Gaps and errors in polling date are more commonplace as an increasing number of pollsters try to make room for themselves in a growing marketplace. Hard upon the inaccuracies of polling data in both 2020 and 2022, that many pollsters either corrected after the fact, or saw a trend coming and made a quick adjustment just before an election and then afterward claimed accuracy, we have a set of polling data coming out this weekend that shows Biden trailing Trump in key battleground states
I remain unconvinced that half of the voters in this country would really cast a ballot for Trump, after the shenanigans he pulled to try and overturn an election and stay in office when voters sent him packing. I have a hard time seeing how segments of Democratic voters, most of whom fall to the left of center, and would be far worse off under a Trump administration, would stay home on election day, effectively letting Trump win and defeating everything they are fighting to establish. I don't believe younger voters are as fickle as some of the pollsters make them out to be, and that they do not understand what is at stake. Nor do I believe that African American and Latino voters are turning to a party that is increasingly more openly racist and specifically bigoted against their interests.
A Major Shift in Public Opinion Doesn't Just Happen Overnight
Trump didn't lead in any polls over Biden a month ago. Not one. Now, all of a sudden, in a couple of weekend polls, he's ahead by three points, and ahead in five of six battleground states where Democrats swept the mid-term elections except, ironically, the one that was actually the closest in the 2020 election and in the mid-terms. And Trump, with a disapproval rating of 57% to 63% in virtually every poll, is the choice of 51% of voters? How does that happen?
My personal speculation, and I'll make this clear, is that it doesn't happen. Pollsters are collecting data on a daily basis, and getting raw numbers without any real context all the time. They all have their "factors" that they use to calculate, "scientifically," of course, their polling data. A year away from the election, they are safe reporting just about anything they want to report. There's no election by which to measure their accuracy. So they can claim a small "margin of error," but it doesn't really matter because they're a year away from accountability. That's why the polls "tighten up" before an election.
A lot of them got caught with their pants down, so to speak, following the mid-terms in 2022. After the fact, they were claiming to be "within the margin of error." But it turns out that there was evidence of a lot of phony data floating around that skewed the composites and caused them to have to make adjustments for it after the fact. I read the narratives on three composite polling sites the night before the mid-terms, and while a lot of the language is vague and obfuscating, "the odds say," "it is a high probability that," "there's a possibility this could change," they all left the clear impression that we were going to see a red wave in Congress, and a Republican-controlled Senate. But couched in terms so that they could come back a few days later and say that they didn't predict that at all. Such is the nature of what we're looking at here.
Fox News polling has consistently put Biden ahead of Trump in battleground states and across the board. I believe their purpose in doing that is to frighten their viewers into making sure they go to the polls and vote. And while it may seem cynical to assign the motive of manipulation to pollsters, almost all of whom are funded by one party or the other, or by television networks looking for ratings that boost revenue, I remain unconvinced that they are all just trying to report facts and let us decide.
Democrats and the President Do Not Have Control of the Narrative
When has it ever been the case that the sitting President of the United States has not received the majority of the time major news networks devote to political coverage? Yet, that has been the case since the first day Joe Biden moved into the White House. His predecessor has received the lion's share of news coverage in the time the media devotes to political reporting. I haven't seen an analysis of it, but I'm willing to bet that Trump gets three times more minutes on a daily basis than Biden does. And that puts Republicans in the spotlight more than Democrats.
The candidacy of former Vice President Pence, who failed to attract a following of even 1% of GOP voters, gets more coverage than Vice President Kamala Harris, who has been actively engaging with voters. In proportion to the time he gets in the media, Trump should be the clear front runner and ahead by 30 points. That's exactly why he stays in the lead in the GOP field, the media doesn't talk about anyone else.
So there's the first order of business for Democrats, and for those who are going to work for the President's re-election. Get the media coverage the President deserves. Surely, there are Democrats in positions of leadership who can figure out how to do this. There aren't as many people who watch mainstream media any more, but still, if two thirds of the political coverage is going to a former president then some stragegy is needed to get that to change. The President's achievements, and whatever else it takes to get in front of cameras and make news, should be high on the agenda now.
When they shut the government down, Democrats need to control the news coverage and get ahead of the messaging, making sure Republicans, not Democrats or Biden, get the full blame. That's the GOP goal, pretty clear from how direct they are about it, so will Democrats do anything to put the blame for that squarely where it belongs and work to make it stick? Remember, these are the people who tried to blame Democrats for McCarthy's downfall and the inability to secure a speaker of the house for weeks. When do they get pilloried for that? They haven't been so far.
What's the Alternative?
Four years of a Trump Presidency would be a dictatorship of white supremacist Christian nationalism. That's the only way to describe it. The Constitution would be a worthless scrap of paper, as would be the individual rights of any American who was not white, rich and conservative. Crime would be a matter of definition, and those who have committed crimes against humanity and against the Constitution would be in charge. Convincing Americans this is where things were headed after Trump's first election, and where they would go if he ever gets back in the White House is the task at hand. I hope there are people in the party who see this, are up for it, and are willing to make this an ongoing theme.
All that Democrats identify as wrong with House Speaker Mike Johnson's ideology and approach to governing is exactly what we will get if Trump is elected.
The strategy of the GOP following Trump's defeat was to figure out how to divide and conquer in order to win on the margins, using antiquated states' rights provisions and an outdated electoral college since they know they can't win elections at large. They've done a fine job, getting Biden's age to the center of the divisiveness, turning the criminal proceedings against Trump into a political issue, rather than being about his crimes, and they've succeeded because they control the narrative, and they have media at their immediate disposal. They are funding third-partiers, though up to this point, those they've found and are willing to help are fixated on Republican issues and would take more GOP voters away than Democrats.
Case in point, RFK Junior has faded from coverage, once he decided to become independent. He'd take more votes from the GOP and Trump than Democrats. And all that "no-labels" talk about Manchin and Hunstman has also died down, at least for now, since they, too, would take more GOP voters.
The alternative to a second Biden term is disaster for representative Democracy in America and for freedom and individual rights. If these polls are even close to accurate, they signal a problem that we must begin to deal with right now. This is a wake up call and we cannot waste any more time. Public pressure needs to push for these trials to move forward and render verdicts. But more than that, the pettiness and divisiveness that has crept in needs to stop, and we need to unite this country around a common enemy to its democracy and constitution. Now is the time, Democrats, for all good men and women to come to the aid of their party.
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