Last week I was listening to Steve Deace talk about polling. It’s what he specializes in generally, so he’s worth a listen. He starts this 9-minute segment with the overall picture about polling right now:
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| Steve Deace on his show October 9, 2020 screenshot from here |
So, the big picture—if you take the entire narrative of the
public polling, the big picture is that Joe Biden is a stronger candidate at
this stage of the election than Barack Obama in 2008, when he would go on and
get the biggest Democrat presidential win since LBJ in 1964. Right now they’re
saying Joe Biden is in a stronger position than that. They’re saying that
Donald Trump is an even weaker incumbent at this stage than George Herbert
Walker Bush was in 1992. That’s the big picture narrative you have to buy, to
accept the conclusions of the public polling.
Polling
Anomalies
Then Deace offers some specifics.
· Rasmussen polling (highly respected and used to
be reliable) says, “Biden is going to outperform FDR’s final reelect in 1944,
when he was in the midst of winning World War II. After D-Day, the Nazis are in
retreat….”
· Quinipiac (which was disastrously wrong on
Florida’s governor race in 2018) says that in Florida, where the margin has
averaged 2.5% in the past 7 presidential races, this year Biden is going to win
by 10%—that’s 400% of the usual margin.
· Monmouth (given an A+ rating by polling aggregate
FiveThirtyEight) says that, in Pennsylvania, where Trump won in 2016, currently
Biden is “leading the state by 12 points. However, if that were to happen, it
would mean that Joe Biden would outperform Barack Obama and his turnout in that
historic win that he had in 2008.” It would also mean “Trump would suffer a
massive 13-point negative swing in Pennsylvania.” Meanwhile, “Since 2016
Democrats have lost 41,294 voters in the state of Pennsylvania, while
Republicans have gained 158,445.” That means people are registering as
Republicans—in order to vote Democrat—in a state where fracking and other
issues led them to vote for Trump, and where Trump kept his promises to them.
· Rasmussen polling, which claims Biden is +12, “has
Trump getting only 76% of the Republican vote. Trump got 88% of Republicans in
the 2016 election. His average approval rating his entire presidency with
Republicans, the average, has been 87%. And yet, with the Democratic Party the
furthest left it’s ever been, Rasmussen is claiming that Trump is going to lose
12 points of Republican support from the last election, which is pretty much
his entire margin of defeat in their poll.” This low Trump Republican support is
an assumption Rasmussen has put into their modeling—the adjustment after
obtaining the raw polling numbers.
We have to be careful not to make assumptions based on the people around us. There are people in New York, for example, who have never met a Republican, so they have no idea the whole world doesn’t think they way they do. So I don’t want to get stuck in that trap.
But, do you know anyone switching sides from last time? I
know quite a lot who refused to vote for Trump in 2016—before he had a track record—who
are voting for him this time. Steve Deace himself is one of those. Glenn Beck
is another. I am another. (None of us voted for Hillary, by the way.) But I
haven’t encountered a single voter who went with Trump in 2016 who is now
saying, “That was a bad decision, and I’d much rather go with Joe Biden, who
has so many qualities I want as a Republican.” Not one. It’s a large country;
maybe there’s a single voter out there who meets that description. But enough
to cause a historical shift—without anyone being able to find such a person,
let alone a movement?
Deace added this info for perspective:
To put that in historical context, the worst a Republican has
done in the last 7 presidential elections with Republican voters, George
Herbert Walker Bush got 73% in 1992, and that was with a Perot on the ballot
siphoning off his own support, something Trump doesn’t have.
So, what are the odds that this wildly pro-Biden polling is
accurate? I don’t know. But there are a great many things I have more faith in
than these polls.
