Good News for President Biden in the Real Polls

The turning point for President Obama in his 2012 re-election bid was his nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.  Polls, which up to that point had favored Mitt Romney, some by as much as 6 points, shifted quickly as the result of the convention "bump" and Romney had to play catch-up from that point on.  He wasn't successful and Obama was pronounced the winner before midnight on election night when he was declared the winner in Ohio.  

It's been interesting watching the media, and their manner of handling polling data in this election.  No matter what happens, the needle doesn't seem to move, according to them.  It's a dead heat, a horserace, Trump up by one, by four, leading in all six battleground states, even though not all of the polling data has shared that conclusion.  No matter what happens, the numbers don't change.  Or, when one poll, especially if it's the New York Times/Siena College poll, it gets national attention while another poll, Emerson or Quinnipiac or YouGov, or the Washington Post shows almost exactly opposite data over the same period of time.  

Can Polls Be Manipulated?

I believe they can be.  So does Jen Psaki and Nicole Wallace.  So I am in good company.  

Most polls are operated by for-profit media outlets.  So the obvious question would be, "Who stands to benefit by manipulating polling data?"  When it goes in Trump's favor, that would be the obvious answer. Although the campaigns have their internal polling, which doesn't get disclosed, it is possible that what's visible to the public might have an affect on how people vote, whether they turn out, or even on how a campaign presents its candidate.  

Can billionaires, who support Trump, have a bearing on the polling data that is reported?  And how about the Russians?  If I were an attorney, I'd be using both of those options to make a case for reasonable doubt.  Or, are we simply looking at outdated polling methods that don't produce reliable results?  All of those are legitimate possibilities.  

Polls tend to "tighten" prior to an election and it's been my theory for a long time that this is to keep legitimacy when they've been exaggerating numbers to puff a candidate.  If polls are significantly off from the actual results of the election, and outside the margins of error, trust in the data is eroded.  Also, when claiming their own accuracy, pollsters and the composites who speak in terms of odds, not exact numbers, need good numbers to "prove" their accuracy.  But even some of the post-election articles written by pollsters about how right they were are exaggerations or outright falsehoods.  It's hard to access most of their data post-election to prove otherwise, so we have to take their word for it.  

There was a bump in the polling data for President Biden following his State of the Union address.  Depending on the poll, it was a decent shift, and most of the available data now shows him leading in the "battleground states."  I tend to think he probably has been all along, and the guesses made by the pollsters in Democratic voter enthusiasm have been off.  Not only that, but while Trump has been bogged down in court, the President has been everywhere, touting his achievements and pointing to his successes.  And now that it's clear that Biden vs. Trump is the election we have, people are paying attention and Trump himself is helping drive down his numbers with his outrageous rhetoric.  

Voters Are Providing Insights Into How the Electorate May Cast Their 2024 Ballot for President

At the moment, while I still believe there's been polling manipulation from somewhere on the Trump side of the campaign, because those numbers seem to be his personal nourishment and encouragement, and he exaggerates them as bragging points in his speeches, there is evidence that the polling data may be off by a fairly significant amount.  Real polls are now showing up all over the place in the form of primary elections, and special elections.  

It's hard to poll primaries, since candidates shift and things change quickly, but if I were going to take a look at primary results and get a perspective of "voter enthusiasm," if I were advising the Trump campaign right now, I would be panicking.  In actual voter exit polls, and in the ballots Republican voters are casting, the presumptive nominee of the party, a former President and one who has been the clear front-runner since the start, is not getting anywhere close to the number of votes he needs to demonstrate a level of voter enthusiasm anywhere close to what the current President is getting.  

Even after dropping out of the campaign, Nikki Haley and Ron Desantis continue to get percentages of the Republican vote from voters who tell exit pollsters they're not voting for Trump.  He can't afford to lose any votes, and win the electoral votes he needs, but he's losing 20% of his own party right now.  It doesn't matter in a state he has no chance of winning, like New York, Connecticut or Rhode Island, but what he didn't get in Wisconsin last night was significant.  And that's a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the primaries, and is being seen in the exit polling. MSNBC is underlining the significance of what's going on, and a couple of CNN reporters have mentioned it.  

The Trump campaign has obviously noticed it.  He's now promising his Evangelical constituents the favored religion status they've always thought they deserved.  Clearly, he thinks that's where he needs to shore up his support, and that's where he's leaking votes.  So they believe the exit polls and are watching the primary results, in spite of claiming that they're huge victories.  Haley is no longer running, and is not a threat to his nomination, but she got 12% of the vote in Wisconsin last night, in spite of his making an appearance and holding a rally at a half-filled venue in Green Bay.  

I can read between the lines.  

Other Measurements Show Biden on Track for Re-Election

Skewed polls are one thing.  Money is quite another.  President Biden is so far ahead of Trump, in terms of both total number of donors, and amounts of money raised, that it is both an indication of voter enthusiasm and of his ability to win what many think will be a close election.  And let's just be honest here, putting Lara Trump in as co-chair of the RNC is a sign of just how panicked Trump is over this one particular aspect of the campaign.  What we now know is that Trump does not have the financial resources to finance his own campaign, or pay his legal bills.  A lot of Republican congressmen and Senators are also panicked, as they see little prospect of drawing from the RNC for their own re-election campaigns.  

Let's not pass over the significance of this aspect of the campaign.  The number of people who financially contribute to a Presidential campaign is a direct measurement of the level of voter enthusiasm.  Factor that in to a few polls and see how the numbers change.

Here's another huge difference.  Two former Democratic Presidents, both popular with Democrats and independent voters, are engaged in big, visible roles in Biden's re-election campaign.  Both Obama and Clinton are front and center, helping with a huge haul of donations this past week and making appearances, with the President and on his behalf, among constituencies the Democrats feel need a little bit of encouragement.  

How many former Republican Presidents, or for that matter, former Republican candidates for President, are out on the campaign trail on Trump's behalf?  The only other living former Republican President has indicated he will vote for Biden, again.  The former Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, has openly declared he will not support Trump.  

Put that in your "voter enthusiasm" pipe and smoke it.  

Out on a Limb, or a Safe Prediction? 

I'm not a political analyst, or a poll data specialist.  I'm an ordinary American who taught high school civics and American History for half my career, and have been in school administration for the other half.  I'm not in the business of predicting elections, though from my former students' perspective, I was pretty formidable in coming up with an accurate prediction in all but one past election.  I missed 2004.  But so did a lot of other people.  

So I don't mind going on the record.  I think voter enthusiasm, in contrast to what the mainstream media wants us to believe, is on President Biden's side.  I think he's going to get a bigger turnout of support than he did in 2020, and I think he's going to increase his electoral vote tally.  Looking at how some of the senate races are shaping up, especially in Texas and Florida, I would not be surprised to see one of those states go blue.  The Biden campaign seems to have enough confidence that they can win Florida to invest some campaign financing and time in that state, and they're setting up a headquarters like they would in other battlegrounds.  It looks like they might also have an even chance in North Carolina, and I predict he'll increase his margins in both Georgia and Arizona by another half a percent.  He'll bury Trump in Michigan and Pennsylvania, win by more than 50,000 in Wisconsin, take Nevada by 5% and win a squeaker in Ohio.  He loses nothing he won in 2020.