Have you wondered where the political middle went? In a highly polarized age, the right-wing pulls to the far right and the left-wing pulls to the far left. That leaves a larger middle where the moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats find themselves falling into the center with the independents.
Axios reports that independent voters are about 49% of the total and the Republican and Democrats are about 25% each. Forbes states that about 43% off voters identify themselves as independents and Democrats and Republicans are tied about 27% each. As there is no national database of voters, these data come from public opinion surveys, thus there is a margin of error in the results. But there seems to be general agreement that the independents are the biggest voting bloc. Pew research reports that voters in general split about evenly between the two parties, irrespective of party registration. That doesn’t mean that independents aren’t ideologically neutral. Many lean to one side of the other, but they remain unenrolled in any major party (we register to vote but we enroll in a party). Does that mean the political center controls? It usually does.
The media reports the “race” between the top candidates as a means of getting attention, and audience share. They report the national polling results and lean in on who is ahead and by how much. But the race for president is decided by the electoral college, and the only states that are undecided are the swing states: Georgia, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona (and maybe Minnesota). If you believed the polls in July, Trip would win most these states. If you believed the polls a few weeks ago, Harris was pulling ahead. If you believe the polls today, it’s a dead heat. And it’s not even September yet, with debates, wars, economic downturns, and perhaps a pandemic or two to go. Still, the middle will determine the race.
But which way will independents go? They have been leaning towards Trump, but he has been trying very hard to put his foot in his mouth, only to be outdone by the never ending Harris word salad and her hide-and-go-seek strategy with the press. And Bobby Kennedy Jr. is now out of the race, so with so many variables, who knows?
The ridiculous level of dishonesty in election campaigns and the media is a major issue in politics today. The desperate attempt to win at any cost has left too many voters in this cycle with the familiar feeling of having to pick between the better of two difficult options. The polls show this and even something as data-driven as polls become the subject of manipulation by die-hards on either side. The data should be objectively observed and reported, but such is not the case.
What we are left with is the bogus poll patrol, and both sides are guilty. Political polls are public opinion surveys that gauge sentiment at the time they are taken. The better polling organizations use sophisticated methods to construct questionnaires, collect data, analyze the data and provide the results with a reasonable margin of error. If we look at many of these polls over a period of time, we can deduce trends to indicate whether a candidate has a lead outside the margin of error, or not. Polls, therefore, are not necessarily predictive but can give us a sense as to where a particular election is heading. Hopelessly biased media “journalists” only look at the data that shows their candidate in the lead or catching up, the other candidate badly failing, and then make impossible-to-support flat predictions in declarative language. Nowhere to be found is any nuanced discussion of margins of error or the methodological difficulties inherent in collecting meaningful data from verbal questionnaires by cell phones.
But back on the campaign trail the Democrats went for the quick fix, the easy route (leveraging Biden out, deciding Kamala is in). But they are not going to solve the Biden problem with a Biden clone. Newly anointed Kamala Harris (so much for “democracy is on the ballot”) is now trying to verbally distance herself from the Biden-Harris border disaster. And Trump is back to his old self, neither chagrined nor informed by the favorable reactions to his mellower convention speech, nor the assassination attempt. Just days ago he called VP Harris “a bum.” How does this help?
Both sides will have an abundance of money, surrogates and talking points. But most of these assets will be bulls-eyed at the other candidate and it will get even uglier if that’s possible. We will be told, umpteen times, that a vote for the opposition is an existential threat, and that our candidate is the savior and the only choice to save the planet. Their candidate? Fuhgeddaboudit. Facts do not matter as each campaign will have legions of realty re-constructors that will design a never-ending air attack designed to destroy the opposition and woo the undecideds. Still, in the end, a more rational electorate will decide which presidential candidate will inherit the most complex job in the world, campaign silliness notwithstanding. This show will go on the for the next few months, with the focus sharpening in the fall, reaching a fever pitch in late October. Let’s hope that somewhere in the circus there may be some actual substantive policy discussion where we can get a glimpse as to what the winning candidate might actually do.
There is much discussion about how the 2024 US Presidential elections will play out, and media types have pushed several comparisons to prior elections, seemingly in an attempt to predict the future from the elections of the past. Analogies are usually not perfect, but there are a few that might be instructive. Three-way presidential races, where there are viable third party candidates or independents, and races between current and former presidents, upset the balance between the two major parties and lessen the predictability of the outcomes. The “third” candidate becomes a mediating variable that is hard to analyze. A brief review of the history of such elections sheds light on such unpredictable contests.
