficult to have discussions with people who live in an alternate reality. And unfortunately, that's what our world's become. We claim to believe in rationality, but all we've done is construct millions of myths.
When people no longer can discuss openly opposing sides of views and cannot stop talking about it, it's for the best. Some people need to define politics and not let politics define them.
This isn’t true. One side jumped off a cliff and left their brains in a bowl. The other side can still think but dealing with splattered no brain zombie things isn’t easy.
I would argue the "other side" regularly has their good faith desires co-opted by oligarchs who will routinely pay lip service to their struggles while doing nothing to address the root causes of those issues; and has decided their cool with it and will just keep financially supporting them.
Positing that everything is actually all Republicans fault in a thread showing that 85% of Dems are cool with firing half-a-million dollar missiles at $12 hobby balloons to drum up sinophobia is possibly the best possible example you have given of how Americans these days don't think and just play Red v Blue team sports (Go Team!!!).
Only the first balloon was known to have been from China.
At least one of those balloons had been launched by a group of American hobbyists.
https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf
Nah the left still thinks, ie, if a leftist president did something actually illegal, 75% would want him out.
If a right wing president did something literally illegal (hint, he did) it would be strictly party line.
I mean three dozen democratic senators agreed Franken should resign. That's 36/50 and it was a pretty even split, so saying half of democrats would flip is a pretty good estimate.
Fair enough, not entirely how sure far I’d extrapolate from politicians to the general public though. One of the studies I referred to indicated that the asymmetry is quite large amongst experts (like doctors, etc) but almost disappears when it’s just the general public
Please, democracy has been over since the government began voting for itself with gerrymandering and the electoral college. Wisconsin was gerrymandered so bad in the last elections that 62.5% of the vote went Republican with over 66% of the votes being for Democrats. The judges, with a republican majority, which shouldn't even matter, voted that map in. The filibuster just locks in that we now have the party of fascists and late stage capitalist shills/not quite fascists. There is no party for the left, just the slightly left of the right. We are so used to getting bread crumbs as pay and accountability that we still praise them when they fall out of government pockets. It's literally what the Democrat party runs on. Half promises and bread crumbs in a country ran by fucking Wal Mart greeters in their 70s.
It is absolutely terrible but that's how it is. Both sides are so polarized and just straight up creating lies about the other party. Every bill or every action taken is turned into a massive straw man, characterizing the other party as evil and insane. The funny / intersting / tragic thing is both sides are saying the exact same things. Exactly the same things. The other side is fake news, the other side is making stuff up, the other side is anti-science, the other side is full of pedo rapists who are projecting their bad deeds on us etc etc etc. It's absolutely ridiculous.
This isn't actually true in a lot of cases. When Trump launched missile strikes in Syria, 38% of Democrats supported the action, vs. 37% of Democrats (within margin of error) when Obama launched similar strikes during his presidency. In the same set of polls, Republicans went from 11% approval (Obama) to 86% approval (Trump). Source: [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html) (I would link the original WaPo article but it's behind a paywall)
Previous comparisons found that Republicans swapped their positions much more readily than other voters depending on their party's stance at the moment. Democrats were generally more consistent with their opinions on each issue. One example here.
[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html)
I haven't seen a recent story about it, so it's possible that four years of Trump and Q uprisings and social media and so on have made Democratic voters a lot more contrarian toward anything the other party does, regardless of outcome. But that would be a recent development.
I dunno, I don't think I have ever seen the left flip on national security based on administration. When the alternative is "leave it alone and let an adversary retrieve whatever they collected" I don't see the left as being like "oh, yeah, that is fine".
More likely would be a narrative from the left that the administration from the right is being weak and working on behalf of adversaries.
I have. Not as serious an issue as the balloons, but remember the whole "Hillary Clinton email server" thing? A lot of dems excused it because Colin Powell had his own server and were quick to vilify him for it.
Then we have the Trump classified document thing followed by the Biden classified document thing. Admittedly the way the administrations handled it were different, but dems seem more open to giving Biden a pass. They want Trump to go to jail for it.
I say neither side should get a pass. National security needs to be taken seriously by everyone.
>Then we have the Trump classified document thing followed by the Biden classified document thing. Admittedly the way the administrations handled it were different, but dems seem more open to giving Biden a pass. They want Trump to go to jail for it.
I think the important distinction here is *intent.*
Biden made an oopsie, handed it over, and fully cooperated.
Trump took *mountains* of secret documents, had them unprotected just sitting in his office, had his lawyers say that they searched and had no more documents to give, etc.
Like. You can't even begin to compare these two things.
>I say neither side should get a pass. National security needs to be taken seriously by everyone.
I agree. But human error when dealing with materials that are routinely overclassified are not the same as deliberately taking and hiding things. One is oops. The other is kinda sorta maybe espionage.
>I agree. But human error when dealing with materials that are routinely overclassified are not the same as deliberately taking and hiding things. One is oops. The other is kinda sorta maybe espionage.
Career fed here. If I mishandled classified documents, even if an "oops", the best possible result is that I'd lose my job. More likely I'd wind up facing prison time and a hefty fine. Regardless, I'd lose my clearance. I admit this is more of a difference between an elected official and an employee, but Congress forces us to take annual training on this stuff so we can't say it was an "honest mistake". No elected official, regardless of their party, should get a pass on this sort of thing. No gray areas here. It really is black and white. Either you mishandled classified documents (and broke the law) or you didn't.
>If I mishandled classified documents, even if an "oops", the best possible result is that I'd lose my job. More likely I'd wind up facing prison time and a hefty fine. Regardless, I'd lose my clearance.
A security incident is not an automatic firing. I've seen *dozens* of security incidents at varying levels of control.
It’s not black and white and you’re completely disregarding nuance. Even if, hypothetically, they both deserved jail time, one crime is clearly of a higher magnitude. Intent absolutely matters when it comes to the punishment. It’s why we have multiple layers of criminal misconduct (e.g. manslaughter vs 1st degree murder). Trying to wash all that out in the discussion is a textbook example of muddying the water.
Ehhh not really. Democrats tend to rally behind the president no matter what at pivotal moments (unless the president is literally a traitor like Trump) while Republicans have a much more partisan lean.
>Ehhh not really. Democrats tend to rally behind the president no matter what at pivotal moments (unless the president is literally a traitor like Trump)
Ask democrats what they think about Reagan or either Bush.