Other Indicators
Deace ended the segment with this thought, which I’m
repeating from my last post:
If you were to consider every other metric that matters when
looking at an election environment—for example, look at the voter registration
numbers, and it’s not just in Pennsylvania; this is going on across the
country. If you looked at things like the NBA ratings, television ratings,
tanking over wokeness. And that’s the most liberal fan base in American team
sports, probably other than soccer. And even they don’t want to watch this
stuff. Look at the falling unemployment rate. Look at all of those metrics. If
you never looked at a single poll, and you just looked at every other metric
that told you what was going on in an election campaign, you would think Trump
is cruising to reelection. The only thing that says differently are the polls.
Draw your own conclusion from there.
So, there’s voter registration numbers; there’s public
turning away from Democrat policies; there’s positive economic news—which was soaring eight months ago and has been pushing back up despite pandemic-caused economic shutdowns, continued mainly in Democrat-led
areas. Anything else?
There’s this one:
National Instant Criminal Background Check System
for gun purchases through June 2020
FBI graphic, found here
Gun sales have skyrocketed. They’re up 145% this year, according
to FBI data; that’s an estimated 2.4 million through June 2020.
A Washington Examiner story on July 1st explained that the surge started early in this presidential election year, against the fear that a Biden presidency would make guns harder to obtain. The pandemic, followed by rioting that started in May and has continued, have both contributed to the rise in demand. Sales have increased this much even with many gun stores closed.
Does that sound like the behavior of a populous that wants
to elect an anti-Second Amendment president by record-breaking margins? I don’t think so
either.
Chatter
In the intelligence world, they refer to something called “chatter.”
It means they hear snippets and conversations that give them an idea of what is
being planned or acted on. We may not be able to get “news” that
tells us what’s actually happening, but we can listen to chatter, which may not
give us a fully clear picture, but it can fill in some otherwise dark spots.
So I’m going to call this next bit chatter. It’s something I encountered on Facebook that sounds somewhat plausible to me. Do with it what
you will. I don’t know the poster or the commenters (one of which seems to have
listened to Steve Deace); they are participants in a group I read:
Troy Rosenow: Have an acquaintance who does polling as
a business (not the fake MSM, Rasmussen, Cook, etc. stuff—refer to 2016 as
evidence). This guy and his team are on the phones all day doing statistically
valid polling. His team projects every race, every district in every state to
help campaigns know where to spend their dollars (all parties). With 24 days to
go (changing daily):
Electoral: Trump 348 / Biden 170 with Virginia dead even
(worth 13). In several [of the Biden] states the candidates are within
1-3 pts: CO, ME, NV, NH, NJ, NM, OR
Popular: Trump 51 / Biden 44.
Senate: R’s gain 1 (solid), gain 4 total (projected).
House: R’s gain 18 (solid), gain 42 (projected); need 20 to
retake.
Again, these change daily based on actions from the various
campaigns and their candidates. Will be interesting to see how accurate he is,
although he’ll tell you polling is not meant to determine winners, just where
to spend the money. Guarantee you he’s closer than the propaganda on tv though.
Shay McDaniel: The pollsters know which
"Republican" never-Trumpers to poll—and they ignore the areas where
there are a lot of pro-Trump Democrats. At Trump rallies 60% of the attendees
are not Republican, 22% are Democrat, 17% didn't vote in the last election, and
of the 17% that did not vote in 2016, 8.9% did not vote in the last 4
elections. There are record numbers of Republican registrations in states like
PA. The NBA has lost 60% of its viewers, people aren't listening to the Marxist
BLM. It is ludicrous that we have stupid polls with Biden leading by 14 points—that
is almost the winning margin of Reagan over Mondale—that is not occurring in
2020. Trump is ahead, he is also going to get a higher percentage of the
Hispanic and African American vote. There is NO excitement for the old
ridiculous criminal Biden.
Frances Campbell Marshall: Does he publish his results
or have a website? I have no doubt most people in this group would love to
check the daily results.
Troy Rosenow: Unfortunately no. From what I can
gather, his team (over 400 employees) typically spends a full day analyzing 5-8
states. So it takes a good 7-10 days to cycle through the country. They just
finished their first pass through all 50 states yesterday, so these are fresh.