The election of 1860 was a 4-way contest between Abraham Lincoln and 3 Democrats at a time that the country was seriously polarized due to sectional differences arising from the slavery issue and the states’ rights argument. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (against whom Lincoln ran in 1858 for the Illinois Senate seat) represented the northern Democrats, John C. Breckenridge (incumbent Vice President of the United States) drew support from the southern states, and John Bell of the newly formed Constitutional Union party gained electoral votes from the border state region. Lincoln won almost all the electoral votes in the north, the three Democrats split the rest, and Lincoln won the presidency.
In 1892 former President Grover Cleveland, Democrat, came back to challenge incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison (who beat Cleveland in 1888). In this return contest Cleveland won back the presidency, the only person in US history to have 2 unconnected terms in the White House. The third party candidate in the race, James B. Weaver, representing the Populist Party, won almost 9% of the vote and carried a few western states, which may have hurt Harrison.
The 1912 election was the race of the 3 presidents, one past, one current and one future. Former President Theodore Roosevelt ran against his old protégé William Howard Taft and won 27% of the vote. President Taft, the incumbent Republican, ran third with only 23% of the vote and only 8 electoral votes. Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won about 6% of the vote. Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote, and New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, won the election with only 41% of the popular vote but an electoral landslide.
The presidential election of 1948 was famous for the biggest media faux pas in American history when the Chicago Tribune prematurely published a headline that stated: “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman beat New York Governor and former prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey by a fairly comfortable margin in the electoral college. Truman was not that popular and the third party candidate, Dixiecrat South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond denied Truman a sizable portion of the southern Democrat vote. After attempts to get him to drop out of the race the Democratic Convention nominated Truman, who went on to win by waging a strong campaign.
There was a similar outcome in the 1968 presidential race but this time the Democrat split gave the election to the Republican former Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Democrat Gov. George Wallace of Alabama ran on the American Independent ticket and won 5 southern states, denying Democrat and incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey the electoral votes of those states and a significant portion of the popular vote.
In 1992 independent Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, won 19% of the vote, most of it from incumbent Vice President Republican George H.W. Bush, giving the election to Democrat Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot scored one of the highest third party totals in US history. Ironically Bush had a national approval rate of 81% following the 1991 Gulf War, only to see his popularity dwindle to only 37 percent of the vote in the election.
The election of 2024 may be a mix of these scenarios. There is a viable third party candidate I Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is drawing about 10% in many polls, but not enough to be in contention for any electoral votes in the swing states. He appears to be taking more votes from Biden than Trump as we see a shift of a few points in the 5-way polling (including 2 other third party candidates), as opposed to the head-to-head data showing Trump with about a 2 point lead over Biden.
The post June 27 debate polls show a slippage in Biden’s support, most notably in the swing states, where Trump now leads outside the margin of error in 8 of 14 critical states. Worse for Biden is that New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia, which have voted Democrat in recent elections, are now within the margin of error. There will be more to come with the polls following the assassination attempt on Trump.
Predicting the future from the past is always a lesson in objectivity and thought, and this election is no different.
“The critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect or change takes place” (Miriam-Webster Dictionary).
Donald Trump has been the focal point of the American political discussion since he first walked down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 when he announced his candidacy for president. Since then much has happened. A good economy, a lousy economy, a pandemic, 2 wars, 3 new Supreme Court justices, elections, court cases, and more political fights than anyone can count. Trump has been at the center of it all.
Thus the political world has divided into 3 camps: those who love Trump, those who hate Trump, and a lot of people in the middle. The current presidential polls show Trump and Biden within the margin of error nationally but Trump with a lead in most swing states. Biden’s approval ratings have been negative for quite some time, and Trump’s aren’t much better. Most polls show that much of the voting public, in general, would prefer 2 other candidates.
Trump has been living on the political edge since he first ran for president. That’s because he put himself there, and the not-so-mainstream media, hardly his fan club, has attached him to almost every story. They just can’t stop talking about him, and they hurl the most bitter, vindictive accusations at him at every chance they get, proving once again there is a dark lining in the silver cloud of public service.
Trump gets forgiven his ranting and personal attacks by his supporters, as his administration had a good record in many ways. Certainly, his time in office compares well against the seriously challenged Biden record of high inflation, the border crisis, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the mismanagement of 2 wars and the deal with Iran that almost guarantees this terrorist state a path to deliverable nuclear weapons.
But even with all that, there remains the issue of Trump fatigue – have too many people heard Trump stories too many times. This has been analyzed and discussed, but his lead in the polls show no evidence of that. There is also the New York hush money trial, with a biased judge who precluded defense witnesses and manipulated the jury instructions so that any 4 jurors could find Trump guilty of any of 3 underlying crimes and did not have to be unanimous in doing so. Any objective reading of the presiding judge’s obvious attempt to manufacture a guilty verdict would lead a reasonable person to conclude that the trial was skewed in favor of conviction.