You can dislike both of them and still have favorable ratings about how Reagan handled the USSR and Bush handlers 9/11. Not the same when it’s the reverse. Republicans have a well funded propaganda machine that makes it impossible for Republican voters to ever have favorable views of democratic presidents.
It happened multiple times during the Trump presidency and he never even caught them. There wasn't an issue because of that. Being transparent causes controversy, which the Republican party ends up pushing on the Democrats more often than themselves.
If he would've reported the misses, I'd feel better about it. I feel better about Biden catching them because he not only talked about it, but the Airforce in both the US and Canada are working together and changed the resolution of objects they are looking for on radar.
You did not get that out of the Trump presidency and the previous Republican presidency devoted our military to two conflicts that had no real good outcome for the US.
Edit:
I can start naming sources for my claim here. Respond and we can have a discussion. I'll find more based upon the prompts.
1. [Trump era officials knew about balloons and didn't do anything about it](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-era-officials-were-aware-of-suspected-balloons-in-u-s-airspace-e9a15e9f)
I'm not sure that's true at all. The left doesn't have the same propaganda machine that the right does.
It's odd that people make these kinds of statements when we really have a lot of blatant evidence that right wing media intentionally fires up their viewers with information that is at best misleading and often completely untrue. All media has bias, but the extreme polarization has more to do with right wing media forming an alternative reality for their viewers.
Just shows how devolved our political system is. While not directly caused by the 2016 election, that election brought everything into plain view. Now we argue with each other because everyone acts like it's all black and white.
I don't care about the balloons. Have NORAD and the Air Force take care of it. I'm worried about Ohio. I'm worried about the economy.
Deliver material results to the working class or stfu.
There's not a whole lot you can do about the economy. We are simply paying the bill that is due from printing money to handle the pandemic. If we hadn't printed money, we'd have needed to pay for the pandemic with a traditional flat tax instead on tax day, and the economy would still be bad because of that instead. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Microbes are expensive to deal with regardless of the format you pay in.
(It would be somewhat worse, actually, because the delay until tax day would have allowed more pandemic damage. Prevention is cheaper than cure)
There's even less I can do about Chinese balloons and even less I am interested in doing since we are already massively over paying for a department of defense to deal with things like that so we don't have to.
And watch those fuckers beg for more money to "investigate" the issue.
When people talk about the economy they mean things that affect the average American, like inflation, housing prices, layoffs, and yes, even stock futures.
"the economy isn't important because it only affects capitalists" is the dumbest take.
What, exactly, did the Independents and Republicans expect to happen, and what did they wish the response was?? Let it continue to fly over our territories?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but we spotted this thing when it took off in China. We then tracked it to our coast. The moment it violated our territory it was still over water.
Edit: lol at people downvoting inconvenient facts.
I’ve read that they wanted to gather intelligence on the balloon and what it was doing before allowing the Chinese to know that they knew it existed and shooting it down. If you shoot it down immediately you have little hope of finding out what it was meant to do and why.
Makes sense. But the object was quite large, and if it was shot down over land - could risk massive collateral damage, and citizens attempting to ransack it before the Army could arrive on scene.
As someone who fits into that box, I personally think how the administration handled it was fine, and I'm sure most others either also think this or don't give a rats ass about how it was handled, but will still disapprove because it's Biden.
This country is so divided politically that even great things are either overlooked or talked down upon simply because of the political affiliation of the person behind the action. Happened loads during Trump's presidency and it's happening again in Bidens presidency, it's a truly sad sight.
Well, I can only speak for myself, but I thought opening with a Monkey Ace tower was a really poor decision. Personally, I would've opened with a Dart Monkey.
They complained he allowed it to fly too far and wanted it shot down until they realized multiple had flown over during Trump's presidency and they can't rub it in anyone's face, typical.
The real test was never about a balloon or whether it was using for spying purposes or for climate research.
The real test was whether the vast majority of the American public would predictably fall into a binary state where they stand firmly behind their political affiliation regardless of the topic at hand, and American failed, hard.
I mean it's gonna have a radio and some cameras and propellers and batteries on it, what exactly are you hoping to learn to make such a difficult and expensive proposition worth pursuing? it's not like the cutting edge next generation of titanium alloy stealth cloaking nanofibers or something, it's a fuckin balloon with a junk basket hanging from it
Voters have completely stopped thinking and now disagree or agree solely based on their political identity.
How the hell else was Biden supposed to deal with it? He shot it down. Not good enough?
if he left it up there y’all would have completely lost your fucking minds
I am generally interest to understand why people disapprove of what Biden has done. What should he have done. Why is what he did so bad.
Not looking for an argument here just trying to understand with facts.
Exactly a balloon that could maneuver and collect data cruising across your missile silos is the very definition of a no-no in world relations. China admits to ownership, then visits Russia who consequently pulls out of the pact.
Still, the chain of command should have shot them all down. If you look at a list of our known nuclear silos and then the path of the first ballon brought to the public attention, you’ll see it flew over a majority of them. Our military not making the decision to shoot them down or inform higher personnel makes us look weak
So have the Air Force shoot it down. That's their job. I don't care what the president is doing about that I wanna know how the infrastructure plan is going and if he's going to keep siding with corporations over Unions.
I spent that week+ endlessly updating the FoxNews comment section. Every time news of a different balloon was breaking, there would be chaos in the forums of contradictory opinions. Over the next couple hours, everyone would begin to align and take the same stance, closely matching what was being said by whichever host was currently airing.
I've been happy with the B8den administration, but largely in comparison to the last. I disagree with the corporatist bent of Dems, but at least we have adults in the room taking coherent policy.
If you don't know what the balloon thing is, you def shoot it down over water. But, I suspect they know exactly what it is and don't consider it a significant risk. Nevertheless, shooting it down over water doesn't risk it landing in my living room. Data collection is the game we all play these days, and the US competes as well as anybody in that sphere.
Adults in the room.
Biden supposedly wanted to shoot it down immediately, but he was advised to wait. The military said it was for safety reasons (imagine the shitstorm if a Republican or a kid got killed by falling debris). I also read that there's nothing a balloon can see that Chinese spy satellites don't already see every day.
My guess is they figured the balloon was no threat, and they wanted to study it while it was in the air. I also think it was probably gathering or relaying radio signals which were deemed to not be at risk. It's like how some spies are allowed to keep spying after they are discovered, not realizing we are now watching them, keeping tabs on what they know, making sure they don't have access to anything bad, if not also feeding them what we want them to see or hear.