I’m definitely going to try to see if he’ll share another update in a week.
Someone asked the name of the polling company, but the author
hasn’t said.
Enthusiasm
Gap
And then there’s is energy and excitement—call it enthusiasm.
One of the comments on that post put up this image.
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| image found here |
The only time crowds are mentioned on MSM is to scold everyone for spreading COVID—which apparently doesn’t happen at protests or riots?
There’s this thing called the “enthusiasm gap.” A PJ Media piece gives this measure:
It may trigger a replay of 2016 when Trump enthusiasm
outpolled Hillary Clinton’s by 13 points. Now it’s 20. Do we see a pattern?
The story reports that, in a recent Pew poll, only 46% of Biden voters are strong
supporters, while 66% of Trump voters are strong supporters.
That shows up in people’s behavior. And remember, this is
happening at a time when mentioning that you support Trump can get you cancelled on social media, at work, and in families. This is from a New York Post piece:
As Ryan’s boat joined at least 2,000 other watercraft for the
Trump Law and Order Boat Parade, the same scene was playing out in dozens of
harbors, rivers and lakes from the Jersey Shore to San Diego that Labor Day
weekend.
One week later, on Sept. 12, more than 16,000 cars, pickups, motorcycles and semis festooned with banners and bunting jammed Cincinnati’s I-275 beltway in a convoy that looped through three states, one of several Trump car caravans being organized on Facebook. Meanwhile, an unknown fan in Norwell, Mass., stenciled “Trump 2020” in bright yellow letters across the travel lanes of busy Route 3 (Highway crews quickly painted over the message.)
There's a funny story here, with news people in Arizona trying their best to explain why a huge Biden rally has no people.
What Does This Mean?
I am not good at predicting the future. One of the biggest
unknowns is how much voter fraud is being done. But, if a party’s candidate
were actually ahead by record numbers, would they have to resort to massive
voter fraud and mail-in vote chicanery?
If they were truly ahead, wouldn’t they be able to tell the
truth in their debates and stump speeches, rather than distort and lie? (See here, here, and here on debate lies.) Wouldn’t
they be able to declare from the rooftops what their plans are once they take
office, like raising your taxes and taking your gun rights and planning to pack
the court to maintain power, since such massive majorities are backing them?
And would the Speaker of the House be proposing new and
creative ways to remove a president from office—like finding a process to more
easily use the 25th Amendment to declare a president “unable to
discharge the powers and duties of his office”?
Would a party that was actually up by double digits be
acting this desperate?
Worst case scenario? The polling is actually accurate; Biden
wins, and the wheels turn to permanently deprive us of the rights our
Constitution was designed to protect. And suddenly we’re Venezuela. Or China.
Next-worse scenario? Biden wins, but it’s obvious it’s by
voter fraud and conservatives are put in the position of finding a way,
preferably non-violent, to retake their country from dastardly usurper tyrants who do not believe in the rule of law.
More likely scenario? Trump wins, but not by a large enough
margin that the opposition will accept defeat, and we will suffer more rioting
and “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.”
Best case scenario? Trump wins, handily, so there is no
question about the winner. But the losers nevertheless refuse to accept the
outcome. The better case here is if they simply continue what they’ve done the
last four years, attempting but failing to overthrow the duly elected president; the worse
case here would be that they throw tantrums in the form of more rioting and “weeping
and wailing and gnashing of teeth.” But at least we will know that they are a
minority—that a majority of Americans still value our US Constitution, which at
least allows us to ask for God’s intervention to protect us.
I don’t know the actual outcome. I tend to believe it might
be that best case scenario—if we look at any evidence but news polling, which looks designed to sway rather than inform. Nevertheless,
I’m trying to prepare for any outcome, the way we on the Gulf Coast know to
prepare for a hurricane that we know is headed our way.
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