The devil is always in the details. Washington Post columnist Aaron Blake took a deep dive into the crosstabs on a recent New York Times/Sienna poll and found the data did not align with his worldview on threats to democracy. Perhaps someday, the coastal cabal of journalists who told workers in flyover country to “learn to code” will understand that the world looks very different between D.C. and Los Angeles than it does from their ivory towers. Today is not that day.
The most adorable part of the analysis is Blake’s disbelief that the January 6 narrative pushed by D.C. Democrats, Twitter activists, and their stenographers in the corporate media is nowhere to be found in the results. If he had investigated a recent Harvard Harris poll, Blake would have known that only 7% of voters saw the Capitol riot, which happened almost two years ago, as an issue in the 2022 midterms.
Instead, he found the evidence in the NYT/Sienna details. Voters do not see the Republican Party as a significant threat to democracy, despite the breathless coverage of the January 6 Committee and its recent “bombshell” cherry-picked text messages. Blake lamented:
A New York Times/Siena College poll shows that 45 percent of Americans regard Trump as a “major” threat to democracy, while just 28 percent say the same of the GOP.
That 28 percent figure is actually smaller than the percentage who view the Democratic Party as a threat to democracy (33 percent) — despite there being no comparable example of Democrats trying to overturn an election.
Imagine his horror when he saw how Democrats outscored the GOP. Blake may want to consider that most Americans do not see an unarmed protest turned riot that included as many grandmothers as young men of military age as a legitimate attempt to overthrow the government. The entire nation lived through three years of the Russian collusion circus, a significantly more serious effort to undermine a duly elected president than January 6.
Related: Democrats’ Disconnect With Voters Is a Gaping Chasm With Only Three Weeks Left
Then Blake discovered just how different the view is from the cheap seats:
The poll shows that 71 percent of Trump 2020 voters regard Democrats as a major threat to democracy. But just 52 percent of Biden voters say the same about the GOP.
And independents are significantly more likely to view Democrats as a major threat than Republicans. Although more than 6 in 10 view each party as at least a minor threat, just 23 percent view the GOP as a major threat, while 31 percent say the same of Democrats. Independents are actually more likely to view voting by mail as a major threat to democracy (31 percent) than the GOP.
It is hard not to laugh, so don’t try. And hold onto your seat. Blake completely ignored one finding in his analysis that could explain why the details surprised him. When voters were asked about the biggest threats to democracy, a clear majority selected only one group. Fifty-nine percent said the mainstream media was a major threat to democracy, while 29% saw them as a minor threat.
Blake really thought Liz Cheney’s Prime Time Circus would rank above inflation, crime, and immigration. If Blake happened to scroll the latest Monmouth poll released Thursday, he might have been buoyed by 38% of respondents selecting elections and voting as an important issue. However, the way Monmouth asked the question could elicit a wide range of perspectives. Likewise, abortion scored 30%, but the left-wing media bias always assumes that respondents agree with the Democrat Party’s narrative. In reality, pro-life voters and people concerned with election fraud are included in both of these findings.
Blake would have also seen that almost half of Americans, 46%, rank inflation as an extremely important issue. That is nearly a 10-point increase from the poll Monmouth took in September. More than three-quarters, 77%, also report that increases in gas prices have caused a great deal of financial hardship. The issues of crime and immigration pull 37% and 34%, respectively.
Even more stunning, 69% percent of Americans with kids in the house disapprove of Biden’s job performance. Making parents a coalition by shoving radical gender theory and racialized curriculum into the K-12 classroom may be the dumbest thing Democrats ever did. Only 24% of parents approve of Biden’s performance, giving the president a net approval of -45 among people with children. And no one will put January 6 ahead of their children’s wellbeing.
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