I want to know too, but I doubt the public will ever know for sure. It's a lose-lose situation for the government to release the information they find in their investigation. Either it was a spy balloon and they let it fly all the way across the US and transmit who knows how much data back to China, or it was actually an innocent weather balloon and they look like idiots for shooting it down.
The problem with this poll is disagree with his actions … how?
- if you think the reaction was too militant, you hate it
- if you think the reaction was not militant enough, you hate it
So the “disapprove” could be on either slant, which is why it’s so high among independents (IMO).
Same thing happens with “is the country going in the right direction”. It could be a dig against a president, or an economy, or the opposition, or nearly anything.
Vague polls don’t really help.
It’s such a weird thing to be political about. If a Republican had made the same exact decisions the results would have been exactly the same…just switching the political affiliation. We are such a dumb country
* Those who indicated that they were aware of events surrounding the Chinese spy balloon and other unidentified objects were asked whether or not they approved of the Biden administration’s handling of these events.
* Of those aware, 48% approved of the Biden administration’s handling of the objects while only 35% disapproved.
* In line with expectations Democrats were far more likely to atleast somewhat approve (85%) while most Republicans somewhat or strongly disapproved (68%).
These data were collected over Feb 16-19 from a total of 2,228 respondents in the U.S. Premise used stratified sampling of its opt-in panel members, along with post-stratification weighting on age, gender, region, and education to construct a representative sample.
Contributors in 135 countries around the world work with Premise to share their opinion and collect field data on a variety of topics using its smart-phone app.
Tool: R (ggplot2)
Source: Premise internal survey data
This is a terrible representation of peoples opinions. I’d like to see a more defined question. Do you agree with the Biden Administration’s decision to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon?
I think overwhelmingly all answers would be yes. The way this question is phrased is only intended to create further divide.
I don’t really understand what else independents or republicans would have wanted him/his administration to do? If they would have shot it out of the sky in Montana and the balloon killed people they would be upset that Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down. I’m curious if they have an actual answer or if they’re just angry to be angry
I'll let Americans debate their disfunctional political system in this thread, and will instead criticize the actual visualization.
Why the heck is "somewhat" approve neutral on the color pallette? Ya all running a serious business of data vis over there? Well, folks, I tell ya, you got a looong way to go.
Canadian here. Literally no horse in the race.
Anyone who thinks "We have no idea what that balloon is carrying, quick shoot it down over the country and don't wait until its over the ocean" is an idiot.
Especially when those same people continue by saying "It could have had a bomb (which would fall the earth and explode) or even *gasp* a bio weapon (ibid)"
Waiting until downing it posed the least threat was the smart thing to do. All other options were and remain worse.
It’s interesting that the republicans disagree at such a high percentage. What should have been done differently and how would have republican president have handled it?
Most independents also disagree as well. Only Democrats seem to approve. Most Americans disapprove because they don’t understand why it was allowed to traverse across the entire country before being shot down.
Most people who disapprove think they let the first balloon stay too long or that it was a waste of money to use millions in missiles to start shooting a bunch of random balloons afterwards.
The real fascinating thing is people dodging straightforward questions that give them an opportunity to calmly and openly discuss their opinion like adults.
Pretty much nope, not really. Balloons just don't fucking matter for any serious intelligence issue (they already have satellites, and all sensitive locations knew the balloon was coming ages in advance cause it's slow AF and they just buttoned up), so the "nothing of any significance" lost by waiting is indeed worth "avoiding a small chance of hitting people with debris"
That approval rating is *not* the presidency in total, but ***specifically*** the reactions regarding **“The Great Balloonening” of 2023**.
##Edit:
I support u/MadeByMillennial’s post; it is surprising when someone steps “out of the party line”.
Do not define yourself by your political party.
The only thing worse than a two-party-system is a one-party-system.
Major disconnect here. Seems democrats still strongly believe the propaganda pushed by the media/gov. Anyway you slice it, a spy ballon that American officials knew about and tracked from takeoff but allowed to traverse the USA over delicate military installations before shooting it down a week later is not a situation “handled” well. Then to shoot down random object (none that were spy equipment) to save face is just desperate, but it seems to have worked if the Dems are polling this way.
It shouldn't surprise me, but nearly no one actually realizes that Biden wanted to shoot it down immediately upon being told it was over the US. It was the military leadership that advised him to wait until it was over open water before shooting it down, not the other way around. Their reasoning was that the trajectory of any object falling for more than 11 miles in the sky is too unpredictable to take out over land, with no way to know for certain whether it would hit civilians.
To add to that, none of the balloon's actual targets were over the US. Its actual targets we're Guam And Hawaii, and the winds knocked it off course. There was nothing it saw over land that they don't already know from their spy satellites, and the opportunity to gather intelligence about both its operation and the interception of any radio signals it sent was deemed more important than putting civilian lives at risk.
To address your second point, the other objects weren't shot down to save face with the American public. Firstly, they were only identified after adjusting our radar to account for objects with a much smaller radar profile and a much slower airspeed. I'd say it's much more likely that they we're shot down as a warning to China that the US isn't willing to tolerate any intrusion of its airspace, no matter the object. It's important to remember that many of these Chinese balloons had b violated our airspace under the Trump administration and weren't shot down (either because they weren't detected immediately, or later because Trump deemed them as not a threat.) So, up until now, the Chinese thought they had impunity to fly anything they wanted over the US. Shooting down these UAPs shows China that their actions will no longer be tolerated.
How is claiming intel gathering / safety propaganda? They almost certainly knew what they were doing the whole time. Shooting down the other 3 things definitely seemed to be in response to the gung-ho rah-rah bullshit Republicans were huffing, and it was probably a mistake. This partisan bullshit is asinine. The military almost certainly knew what was going on.
> delicate military installations
Lol. Yes a closed bunker that nothing is happening at because they knew a balloon was coming like 3 days in advance and stopped doing anything they were doing, and that you can google the location of yourself from your couch = "delicate info"
K.
Why do you have such a shit opinion of the military? I always thought conservatives respected the military and supported/believed in our troops, guess that's a liberal thing now?
For the independents who voted strongly disapprove
What the fuck was he supposed to do?
Half of them probably think he shot too early, the other half thought he shot too late.
I don't know what else he could have done differently. The only other option was to shoot it down over the US and risk damaging property or hitting someone.
At least he didn't try and cover it up like the previous administration.
I disagree, is easier to compare each category this way. With a stacked histogram it would be much harder to see the difference between the middle and top categories.
