Tag: Political Polls

Monday Wake Up Call – Get Your Ass Out and Vote Edition, November 7, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, ME – November 2022 photo by Eric Storm Photography

We’re not going down without a fight. Both the Dem candidates and media outlets of all stripes are saying that the polls show fading hope for Democrats in the US House and Senate. But many of the polls, particularly those which present an average of other polls, have trouble accounting for a recent slew of Republican-aligned polls.

From The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…what if polls are underestimating support for the Democrats? Many surveys published in the closing weeks of this midterm campaign have come from firms that are either explicitly affiliated with Republican clients or simply publish numbers that are favorable to the party—what pollsters call a “house effect”. According to our poll-of-polls in New Hampshire’s senate race, for example, all seven polls released since October 1st were conducted by firms that we think are publishing numbers that are overly favorable to Republicans.”

The Economist looks at the history of the polling entities. They mention one in particular:

“One example is Emerson College, a prominent firm that releases surveys of races all around the country. In elections from 2000 through 2020, our model finds Emerson College’s polls overestimated support for Republican candidates for office by one percentage point…”

Steve Shepard of  Politico sees the same thing:

“How much of an influence are the Republican polls having? In New Hampshire, four of the last seven polls in the FiveThirtyEight average are from Republican firms. In Pennsylvania, it’s the three most recent polls, and six of the last nine. In Georgia, five of the last seven.”

Dan Pfeiffer says:

“…the math is clear – absent the partisan polls, the polling average looks a little better for Dems.”

More from Pfeiffer:

“…creating a false sense of momentum is a long-running Republican strategy. Many Republicans believe the best way to win elections is to convince voters that you are already winning. The strategy is loosely based on the idea of social proof – people want to be with the winners, not the losers. If the cause seems lost, voters will stay home.”

And the mainsteam media is reporting these polls uncritically. Why?

Republicans attempting to flood the zone with pro-GOP polls makes sense for another reason: They plan to contest any election they lose. And these scam polls showing Republicans ahead provide a sort of “proof” for challenging any election they fail to win.

The Democrats are cynically using the same Republican polls to raise money from their base. Do Dems really have to catastrophize in nearly every email and text message? Wrongo gets more than 20 emails and texts a day from Democrats asking for money by citing that they’re slipping in the polls.

Some slippage may be true, but the abuse of email/text by Democratic and Dem-aligned campaigns is something that absolutely must be addressed after this election. It’s become a disaster. Wrongo thinks the hysteria delivered in email and text may help achieve the Republican’s plan of suppressing turnout because when all we hear is gloom and doom from candidates we support, some of us will give up hope.

OTOH, maybe the negativity will inspire some people to stand in long lines to vote.

This doesn’t feel like a normal midterm election. Early voting so far shows a massive turnout. Traditionally, that’s an advantage for Democrats, but we have no way of knowing whether this big early vote means that large numbers of GOP voters have already voted. We’ll simply have to wait and see.

Regardless, the mainstream media have decided to frame the race as if Republicans already have it in the bag. Despite what we’ve learned about Republican-aligned polls flooding the zone, they’re taking races that are too close to call as a sign that the election is the GOP’s to lose.

That will set up a monumental Right-wing freakout if Democrats happen to pull off a win.

There’s less than 24 hours left before in-person voting begins. Wrongo is sharing the above so fewer people stay discouraged and subsequently stay home on Tuesday.

Time to wake up Democrats! Getting to the polls and getting your kids and friends to the polls may be more important in this election. The margins in many of these House and Senate elections look to be razor thin.

For the next few days we’ll all have to do something we hate: Live in uncertainty.

To help you wake up, watch, and listen to Jenifer Lewis, who plays the grandmother on Black-ish, sing “Get Your Ass Out And Vote” from 2016:

You know what to do, and you know how to do it.

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Saturday Soother – January 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Dawn, Zabriskie Point with Panamint Range in background, Death Valley CA – January 2022 photo by Rick Berk Photography

Various thoughts on a snowy Saturday in Connecticut.

First, in a turnaround from recent polls, a Marquette Law School nationwide survey of adults finds that Biden leads both Florida Gov. DeSantis and former President Trump in hypothetical 2024 matchups:

“In a head-to-head matchup, DeSantis is supported by 33%, while Biden is supported by 41%. A substantial 18% say they would support someone else, and 8% say they would not vote.

In a Trump versus Biden rematch, Trump receives 33% to Biden’s 43%, with 16% preferring someone else and 6% saying they would not vote.”

The survey was conducted between Jan. 10-21, 2022. It surveyed 1000 adults nationwide and has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points. There are always a few outlier polls. Could this be accurate?

Second, even before Justice Breyer announced his retirement, Republicans already had their usual hissy fit over Biden’s decision to name a Black woman to the Supreme Court, implying that she would be an “affirmative action” hire. Republicans on Twitter are prejudging any Black woman nominee as inherently inferior and underqualified.

Ilya Shapiro, a conservative lawyer who will soon teach at Georgetown Law, made it clear that he thinks being Black and a woman means the person is innately unqualified for the Supreme Court. In a since-deleted tweet, he lamented that since his preferred candidate for the job “doesn’t fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get a lesser black woman.”

Shapiro is the same guy who wrote in 2009 that Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination “confirmed that identity politics matter… more than merit,” showing that this is who he’s always been. Wrongo is appalled that my alma mater just gave this guy a job.

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley tweeted that Biden’s pick will cause uncomfortable moments on the Court because:

“…when the justices will hear arguments on the use of race in [college] admissions, one member will have been selected initially through an exclusionary criteria of race and sex.”

