They’re called the “favorability/unfavorability ratings” -- I prefer to call them “popularity polls” -- and according to Real Clear Politics’ latest average, 43.8% of registered voters like President Trump and 52.2% don’t. That’s a popularity deficit of 8.4%.

At this rate, Trump is a shoo-in for re-election.

How important is popularity polling? One way to find out is to look at the numbers in 2016, before Trump’s triumph. Surveys in the week before his election pegged his popularity at minus 21%!

Here are a few of the polling culprits, along with their final tallies:

Fox News                               38% Favorable    60% Unfavorable   -22%

NBC/Wall Street Journal       33%                     59%                        -26%

ABC/Washington Post           38%                     60%                        -22%

Reuters/Ipsos                          43%                     57%                        -14%

CNN/ORG                              41%                     57%                        -16%

It’s obvious that Trump’s popularity scores don’t directly correlate with his electability. Maybe his opponent -- Hillary in this case -- was even more disliked.

But she wasn’t. According to an article written by Real Clear Politics reporter David Byler (September 12, 2016), Hillary’s popularity deficit held at about 10% -- half that of Trump.

If measures of popularity have any significance -- and they should -- then these polling firms were way off. Whether you chalk up their unreliability to the “shy Trump voter” who refuses to express his opinion, or to bias amongst polling companies who find the numbers they expect, or want, to find, the conclusion is inescapable: Pollsters don’t accurately measure the electorate in the Age of Trump.

A particularly galling example is the Quinnipiac University Poll, self-described as the “gold standard” of political surveys. This past May, they awarded Trump a popularity rating of minus 19% -- a record-breaker for the year.

This month, Quinnipiac came up with head-to-head matches. You won’t be surprised to learn that Trump lost every single one. Biden beat him by nine points, Sanders by six, Warren by four, and Harris, O’Rourke, and Buttigieg by one point each.

These results might lead you to wonder how Quinnipiac performed in 2016.

Worse than most.

In their last poll before the election, covering the period September 8-13, 2016, they gave Trump a popularity rating of minus 24%. Like I said, worse than most.

Inexplicably, Quinnipiac released another poll just after the 2016 election. Whether this was an attempt to burnish their now-completely-tarnished reputation, I cannot say.

Querying registered voters November 17-20, 2016, the “gold standard” polling company gave then-President Trump a popularity score of minus 2%. Coincidentally, that’s pretty close to how the popular vote turned out.

Hooray for them.