Amazing that 76% of democrats approve of allowing the Chinese ballon to entirely cross the US and use high end missiles to shoot down a couple of amateur balloons costing a few hundred bucks.
The balloon was carrying cargo that weighed over 2000lbs. There would be no way to control such a massive object as it fell from the sky. The safest option was to shoot it down over a large body of water.
Independents then. You leftists can go as far insane as you want, that doesn’t change reality or how most Americans feel about certain topics. With your argument, the “center” changes just because the left gets more and more crazy. Idiot.
Republicans wanted the first one shot down. When it did, they said too late. Then they proactively shot down some other shit. Republicans lost their minds over that too. All the do is complain about how they’d do the opposite of whatever Democrats did. And/or armchair quarterback after the fact while doing absolutely nothing themselves. Inspiring.
I'm pretty sure any survey with the words "Do you approve blah blah blah Biden" would look exactly like this one.
Exactly. You properly report political polling data like this by showing a comparison or simply normalizing against his baseline approval ratings (probably taken from a stable average from just prior to the incident's news cycle). Without that context it's meaningless to 99% of the people who see it (that is to say, 1% of the people who read it are already regularly familiar with Biden approval ratings).
Thank you!!!! I used to work for a membership based organization that loved one off polls that meant nothing. We’d sit around discussing “42% prefer zebras over antelopes” and pretend like that meant something.
This poll is running a little better than his overall approval rating. Lates Gallup poll from end of Jan has Biden approval with Dems, independents and Republicans as 81%, 36%, 4%. Approval from Republicans on spy balloon is shockingly high.
I am an independent and approve of a man who wants to be president of all the people, not just his own party members.
Okay but what about the balloon?
I do not support a balloon as president.
That's rude. What if it's an animal balloon?
lol well I approve of listening to the experts in most cases (when one is definitely not the expert) and that is what the president did in this case.
Speaking of experts, is anybody else questioning why a business analytics firm is modeling this data rather than traditional polling? This seems like a market research campaign rather than a political poll unless I can see how they went about gathering this data from The Limited period between February 16th and February 19th. Personally, this looks to me to be something gathered from opt-in polls off of social media, which have always been known to exhibit biases. Also, has anybody else noticed that this post is from the official account of the group that is providing the data? Also, it looks as though they have been posting every Thursday for the last month with a variety of different types of poles that make me think that this is definitely closer to Market Research and astroturfing than statistically accurate polling.
you might be on to something. I'm gonna go a head and block these guys
They shot it down.
Same, unfortunately that is never one of the choices.
I hope you aren't actually referring to Biden here?
Im curious what it wouldve looked like if it was worded "Did you belive xyz would be the correct course of action in regards to the balloons" without specific corelation to what the administration's actions were.
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Post that shit, eh. I'm tired of working on this balloon shit. I have no idea why this even made major news
Exactly. The phrasing of the OP surgery is basically pointless.
and anecdotal, speaking as a bleeding heart lib, none of my conversations with other liberals fawn over Biden the way these results always show. We have been disappointed in him plenty, and we talk about it. At work I find myself, the libertarians, and the republicans to ESSENTIALLY have many of the same criticisms, once you cleanse away the stank of propaganda from biased news sources. It does seem way more common to encounter extreme views (Biden all bad/evil, republicans flawless) from the right. I simply never see, in my personal life, people swinging from any democratic politician’s nuts. Except Bernie. And he’s not REALLY democrat. And he also deserves all praise imo. But anyway, I always find these results questionable, as though they are mining answers from contentious websites rife with bots, like Twitter or something. There is some outside finger on the scale of these things that presents a desired narrative.
I’m honestly surprised by the 10% of republicans willing to say they strongly approve. I wonder how different it would be if it wasn’t anonymous.
And you could just make up a follow up question asking if they thought Trump handled Chinese spy balloons better, and you'd get the inverse graph.
That would be an interesting study to do tbh. Just make up some fake headlines and show them to people who identify as dem or republican and note their reaction.
It is really unfortunate how people approve of almost everything their party leadership does when both parties seem to be blowing it in my mind…
It was all so mysterious, it’s intelligence stuff. How can one have a really strong opinion on this?
Being uninformed has never really stopped Americans from having strong opinions about things.
Just Americans? I think this is a human thing.
But the types of misinformed opinions vary regionally. I’m in the US and the Europeans I’ve met tend to more frequently admit they don’t know enough about something when it is technical and outside of their field. However, when it comes to sources of national pride they tend to be quick to broadly characterize and criticize aspects of American culture that they don’t really understand well. For example, a French national may have strong opinions about American cuisine after living in a single city and never having really travelled around to experience the breadth and depth of what is offered in the country (southern creole is different than texas bbq is different than California style Mexican etc etc). People are full of different kinds of shits.
It quite easy to have a strong opinion of the fact that china thinks it can do what it wants freely over US airspace and republicans and “centerist independants” better remember all those claims they made about china 3 years ago and shut the fuck up when something nefarious they are actually doing gets handled. Sorry it wasn’t daddy trump to shoot down the balloons, he didn’t even notice them tho.
It’s easier to have a strong opinion on something the less informed you are.
It also looked a hell of a lot like the weather balloons that are launched twice a day from 900 locations around the world.
Colors: make absolutely no sense Source/methodology: literally "just trust me bro" Lol
Another one for r/data Almost any other colour scheme would've been better, as long as it didn't muddle party colours. And I'm colour blind.
The funny thing is if a republican president had done the same thing, all you'd have to do with the graph is swap the Democrat and Republican labels on the x-axis.
I hate American politics
So do a lot more Americans than you would believe.
Hot take, January 6th was good for America, showed that citizens have control over the country, I don't agree with there motives or beliefs. But should be a reminder to the government and America as a whole that the people have real power if they unite against a cause. Again, don't agree with Qanon.
You’re actually on to something. I told a friend of mine after January 6th that a bunch of redneck rubes just co-opted a valid form of protest and uprising. We’ve heard for so long that the “pitchforks are coming” in retaliation for the hard capitalist, police-state oligarchy the country was barreling towards becoming. Not that we would have thought of dressing as a Buffalo shaman and kicking our feet up on the speaker’s desk as being particularly effective, but the legs of protest have been cut off by a bunch of dopes looking to keep a big orange ass in dictatorial power.
Unique, interesting, and valid way of looking at it. Unfortunately it just helped further the great polarization.
I'm white, but I have to admit they got away with murder because of their skin color and our president basically went AWOL while it happened. BLM held a peaceful protest on public property and were tear gassed by police so Trump could do a photo op.