He thinks it will cause uncomfortable moments for the White majority on the Court. This is from the same crowd that was fine with the White Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, who had never before been on the bench or even argued an appeal, being on the court.

Third, more about yesterday’s discussion on education, in which we said that the Right-wing is using the slogan of “parental control” to rationalize imposing changes in school curricula and libraries. A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously to ban “Maus,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust from being taught in its classrooms because board members said the book contains material that was inappropriate for eighth grade students. Members also objected to a cartoon that featured a drawing of a “naked” mouse.

Wrongo has read “Maus” and recommends it to readers of all ages.

And there’s this gem from Indiana: HB 1362 mandates that teachers adopt a posture of impartiality in any conversation about controversial historical events. It goes on to state that in the run-up to a general election, students must be taught that: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded. In addition, students must be instructed that if any of these political systems were to replace the current form of government, the government of the United States would be overthrown and existing freedoms under the Constitution of the United States would no longer exist. As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.”

We’re now seeing a deadly combination against public education: parents plus legislators following the marching orders of a Right-wing media complex that spews disinformation.

Time for us to kick back and enjoy our Saturday Soother.

If you live in the Northeast, you’re not going to be driving or working outside today, what with the 50+ mph winds and the 1-2+ ft of snow. So start by brewing up a cup of Pearl District Blend ($17.00/12 oz.) from Portland, Oregon’s Cycletown Coffee Roasters.

Now grab a seat by a window and listen to Giuseppe Verdi’s “Va, pensiero“, also known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves“, from his 1842 opera “Nabucco”. It recollects the period of Babylonian captivity in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Here it’s performed outdoors in front of a large audience in Naples, Italy by the orchestras of the Theater of San Carlo, and the National Academy of Sainta Cecilia, in July 2009. It’s not totally on point for Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but it’s beautiful:

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Can Dems Beat Trump In The 2020 Battleground States?

The Daily Escape:

Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca, NY – October 2019 photo by mattmacphersonphoto

Some news was made by pollsters yesterday. The NYT and Siena College are out with a poll of 2020 battleground states that shows Trump is highly competitive in head-to-head matchups with the top Democratic candidates. Even though Trump is by far the most unpopular president in American history, these polls indicate that he could get re-elected.

Here are the top line results. Among registered voters, Biden narrowly leads Trump in four of them, Sanders in three, Warren in one:

These states were the key contests in 2016 between Hillary and Trump. Trump’s approval ratings have long been in the high 30s to low 40s, and he trails Biden by almost nine points in an average of national polls. But as the 2016 race showed, the story in the battleground states can be quite different. Mr. Trump won these six states even while losing the national vote by two percentage points.

In this poll, Trump trails Biden by an average of two points, but that result is within the margin of error in the individual states. And we know how erroneous the polls were in November 2016. You can look at the current poll’s cross-tabs here.

Hate to pour cold water on Democrats, but Trump could lose the 2020 popular vote by upwards of ten million, and still win in the Electoral College.

This is reality – it will come down to six states. This is why people get so disengaged from presidential politics. Then, by not voting in election years, the Congress, state houses, and state assemblies stay with the Republicans.

Ten years from now, the demographics will be different. Consider Texas, where Latinos will outnumber non-Hispanic whites by 2022. OTOH, we have a census next year, and some states are deploying multimillion-dollar efforts to ensure their population gets counted correctly. But in the South, only three states have allocated state funding for census outreach, with just eight months to go.

It may take time, but much of the South will again come back into play. Maybe people won’t feel like they’re overlooked if presidential campaigns actually required the votes of people in most states in order to win.

Just six states. That should infuriate everyone. We remain at the mercy of the Electoral College.

But there’s more. Nate Cohn says in the Times article:

“Nearly two-thirds of the Trump voters who said they voted for Democratic congressional candidates in 2018 say that they’ll back the president against all three named opponents.”

The crossover by Republicans to vote for a Democrat in 2018 was a factor in taking back the House. So, losing two-thirds of them sounds terrible for Dems, until you realize that it means 1/3 of Trump’s 2016 voters in those states say they’ll stay with the Dems in 2020. And Trump’s margin in PA, MI, and WI was just 80,000 in 2016

We’re at a point where the Democratic field is narrowing. Four candidates have moved clear of the field, Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg. Biden and Buttigieg represent middle-of-the-road liberalism, while Warren and Sanders represent a more liberal, anti-corporate philosophy. Only Buttigieg is under 70, but that doesn’t matter if the opponent is over 70 himself. The rest of the field barely polls at 2%.

It’s likely that the Dem nominee will be one of these four, but it’s way too early to be concerned about how they perform vs. Trump’s relative strength in the battleground states he won in 2016.

It’s smart for Democrats to fight as though every poll has them way behind. And the figures on advertising dollars spent per campaign show that Trump is currently spending as much money as all the Democrats combined.

A year from now, we’ll be entering a different world. But since we can’t know the future, it could be either wonderful news, or more of the brain-melting hell in which we currently reside.

To make sure it’s a new world, we have to do everything we can to ensure that someone new is elected, someone who will oppose with every vote, every fiber of their being, the policies and hate spewed by Trump and his GOP fellow-travelers.

This means we have to work to turn them out not only from the presidency, but from every other elected office, from county commissioner to the House and Senate.

How?  There are a lot of ways, from donating money, to donating time at the local Party office; to writing letters to the editor, or making your voice heard through whatever means you can.

The How is important, but the Why is what should energize every one of us.

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