It seemed that every time I turned a TV on over the last few days someone was interviewing, or was reporting on an interview they had done with Donald Trump. (Oh, everybody but Fox News because The Donald and the “Fair and Balanced” network currently have mutual “I don’t want to talk to you” pack in place.)

The news jockeys must think that Trump is good for their ratings. They might also argue that he is in first place in all of the polls, but when polls cover 15 candidates and the leader pulls down only 20% to 30%, that’s really not a big deal.

The people doing the polling generally include only Republicans or those likely to vote in Republican nomination process. A recent Pew Research poll determined that only 39% of the country’s voters are Republican or Independents who lean Republican. So at most the people polled represent only 39% of all American Voters voters. In addition, the latest poll which was taken by NBC/WSJ shows Trump leading the Republican pack with only 21%.

It requires only simple arithmetic to understand how insignificant Trump’s polling numbers really are. If you want to determine the percentage of all American voters who are favor Trump that are represented on the NBC/WSJ poll, you simply multiply 39% by 21%. So 0.39 X 0.21 = 0.082 or 8.2%. So the likely Republican voters who favored Trump on the latest poll represent only about 8% of all American voters.

So I ask again, why is it that Donald Trump is being treated as a major force in American politics?

Cajun    9/28/15