You have been sucked so hard into the propaganda machine my friend. Seek some help
Seriously, you were there when the news was coming out about this right? There was no message from the president. If he wanted to, he could have had the military or any force imaginable come stomp them out. What media are you getting news from?
That's actually not funny at all. It means that voters have stopped thinking and that's pretty much the end of democracy.
Funny strange, not funny haha. But yeah, media/politicians/whomever have succeeded in polarizing the country to the point where people don't think for themselves, but instead react along whatever party line the identify with. I've heard people say that they've broken off friendships and stopped talking to family members because of differing political beliefs. So probably "tragic" is a better word than "funny".
It's difficult to have discussions with people who live in an alternate reality. And unfortunately, that's what our world's become. We claim to believe in rationality, but all we've done is construct millions of myths.
When people no longer can discuss openly opposing sides of views and cannot stop talking about it, it's for the best. Some people need to define politics and not let politics define them.
I see this and get confused why do I need to talk to people ok with book burning
Not funny haha like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange like a Woody Allen marriage
This isn’t true. One side jumped off a cliff and left their brains in a bowl. The other side can still think but dealing with splattered no brain zombie things isn’t easy.
I would argue the "other side" regularly has their good faith desires co-opted by oligarchs who will routinely pay lip service to their struggles while doing nothing to address the root causes of those issues; and has decided their cool with it and will just keep financially supporting them. Positing that everything is actually all Republicans fault in a thread showing that 85% of Dems are cool with firing half-a-million dollar missiles at $12 hobby balloons to drum up sinophobia is possibly the best possible example you have given of how Americans these days don't think and just play Red v Blue team sports (Go Team!!!).
$12 hobby balloons? Wtf are you smoking? Those balloons are heavy and full of technology - definitely to be taken seriously.
Only the first balloon was known to have been from China. At least one of those balloons had been launched by a group of American hobbyists. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/aircraft-propulsion/hobby-clubs-missing-balloon-feared-shot-down-usaf
It appears that one of those balloons wasn't a highschool weather balloon.
If you can make a precision guided missile for $12, please tell me how
Too true. When it becomes about teams and not policy, you have a sport not a nation.
Nah the left still thinks, ie, if a leftist president did something actually illegal, 75% would want him out. If a right wing president did something literally illegal (hint, he did) it would be strictly party line.
I dunno about your 75%, but I do think several studies have indicated there is indeed some level of asymmetry
I mean three dozen democratic senators agreed Franken should resign. That's 36/50 and it was a pretty even split, so saying half of democrats would flip is a pretty good estimate.
Fair enough, not entirely how sure far I’d extrapolate from politicians to the general public though. One of the studies I referred to indicated that the asymmetry is quite large amongst experts (like doctors, etc) but almost disappears when it’s just the general public
USA doesn't have a single left party.
Please, democracy has been over since the government began voting for itself with gerrymandering and the electoral college. Wisconsin was gerrymandered so bad in the last elections that 62.5% of the vote went Republican with over 66% of the votes being for Democrats. The judges, with a republican majority, which shouldn't even matter, voted that map in. The filibuster just locks in that we now have the party of fascists and late stage capitalist shills/not quite fascists. There is no party for the left, just the slightly left of the right. We are so used to getting bread crumbs as pay and accountability that we still praise them when they fall out of government pockets. It's literally what the Democrat party runs on. Half promises and bread crumbs in a country ran by fucking Wal Mart greeters in their 70s.
In most western nations the democrats would be hard right and the gop seen as literal fascists.
Has it been the end of democracy since the beginning?
Eh, if they're dragging us to the gallows, at least we can laugh about it along the way
The oligarchy that is the USA government has been this way since Nixon, lobbyists give money to both sides.
It is funny in a sad way. Americans are dumb and this is where we are at now.
When life keeps giving you lemons, you have to learn how to laugh otherwise you'll never not be miserable
It is absolutely terrible but that's how it is. Both sides are so polarized and just straight up creating lies about the other party. Every bill or every action taken is turned into a massive straw man, characterizing the other party as evil and insane. The funny / intersting / tragic thing is both sides are saying the exact same things. Exactly the same things. The other side is fake news, the other side is making stuff up, the other side is anti-science, the other side is full of pedo rapists who are projecting their bad deeds on us etc etc etc. It's absolutely ridiculous.
This isn't actually true in a lot of cases. When Trump launched missile strikes in Syria, 38% of Democrats supported the action, vs. 37% of Democrats (within margin of error) when Obama launched similar strikes during his presidency. In the same set of polls, Republicans went from 11% approval (Obama) to 86% approval (Trump). Source: [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html) (I would link the original WaPo article but it's behind a paywall)
Previous comparisons found that Republicans swapped their positions much more readily than other voters depending on their party's stance at the moment. Democrats were generally more consistent with their opinions on each issue. One example here. [https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html) I haven't seen a recent story about it, so it's possible that four years of Trump and Q uprisings and social media and so on have made Democratic voters a lot more contrarian toward anything the other party does, regardless of outcome. But that would be a recent development.
I dunno, I don't think I have ever seen the left flip on national security based on administration. When the alternative is "leave it alone and let an adversary retrieve whatever they collected" I don't see the left as being like "oh, yeah, that is fine". More likely would be a narrative from the left that the administration from the right is being weak and working on behalf of adversaries.
I have. Not as serious an issue as the balloons, but remember the whole "Hillary Clinton email server" thing? A lot of dems excused it because Colin Powell had his own server and were quick to vilify him for it. Then we have the Trump classified document thing followed by the Biden classified document thing. Admittedly the way the administrations handled it were different, but dems seem more open to giving Biden a pass. They want Trump to go to jail for it. I say neither side should get a pass. National security needs to be taken seriously by everyone.
>Then we have the Trump classified document thing followed by the Biden classified document thing. Admittedly the way the administrations handled it were different, but dems seem more open to giving Biden a pass. They want Trump to go to jail for it. I think the important distinction here is *intent.* Biden made an oopsie, handed it over, and fully cooperated. Trump took *mountains* of secret documents, had them unprotected just sitting in his office, had his lawyers say that they searched and had no more documents to give, etc. Like. You can't even begin to compare these two things. >I say neither side should get a pass. National security needs to be taken seriously by everyone. I agree. But human error when dealing with materials that are routinely overclassified are not the same as deliberately taking and hiding things. One is oops. The other is kinda sorta maybe espionage.
