Friday, July 8, 2022

My Article At American Thinker July 7th 2022 "GOP freakouts and the Ten-Day Rule"

GOP freakouts and the Ten-Day Rule

Richard Baris said it succinctly: "Last month, it was 'Ukraine.' Week before Roe, it was 'Gun Safety.' We call them 'News Cycle DEMs.'" This is of course perfectly true, but the corollary is that, unfortunately, many Republicans react to these Dem media and Twitter onslaughts in total Chicken Little mode.

A seemingly major event takes place, often artificially magnified in its supposed political importance by the Twitter Dembot mob and the usual media suspects, followed by an equal-in-volume GOP chorus of "the midterms have slipped away from us," "we are doomed," and endless variations of these morose themes flood Republican timelines and articles.

Recall former British prime minister Harold Wilson's eternal political dictum: "a week in politics is a long time." I'll add my less well known dictum: "always remember the 'Rule of Ten.'"

Regarding Wilson's statement, a few moments of consideration will show that what seemed momentous in the fast-changing media cycle was totally removed from the voter's consciousness, if it ever penetrated it in the first place, within a matter of days as the Baris cycle pedaled on.

But using the Rule of Ten, Republicans can divest themselves of this unfortunate habit and direct their energies to more profitable use.

So what is "The Rule of Ten"? Quite simply, it is that whatever the political framework may be, for example the midterm congressional polling, no matter how seemingly earthshaking an event may seem, ten days afterward, is the point at which a real judgment as to its effects, or not, can be determined.

If at the end of ten days the event, bolstered by Dem activity, has shown a marked change against the GOP in the polling aggregate, then by all means proceed to freak out. However, such negative movements have simply not happened, so nil desperandum.

The first example of an event that caused a GOP freak-out was the Supreme Court Roe v. Wade leak on May 2. The RCP midterm aggregate was GOP +4. Ten days later, May 12, despite all the furor and GOP doom and gloom, it was GOP +3.8.

On May 24 the Uvalde tragedy. GOP +2.2. On June 3, it was GOP +2.1.

On June 9, the 1/6 Commission starts. GOP +3.5. On June 20, it was GOP +2.8.

On June 24, Roe overturned/bipartisan gun bill passes, the latter if which produced huge GOP "angst." GOP +3.4. On (holiday intervening) July 6: GOP +2. This seeming move down was distorted by three push polls over the period from the usual suspects: Politico; PBS, which came out one day after the Dobbs ruling; and a ludicrous midterms Dem +7 Yahoo "poll."

During this entire period, the GOP's midterm congressional lead fluctuated from between +1.5 and +4 (Rasmussen, a daily tracker, accurately captures these reactions to events), which is entirely to be expected, given when different polls with their Dem or GOP demographic structural leanings report their findings. The mean would be about GOP +2.5%, which would be historically near landslide territory.

The bottom line is that unless an event is a genuine game-changer (the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco was such an event) or a series of events that structurally changes the voters' mood, and the change is bedded in over a reasonable time, after ten days at a minimum, Republicans can stop worrying over each media sensation. The cake is baked.

Friday, April 22, 2022

My Article As published At American Thinker; "The 2020 Loss — A Blessing In Disguise?"

he 2020 Loss — A Blessing In Disguise?

Let’s be totally frank: if on election night 2020 a total of just over 40,000 votes across Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona had gone for President Donald Trump instead of Biden it would have eventuated in a complete disaster for both Trump and the GOP with the latter likely out of the presidency for a dozen years or more.

Trump’s 269/269 Electoral College tie “win” i.e., being put into office by a majority of state delegations in the House of Representatives even though he had lost the popular vote by an unprecedented seven million votes, 4.3% behind the “loser,” would have made the 2016 protests against his, also minority popular vote win, seem a Sunday picnic.

The media, already hateful, would have turned venomous, and the atmosphere leading up to the House meeting and determining him re-elected would have been filled with commentary calling on the House delegates to switch their votes, further inflaming the environment.

But should the constitutional process have worked its way through on strictly partisan basis, including Vice-President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote for himself, a sullen quiet would have descended on the country.

Again, being frank, the current inflationary economy commenced its stark rise, caused in the main by the massive creation of money, just after Biden’s inauguration along with the supply chain bottlenecks. Trump would have owned all of it.

