BTT Poll: Trump steers into skid with 1st joint address

#BlogTypeThing poll:Now that @realDonaldTrump has survived his 1st #AddressToCongress, how do you see the rest of his 1st 100 days going?

— Thomas Keister (@thomaskeister) March 1, 2017

So, this morning, I launched the very first official Blog.Type.Thing. Poll, to measure reaction to President Trump's first joint address to Congress. Judging by a pre-speech poll I conducted yesterday, there was not a lot of optimism heading into the speech (only 15% were positive of the potential tone of the speech), but that seems to have enjoyed a big swing in the first few hours following the President's remarks.

While to me, it mostly seemed like the same boilerplate speech, with the right hearing nothing but good things, the left hearing nothing but unintelligible grunting, and the rest of us left to kick around what was actually said, to the country at-large (at least represented by my wee Twitter sample), their ears perked up and trended to the positive.

There are two ways I am interpreting these numbers- Either 53% Positive (32% outstanding + 21% fair), 47% Negative (15% less than fair + 32% disaster) or Positive (32%), On the Fence (21% fair + 15% less than fair), and Negative (32%). So you can either look at it as Trump finishing positive, or holding a fairly even keel between positive and negative, with just enough people representing the waffle state to allow Trump to remain at the water line.

So, this leads one to wonder if Trump is actually managing to start taking things seriously like approval ratings. Approval, after all, ranks right behind popularity and adoration as the reasons Trump gets out of bed in the morning. Teleprompter or not, he stuck to the script in a way he had been unable to accomplish up until this point.  

Whether this is an improbable epiphany remains to be seen. There are still a lot of irons in Trump’s fire, and just because he has managed to go a day without grabbing the hot end doesn’t mean we should hold out hope for a painless road ahead.