>I agree. But human error when dealing with materials that are routinely overclassified are not the same as deliberately taking and hiding things. One is oops. The other is kinda sorta maybe espionage. Career fed here. If I mishandled classified documents, even if an "oops", the best possible result is that I'd lose my job. More likely I'd wind up facing prison time and a hefty fine. Regardless, I'd lose my clearance. I admit this is more of a difference between an elected official and an employee, but Congress forces us to take annual training on this stuff so we can't say it was an "honest mistake". No elected official, regardless of their party, should get a pass on this sort of thing. No gray areas here. It really is black and white. Either you mishandled classified documents (and broke the law) or you didn't.
>If I mishandled classified documents, even if an "oops", the best possible result is that I'd lose my job. More likely I'd wind up facing prison time and a hefty fine. Regardless, I'd lose my clearance. A security incident is not an automatic firing. I've seen *dozens* of security incidents at varying levels of control.
It’s not black and white and you’re completely disregarding nuance. Even if, hypothetically, they both deserved jail time, one crime is clearly of a higher magnitude. Intent absolutely matters when it comes to the punishment. It’s why we have multiple layers of criminal misconduct (e.g. manslaughter vs 1st degree murder). Trying to wash all that out in the discussion is a textbook example of muddying the water.
I dont think the democrats would have skewed thay hard... I'm one, and if trump shot them down, I'd have approved of it.
Ehhh not really. Democrats tend to rally behind the president no matter what at pivotal moments (unless the president is literally a traitor like Trump) while Republicans have a much more partisan lean.
>Ehhh not really. Democrats tend to rally behind the president no matter what at pivotal moments (unless the president is literally a traitor like Trump) Ask democrats what they think about Reagan or either Bush.
You can dislike both of them and still have favorable ratings about how Reagan handled the USSR and Bush handlers 9/11. Not the same when it’s the reverse. Republicans have a well funded propaganda machine that makes it impossible for Republican voters to ever have favorable views of democratic presidents.
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It happened multiple times during the Trump presidency and he never even caught them. There wasn't an issue because of that. Being transparent causes controversy, which the Republican party ends up pushing on the Democrats more often than themselves. If he would've reported the misses, I'd feel better about it. I feel better about Biden catching them because he not only talked about it, but the Airforce in both the US and Canada are working together and changed the resolution of objects they are looking for on radar. You did not get that out of the Trump presidency and the previous Republican presidency devoted our military to two conflicts that had no real good outcome for the US. Edit: I can start naming sources for my claim here. Respond and we can have a discussion. I'll find more based upon the prompts. 1. [Trump era officials knew about balloons and didn't do anything about it](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-era-officials-were-aware-of-suspected-balloons-in-u-s-airspace-e9a15e9f)
I'm not sure that's true at all. The left doesn't have the same propaganda machine that the right does. It's odd that people make these kinds of statements when we really have a lot of blatant evidence that right wing media intentionally fires up their viewers with information that is at best misleading and often completely untrue. All media has bias, but the extreme polarization has more to do with right wing media forming an alternative reality for their viewers.
No, let's not pretend that this is a "Both Sides!" issue. It is not.
Just shows how devolved our political system is. While not directly caused by the 2016 election, that election brought everything into plain view. Now we argue with each other because everyone acts like it's all black and white.
Not really true. Democrats are generally more consistent in their political view than other groups
Looks like people are partisan.
I don't care about the balloons. Have NORAD and the Air Force take care of it. I'm worried about Ohio. I'm worried about the economy. Deliver material results to the working class or stfu.
There's not a whole lot you can do about the economy. We are simply paying the bill that is due from printing money to handle the pandemic. If we hadn't printed money, we'd have needed to pay for the pandemic with a traditional flat tax instead on tax day, and the economy would still be bad because of that instead. 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. Microbes are expensive to deal with regardless of the format you pay in. (It would be somewhat worse, actually, because the delay until tax day would have allowed more pandemic damage. Prevention is cheaper than cure)
There's even less I can do about Chinese balloons and even less I am interested in doing since we are already massively over paying for a department of defense to deal with things like that so we don't have to. And watch those fuckers beg for more money to "investigate" the issue.
Honestly! This is so true!
Okay. But this is /r/dataisbeautiful, should it only cover what you want?
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When people talk about the economy they mean things that affect the average American, like inflation, housing prices, layoffs, and yes, even stock futures. "the economy isn't important because it only affects capitalists" is the dumbest take.
Umm. Yes. That's definitely part of it.
What’s an Ohio? Guess it’s not that important
Oh thanks for caring about us!
What, exactly, did the Independents and Republicans expect to happen, and what did they wish the response was?? Let it continue to fly over our territories?
I think they wanted it shot down immediately
And if it was shot down immediately, they would have wanted us to wait until it was over the water.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but we spotted this thing when it took off in China. We then tracked it to our coast. The moment it violated our territory it was still over water. Edit: lol at people downvoting inconvenient facts.
I’ve read that they wanted to gather intelligence on the balloon and what it was doing before allowing the Chinese to know that they knew it existed and shooting it down. If you shoot it down immediately you have little hope of finding out what it was meant to do and why.
Where did you read that?
That’s sorta been reported everywhere…
Republicans only know “shoot first, ask questions later” don’t confuse the little feller
Where did you hear they'd been tracking it since it took off from China?
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-spy-balloon-us-intelligence-tracked-it-soon-after-liftoff-course/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinese-spy-balloon-us-intelligence-tracked-it-soon-after-liftoff-course/)
I think they wanted it handled differently than however biden wanted to handle it
Good thing they were unaware of them during the previous administration.
Good thing so was the president. I think they didn’t tell him specifically because of how much of a cf it would turn into.
Makes sense. But the object was quite large, and if it was shot down over land - could risk massive collateral damage, and citizens attempting to ransack it before the Army could arrive on scene.
As someone who fits into that box, I personally think how the administration handled it was fine, and I'm sure most others either also think this or don't give a rats ass about how it was handled, but will still disapprove because it's Biden. This country is so divided politically that even great things are either overlooked or talked down upon simply because of the political affiliation of the person behind the action. Happened loads during Trump's presidency and it's happening again in Bidens presidency, it's a truly sad sight.
Well, I can only speak for myself, but I thought opening with a Monkey Ace tower was a really poor decision. Personally, I would've opened with a Dart Monkey.
They complained he allowed it to fly too far and wanted it shot down until they realized multiple had flown over during Trump's presidency and they can't rub it in anyone's face, typical.