Now, if in this current economy President Trump were in charge, it is difficult to imagine the political environment as being anything other than a complete and utter disaster for Trump and the GOP. Even with a still more or less compliant media supporting Biden and overlooking his lapses, he still manages to be around the 41% approval rating for all of this year to date.

If Trump were in office today, he would be lucky to be in the high 20s. The Dems and media would be hitting the “illegitimate president.” The GOP “establishment” would be completely emboldened and would be fracturing what would be left of any messaging cohesion from the Trump administration.

If Putin had invaded the Ukraine the media/Dems response would be unimaginable. After four years of, without cause, calling Trump “Putin’s puppet,” the rhetoric would be through the roof. If Trump did not take any overt action, he would be called worse than a traitor “enabling the death of democracy.” If he had taken strong action, then “Trump is leading us into World War Three.”

As bad as the midterms currently look for the Dems, the prospect of a near complete annihilation of the GOP would make their outlook appear just like the normal, historical swings. There would have been the very real prospect of a filibuster proof 60+ Dem senate and a two-thirds House majority if not in 2022, then most certainly in 2024.

Whoever was the unfortunate Republican presidential candidate would go down to a Mondale-type defeat and what was left of the GOP would be out of the presidency, possibly up to 12 years. Such massive across-the-board rejection would have seen the most radical Democratic party legislation rammed through with every progressive agenda wish passed completely and finally changing the polity to a bicoastal ultra-liberal one.

What would have been particularly tragic for the GOP would have been the loss of the current marked swing to their ranks by Hispanics which would also have put Texas in play for the Dems in such a massive swing environment.

As it stands now, should they lose control of the House next year, Democrats will have a more emboldened progressive caucus, having lost many moderate and swing district members. This will present the electorate with a stark choice: a continuation of the current progressive inspired economy, illegal immigration and “woke” social mores, or a return to the pre-COVID booming Trump economy, especially for Blacks and Hispanics.

In contrast to the potentially disastrous political situation for the GOP which a narrow 2020 win would have engendered, the prospect for both Trump and the entire Republican party for 2022 and 2024 looks bright.

In fact, looking even further out, 2028 would not be marked by the usual two-term election malaise as the political reality in that respect is that it would appear for Trump’s successor as a follow on from a single term.

Sometimes a loss, no matter how much it hurts, can turn out to be a blessing in disguise, and 2020 is very much that blessing. The Biden administration’s policy plans have been waylaid by Omicron, Manchin and Sinema, inflation, Putin’s war, rising urban crime and internal party divisions. So far Biden’s 2020 win has not inflicted too much damage than can’t quickly be fixed in 2022/24

About forty thousand votes in two presidential elections in a row will have determined the American landscape for a generation after the midterms — such are the imponderables of fate in a polarized society.

Monday, March 14, 2022

Analysis of 26 Current Polling Shows Shift From Aggregate D+7 In 2020 To D+2

In June 2020 I did a comprehensive, ground breaking analysis of all available polls from Real Clear Politics and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.

The result were staggering, the aggregate, which included a few low bias polls, to the Democratic Party was +7.6 with some polls being as high a D+13!

After the pollster humiliating disasters in 2016 and 2020 the message appears to have sunk in that if they continued with their obvious biased polling they would lose what little credibility they had left. Thus there has been a noticeable shift in a more balanced polling since the 2020 election.

For example Quinnipiac, which used the be at the forefront of some preposterous Dem leaning polls, has now become one of the most conservative pollster usually reporting President Biden's approval numbers well below even the Republican orientated polls.

The fact that prior to 2021 most such polling outfits had their "weightings" wrong i.e. they failed to include enough rural voters, the propensity for Republicans not to participate in polls in their analysis and didn't allow for the Republican turnout differential. Given the marked drop in polls giving Biden a substantial higher rating over Rasmussen/Trafalgar (both of which have been "upgraded" in their respective ratings by FiveThirtyEight it appears these lessons have been taken on board to one degree or another.

I have done a further comprehensive analysis of 26 available pollsters and the bias difference is remarkable, From D+7 to now D+2 (rounded and including consensus) a shift of 5 points and now near exact the CNN exit poll result from 2020

I have, as previously, included links to every poll that includes their Dem/Rep/Ind demographics. Unfortunately a small number, some with high profiles, do not indicate such data or "hide" it in their questionnaires. Where such obscured data is available I have indicted that the ratio are the result of outside, assisted, analysis but the data is still linked.

