In May of this year, political light-years ago, a syndicated piece by David Limbaugh was published on this website, “Trump Supporters: Fear Not Those Discouraging Polls.”
Light years, yes, and much has changed since May. But the fact remains that the polls could not be reliably trusted then, and cannot be trusted now. Many of them are intentionally designed to dishearten and dispirit voters who support the president. Their designers and the people who work for them are in the business of seeding the ground with hopelessness.
The idea that Joe Biden’s catatonic campaign could be eclipsing the invigorated Trump sweep across America seems patently counterintuitive. While Biden struggles to attract a clutch of die-hard Democrats into a gymnasium, Trump is pulling up in Air Force One to overflow crowds and rock-star excitement.
Crowds on the ground do not necessarily a winning ticket make, that’s true. But enthusiasm gaps cannot be dismissed.
Some leftist pundits have floated the notion that since Biden supporters are more likely to harbor realistic fears about COVID, they are astronomically less likely to turn out en masse. Even if that’s true, it registers as impolitic. It creates a contrast that doesn’t do the Biden campaign any favors: Biden’s base cowering in their homes, and walking dogs in parks with masks on, while Trump’s base refuses to allow an admittedly nasty but ultimately surmountable virus to stop the workings of the country, or forestall their willingness to brave a virus to show support.
It’s a pretty good metaphor for the whole election. More alarmingly, it’s a good metaphor for the respective fate awaiting the republic dependent upon which candidate prevails on November 3rd.
Fear not the polls? Mr. Limbaugh is, of course, correct. Here’s an excerpt:
I’m old enough to remember when exit polling was so accurate that if you got word at noon on Election Day that your favored candidate was losing, you could take it to the bank — or to your psychiatrist. You knew the pit in your stomach was based on something real and likely irreversible. At some point, however, that changed, and it’s hard to know why.
The accuracy of preelection polling has also waned over the years, maybe because it’s hard to get a random sampling with the advent of cellphones and deserved cynicism over politically-motivated polling. In this era of political correctness, political shaming, and cancel culture, surely many tell pollsters what they think they want to hear rather than what they truly believe. Let’s also admit that polls vary widely. Just this week, as progressives were reporting that polling shows Trump is toast, a new Gallup poll shows his approval ratings at an all-time high.
That was May, this is now. Has anything substantively changed? The Real Clear average has always, from the first 2020 poll, “shown” dampened if not downright impossible prospects for a Trump second term. That and $1.39 will get you a medium coffee at 7-Eleven.
Where things get interesting is in the battleground (or swing state) polls. Battleground polls that “vary widely” as much as confirm that every battleground state remains a toss-up. It is in those narrow-margin battlegrounds that Trump defeated the widely-favored Hillary Clinton, and it is in those same battlegrounds that the president must edge if not obliterate Biden.
While most battleground polls still show an edge for Biden, the gap is narrowing – if the polls can be considered as accurately representative of the eventual outcome at all.
What we’ve got on the polling front are some polls that Republicans and conservatives generally trust. For example, Bill O’Reilly likes Rasmussen and Trafalgar Group. Concerning for Trump supporters a week or so ago was that Trafalgar had Biden eight points ahead of Trump in battleground Pennsylvania. A new poll from Trafalgar has Biden’s 47.4% against Trump’s 45.1%.
You can pretty much throw any Keystone State margin of error out the window at this point. This race is inevitably tightening in the states that matter most in terms of the Electoral College.
What we’ve also got is polling designed to sow despair amongst Trump voters. Duplicitous, manipulative, and underhanded attempts to create and conduct polls that unethically spin results in favor of Biden.
What about the internal polling, conducted by campaigns or entities that have a partisan stake in a given candidate? What can be ascertained from the actions of the left in terms of what they are seeing in their internals? What can be surmised from the actions of President Trump in terms of what he is seeing?
Contrary to published polling that has consistently shown the president losing to Biden, it can be compellingly argued based on obvious Socialist Democrat desperation plays too numerous to mention that what they are seeing in their internal polling is not good. That the same flawed polling dynamics that consistently and preemptively showed Clinton as unbeatable in 2016 are in play here, and will be inexorably exposed as equally inaccurate when pedal reaches metal in the final days before Election Day.
That what they are seeing spells disaster for Biden/Harris.
By contrast, Mr. Trump seems pretty confident.
There’s no way of knowing how accurate the 2020 polls will prove to have been. Up till now, they have almost universally projected a negative outcome for the president. Yet the unhinged and desperate actions of the Democrat left seem to intuitively suggest that all is not as it may seem. And while Biden supporters presumably stay home and timidly cast their mail-in ballots, Trump’s Troops are on the march.
Beware the internals, Democrats, and may God bless MAGA.
Mark Ellis is the author of A Death on the Horizon, a finalist in the 14th annual National Indie Excellence Awards in the category of General Fiction. Follow Mark on Twitter.
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