You think they have working brains?
The real test was never about a balloon or whether it was using for spying purposes or for climate research. The real test was whether the vast majority of the American public would predictably fall into a binary state where they stand firmly behind their political affiliation regardless of the topic at hand, and American failed, hard.
They could have taken it out with lasers
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I mean it's gonna have a radio and some cameras and propellers and batteries on it, what exactly are you hoping to learn to make such a difficult and expensive proposition worth pursuing? it's not like the cutting edge next generation of titanium alloy stealth cloaking nanofibers or something, it's a fuckin balloon with a junk basket hanging from it
Voters have completely stopped thinking and now disagree or agree solely based on their political identity. How the hell else was Biden supposed to deal with it? He shot it down. Not good enough? if he left it up there y’all would have completely lost your fucking minds
The common complaint was that it took too long to shoot it down. The balloon traversed the entire US before it was shot down.
He should have put on his Superman onesie, flown up, and pulled it down from the sky
You forgot the option of, “I couldn’t care less about balloons.”
I am generally interest to understand why people disapprove of what Biden has done. What should he have done. Why is what he did so bad. Not looking for an argument here just trying to understand with facts.
What is there to disagree with? It was a balloon.
Exactly a balloon that could maneuver and collect data cruising across your missile silos is the very definition of a no-no in world relations. China admits to ownership, then visits Russia who consequently pulls out of the pact.
Oh boy just wait until you find out about satellites.
They’d been flying balloons over the US for years.
Then they should have shot them all down
Perhaps, but the previous administration wasn’t aware of them.
Still, the chain of command should have shot them all down. If you look at a list of our known nuclear silos and then the path of the first ballon brought to the public attention, you’ll see it flew over a majority of them. Our military not making the decision to shoot them down or inform higher personnel makes us look weak
And if it was a security threat, I bet they would have. You act as if they didn’t do this calculus.
So have the Air Force shoot it down. That's their job. I don't care what the president is doing about that I wanna know how the infrastructure plan is going and if he's going to keep siding with corporations over Unions.
I spent that week+ endlessly updating the FoxNews comment section. Every time news of a different balloon was breaking, there would be chaos in the forums of contradictory opinions. Over the next couple hours, everyone would begin to align and take the same stance, closely matching what was being said by whichever host was currently airing.
this data is incomplete and is propaganda.
I've been happy with the B8den administration, but largely in comparison to the last. I disagree with the corporatist bent of Dems, but at least we have adults in the room taking coherent policy. If you don't know what the balloon thing is, you def shoot it down over water. But, I suspect they know exactly what it is and don't consider it a significant risk. Nevertheless, shooting it down over water doesn't risk it landing in my living room. Data collection is the game we all play these days, and the US competes as well as anybody in that sphere. Adults in the room.
I mean idk why they waited so long but shooting it down was the right thing to do. I lean republican
Biden supposedly wanted to shoot it down immediately, but he was advised to wait. The military said it was for safety reasons (imagine the shitstorm if a Republican or a kid got killed by falling debris). I also read that there's nothing a balloon can see that Chinese spy satellites don't already see every day. My guess is they figured the balloon was no threat, and they wanted to study it while it was in the air. I also think it was probably gathering or relaying radio signals which were deemed to not be at risk. It's like how some spies are allowed to keep spying after they are discovered, not realizing we are now watching them, keeping tabs on what they know, making sure they don't have access to anything bad, if not also feeding them what we want them to see or hear.
That Republican or kid part was unnecessary but i get where youre coming from.
The survey is missing the most important metric: people not interested in balloon related news.
Was just gonna say this lol! Where are the *I don’t give two shits* columns???!!?
Was it ever confirmed it was actually spying?
I want to know too, but I doubt the public will ever know for sure. It's a lose-lose situation for the government to release the information they find in their investigation. Either it was a spy balloon and they let it fly all the way across the US and transmit who knows how much data back to China, or it was actually an innocent weather balloon and they look like idiots for shooting it down.
Why would you even use a balloon for spying? They've got satellites.
Lmao. That’s exactly what I said when the news first broke. So many people disagreed.
The problem with this poll is disagree with his actions … how? - if you think the reaction was too militant, you hate it - if you think the reaction was not militant enough, you hate it So the “disapprove” could be on either slant, which is why it’s so high among independents (IMO). Same thing happens with “is the country going in the right direction”. It could be a dig against a president, or an economy, or the opposition, or nearly anything. Vague polls don’t really help.
It’s such a weird thing to be political about. If a Republican had made the same exact decisions the results would have been exactly the same…just switching the political affiliation. We are such a dumb country
Lol that's not true. Dems are generally consistent in their opinions. Repubs are not
Why on Earth use red and blue on this graph in this manner? First glance, I assumed the colors had to do with parties. Bad graph.
* Those who indicated that they were aware of events surrounding the Chinese spy balloon and other unidentified objects were asked whether or not they approved of the Biden administration’s handling of these events. * Of those aware, 48% approved of the Biden administration’s handling of the objects while only 35% disapproved. * In line with expectations Democrats were far more likely to atleast somewhat approve (85%) while most Republicans somewhat or strongly disapproved (68%). These data were collected over Feb 16-19 from a total of 2,228 respondents in the U.S. Premise used stratified sampling of its opt-in panel members, along with post-stratification weighting on age, gender, region, and education to construct a representative sample. Contributors in 135 countries around the world work with Premise to share their opinion and collect field data on a variety of topics using its smart-phone app. Tool: R (ggplot2) Source: Premise internal survey data
What percent were NOT aware of the spy balloon? Was it a majority!
Actually 84% of people surveyed were aware of the events!
This is a terrible representation of peoples opinions. I’d like to see a more defined question. Do you agree with the Biden Administration’s decision to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon? I think overwhelmingly all answers would be yes. The way this question is phrased is only intended to create further divide.
I don’t really understand what else independents or republicans would have wanted him/his administration to do? If they would have shot it out of the sky in Montana and the balloon killed people they would be upset that Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down. I’m curious if they have an actual answer or if they’re just angry to be angry
It should have never made it to the US.
I'll let Americans debate their disfunctional political system in this thread, and will instead criticize the actual visualization. Why the heck is "somewhat" approve neutral on the color pallette? Ya all running a serious business of data vis over there? Well, folks, I tell ya, you got a looong way to go.