Here are the most current polls with their demographics, Dem or GOP lean, and their poll links. Any errors of tabulation would be minor and given the large sample would have minimal affect of the aggregate of all polls. It may be necessary to cut and paste some links, all links are active as of this writing.

For reference;

"CNN's 2020 exit poll data indicates voter party splits at Dems 37%, GOP 36% & Unaffiliated Voters at 27% D+1"

NPR/PBS/Marist D+6 33/27/38 RV

https://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_202203010901.pdf

Tarrance Group RV Even

30% Rep, 40% Ind, 30%

https://prod-static.gop.com/media/documents/RNC_Data_Survey_Executive_Summary_1_1646064029.pdf

McLaughlin D+1 LV

37/36/27

https://mclaughlinonline.com/pols/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/National-Monthly-February-2022-Release.pdf

Reuters/IPSOS D+7 46/39/15 AV

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2022-03/2022%20Ipsos%20Tracking%20-%20Core%20Political%20Presidential%20Approval%20Tracker%207%20thru%208%20Mar%202022.pdf

Reuters/IPSOS D+8.8

D+8.8 The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English throughout the United States. The latest poll gathered responses from 1,005 adults in total including 439 Democrats and 351 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 4 percentage points.

https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-BIDEN/POLL/nmopagnqapa/index.html

Rasmussen D+2 LV

D35, R33, IND32

https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1503408115672363016/photo/1

IBD/TIPP Not Available 2020;

2020 (Not Included)

IBD: 1413 Registered Voters weighted D40, R30, Ind30 -

CBS D+6 AV (Consensus analysis)

35.9/29.6/34.4 D/R/I

"The breakdown for each question reveals the answer: 52.3/47.7 Biden v Trump (665/606, so way less than overall sample, and slight Biden oversample) and 35.9D/29.6R/34.4I (701/578/672 - most of the sample). D+6.3 seems overweighted D.

Based on

https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Y21kBKAQnfc-MVyhlYNIMWD8iGjU_Nk/view

SELZER/GRINNELL AV Even 34/34/27/5

https://www.grinnell.edu/sites/default/files/docs/2021-03/GCNP%20Methodology%2003-31-21_1.pdf

SCR The Hill R+3 LV

· Do you consider yourself a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yTbbk7etuyPVr7Id_QlKPKl_BbUGC6MN/edit

Democrat	33%
Republican	36%
Independent	28%
Some other political party	3%

Economist/YouGov Economist/YouGov D+3 38/35/21 AV

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/2g5l01eto4/econToplines.pdf

Quinnipiac RV N/A

Harvard/Harris D+2 38/36/24/2 RV

https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/January-2022_HHP_Crosstab.pdf

ABC NEWS/WASHINGTON POST D+1 RV

Democrat Republican Independent Other (vol.) No opinion

27/26/ 40/ 4/ 3

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21282643-2022-02-24-trend-for-release

Associated Press NORC D+8

https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/SCOTUS-topline-2_22-2.pdf

FOX NEWS Varies between D+5 and GOP +3 Aggregate D+0.2 RV

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2022/02/Fox_February-19-22-2022_National_Topline_February-24-Release.pdf

EMERSON D+1.5 37.4/35.9/26.7 RV

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/february-2022-national-poll-inflation-tops-nation-s-concerns-perception-of-covid-s-public-health-threat-drops

USA TODAY/SUFFOLK D+1.8 32.7 /30.9/31.5 RV

https://www.suffolk.edu/-/media/suffolk/documents/academics/research-at-suffolk/suprc/polls/national/2022/02_28_2022_complete_marginals.pdf?la=en&hash=6644AE77129EC0F4D711EB83D90CBC0E683DA658

POLITICO/MORNING CONSULT D+6 40/34/36 RV

https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2022/03/08120211/2203034_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v3_SH.pdf

GALLUP D+3 RV 29/27/42 AV

https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx

TRAFALGAR D +3.7 39.3/35.6/25.1 LV

https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/TRF-Biden-Approval-0217-Poll-Report.pdf

FEDERALIST/SUSQUEHANA R+2 39/41/15 LV

https://www.scribd.com/document/558262784/New-FDRLST-Susquehanna-Polls-Shows-GOP-6-Ahead-Of-2022-Mid-Terms-Topline-Results

CNN R+1 30/31/39 RV

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21201827/cnn-poll-on-biden-approval-rating-januaryfebruary-2022.pdf

MONMOUTH R+5 26/31/33 January 2020 RV

https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_US_012622/