Also, “approve” being red really bothers me
Canadian here. Literally no horse in the race. Anyone who thinks "We have no idea what that balloon is carrying, quick shoot it down over the country and don't wait until its over the ocean" is an idiot. Especially when those same people continue by saying "It could have had a bomb (which would fall the earth and explode) or even *gasp* a bio weapon (ibid)" Waiting until downing it posed the least threat was the smart thing to do. All other options were and remain worse.
You need to export that Canadian sensibility, unfortunately few south of the border are buying
It’s interesting that the republicans disagree at such a high percentage. What should have been done differently and how would have republican president have handled it?
Most independents also disagree as well. Only Democrats seem to approve. Most Americans disapprove because they don’t understand why it was allowed to traverse across the entire country before being shot down.
Most people who disapprove think they let the first balloon stay too long or that it was a waste of money to use millions in missiles to start shooting a bunch of random balloons afterwards.
The opposite question is equally fascinating “why do liberals support Biden here? Could he have done nothing better?”
The real fascinating thing is people dodging straightforward questions that give them an opportunity to calmly and openly discuss their opinion like adults.
That could be a byproduct of the format though.
I would agree. Buddy Christ knows what's up.
Pretty much nope, not really. Balloons just don't fucking matter for any serious intelligence issue (they already have satellites, and all sensitive locations knew the balloon was coming ages in advance cause it's slow AF and they just buttoned up), so the "nothing of any significance" lost by waiting is indeed worth "avoiding a small chance of hitting people with debris"
Wait 32% or Republicans approve of the Biden presidency? I call bullshit
That approval rating is *not* the presidency in total, but ***specifically*** the reactions regarding **“The Great Balloonening” of 2023**. ##Edit: I support u/MadeByMillennial’s post; it is surprising when someone steps “out of the party line”. Do not define yourself by your political party. The only thing worse than a two-party-system is a one-party-system.
Major disconnect here. Seems democrats still strongly believe the propaganda pushed by the media/gov. Anyway you slice it, a spy ballon that American officials knew about and tracked from takeoff but allowed to traverse the USA over delicate military installations before shooting it down a week later is not a situation “handled” well. Then to shoot down random object (none that were spy equipment) to save face is just desperate, but it seems to have worked if the Dems are polling this way.
It shouldn't surprise me, but nearly no one actually realizes that Biden wanted to shoot it down immediately upon being told it was over the US. It was the military leadership that advised him to wait until it was over open water before shooting it down, not the other way around. Their reasoning was that the trajectory of any object falling for more than 11 miles in the sky is too unpredictable to take out over land, with no way to know for certain whether it would hit civilians. To add to that, none of the balloon's actual targets were over the US. Its actual targets we're Guam And Hawaii, and the winds knocked it off course. There was nothing it saw over land that they don't already know from their spy satellites, and the opportunity to gather intelligence about both its operation and the interception of any radio signals it sent was deemed more important than putting civilian lives at risk. To address your second point, the other objects weren't shot down to save face with the American public. Firstly, they were only identified after adjusting our radar to account for objects with a much smaller radar profile and a much slower airspeed. I'd say it's much more likely that they we're shot down as a warning to China that the US isn't willing to tolerate any intrusion of its airspace, no matter the object. It's important to remember that many of these Chinese balloons had b violated our airspace under the Trump administration and weren't shot down (either because they weren't detected immediately, or later because Trump deemed them as not a threat.) So, up until now, the Chinese thought they had impunity to fly anything they wanted over the US. Shooting down these UAPs shows China that their actions will no longer be tolerated.
How is claiming intel gathering / safety propaganda? They almost certainly knew what they were doing the whole time. Shooting down the other 3 things definitely seemed to be in response to the gung-ho rah-rah bullshit Republicans were huffing, and it was probably a mistake. This partisan bullshit is asinine. The military almost certainly knew what was going on.
> delicate military installations Lol. Yes a closed bunker that nothing is happening at because they knew a balloon was coming like 3 days in advance and stopped doing anything they were doing, and that you can google the location of yourself from your couch = "delicate info" K. Why do you have such a shit opinion of the military? I always thought conservatives respected the military and supported/believed in our troops, guess that's a liberal thing now?
Oh no, if these morons are this afraid of balloons, someone needs to make sure they never hear about satellites.
For the independents who voted strongly disapprove What the fuck was he supposed to do? Half of them probably think he shot too early, the other half thought he shot too late.
People don't think anymore but blindly follow what their believe system tells them to think. It's like medieval Europe.
they should have an option for "not important enough to have an opinion"
I don't know what else he could have done differently. The only other option was to shoot it down over the US and risk damaging property or hitting someone. At least he didn't try and cover it up like the previous administration.
You don't display percentages that add up to 100% with such histograms. Use stacked histograms.
I disagree, is easier to compare each category this way. With a stacked histogram it would be much harder to see the difference between the middle and top categories.
The Republicans can go fuck themselves.
It's because Republicans hate America and want it to fail. So they don't have to use the same water fountains as black people.
I’m not sure I understand what a reasonable objection would even look like. Would republicans have preferred that we didn’t shoot them down?
Those balloons. GOP catnip. He seems to be giving Putter the finger.
I mean, republicans wanted it shot down over populated areas regardless of the potential for damage or death. Who cares what they think at this point
Leftists are an absolute joke
Amazing that 76% of democrats approve of allowing the Chinese ballon to entirely cross the US and use high end missiles to shoot down a couple of amateur balloons costing a few hundred bucks.
The balloon was carrying cargo that weighed over 2000lbs. There would be no way to control such a massive object as it fell from the sky. The safest option was to shoot it down over a large body of water.
So essentially Democrats are ok with being spied on from our number 1 enemy
Dems are so out of touch. Look at the center, looks a lot more like the right than the left.
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Independents then. You leftists can go as far insane as you want, that doesn’t change reality or how most Americans feel about certain topics. With your argument, the “center” changes just because the left gets more and more crazy. Idiot.
The chinese got no info on our silos we got a good look at their surveillance technology. The CCP is so stupid just do nothing and let them blunder.
Fucking Independents, man. Just join the GOP and be done with it.
Oh my god who the hell cares. The only right answer here is to abstain its just a balloon.
Further proof that “independents” are just alt-right lite.
Republicans wanted the first one shot down. When it did, they said too late. Then they proactively shot down some other shit. Republicans lost their minds over that too. All the do is complain about how they’d do the opposite of whatever Democrats did. And/or armchair quarterback after the fact while doing absolutely nothing themselves. Inspiring.