But is this one issue too many, in a political career jammed with issues? Even if one concedes that Trump had a good record in office, and that this latest trial was a sham, have we just reached the point where some likely voters have reached the Trumpian saturation point and will begin to finally peel away from the Trump-is-better-than Biden logic? Trump is setting fundraising records off his guilty verdict, but will millions of dollars be enough to hold the soft Trump voters, and to persuade the undecideds? Does Robert Kennedy Jr. edge more into the weaker part of the Trump base?
Polls give us trends, not necessarily predictions, and we will see in the coming weeks which direction the political needles point, but let’s not be surprised if there begins a new attrition in Trump support, and perhaps correspondingly in Biden’s as well.
The news media has reported numerous Pro-Palestine, Pro-Hamas, Anti-Israel protests on a wide variety of American college campuses. This is bizarre, and perhaps the student protestors (paid outside agitators notwithstanding) are a bit misinformed.
Some recent, undisputed history. As previously stated in a prior blog, on October 7 Hamas put on a freak show that would have embarrassed the Gestapo. Over 1200 Israelis were murdered. Yet, fast forward from what, historically, is the blink of an eye, college students are conducting protests for Hamas and against Israel. Also as previously blogged, Israel is in a moral quandary, having to kill innocent civilians (including children) in an attempt to survive (Israel has been attacked on 4 sides by terrorist organizations). Only a Solomon could figure this out. This is the torturous position in which Israel finds itself: do nothing and risk everything, or kill innocents in order to survive. But the mindless miscreants on college campuses, caught up in the latest frenzy, seem to have skipped that day in class on October 7, and have bought into the goading of the paid anarchists on various campuses. They began setting up encampments and shouting slogans based on an alternative reality and a need for expression reserved only for the emotionally over-stimulated, dim-witted neurotics all too present in past times of mass hysteria.
However, we may have a solution. There is an opportunity for these pseudo-radicalized college students who feel so strongly about Hamas, Palestine, Israel and America, to gain a bit of perspective on this troubling situation, and that is to go to the source. A Palestine field trip. Pack up and go, possibly funded by the SAVE AMERICA PAC, the Trump for President organization. They can learn first-hand what is really going in, from the ones doing the fighting and suffering. But the otherwise-coddled college students may have to toughen up a bit: no Starbucks, no lattes, no instant satisfaction, no Door Dash pizza deliveries, and no one to rub their tushies when they get a bit fussy. In Hamas-land, women do not fare particularly well, nor do protestors. Instant death seems to be the controlling technique, and we cannot be sure how these privileged Americans would fare under such circumstances with no First Amendment, no fawning student organizations, and no sympathetic, permissive, paranoid school administrators to crank out the excuses and rationalizations for their inexcusably irresponsible behavior.
One can only guess as to how many of these earnest but challenged protesting students would take advantage of such an offer, but we may surmise that the volunteers would not take up too much space on one of several open-minded international carriers (presumably El Al would not be a first choice). And many in this latte-dependent cohort may have to send less caffeine-reliant proxies in their stead. Those that brave the trip may learn more than they bargained for, as they involuntarily manifest into the next round of hostages, having to negotiate the tender surroundings of a Hamas tunnel some 80 meters below the streets of Rafah.
Politicians love to spin reality into a self-serving interpretation. Inflation may be the number one topic in this year’s presidential election, and both Biden and Trump have contrived diametrically opposed stories. Both cannot be true at the same time, but this is the silly season. The key topic this year, as in most elections, is the economy.
Inflation is defined as too many dollars chasing too few goods, creating economic conditions whereby prices rise. There are a number of metrics for this but the most recent number being reported is 3.5% for March of 2024 (US Bureau of Labor Statistics, 04/10/24). The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is the most used term for inflation, a measure of the change in the prices of basic goods, and what we worry about most is food and energy (e.g., gas). When Trump left office, the CPI was 1.9% (Investopedia, 04/30/24). Under Biden the CPI rose as high as 8.0% in 2022 (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 04/30/24).
So here’s the conundrum: the rate of inflation rose dramatically during Biden’s term but has since decreased. So far so good. But how do we word this? If inflation is currently increasing at a 3.5% rate, it is still going up. But it was rising at about 8.0%. So is it correct to state that inflation itself is coming down, or is it just going up less? It would be correct to say that the rate of inflation has come down since 2022 but it’s not factually correct to state that “today’s report shows inflation has fallen more than 60%…” (The White House, 04/10/24) inferring that the rate of inflation, and therefore prices, are coming down (thus things are getting better). Under Biden the price of consumer goods has constantly increased. To manipulate the wording to make it seem like the opposite is true, is to engage in the kind of political deception we see too often in today’s political environment. And Biden has said this many times, part of his Bidenomics mantra (a term he has recently dispensed with). Under Biden, consumer prices have increased by about 20% (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, 04/30/24). This has crushed the middle class and the working poor, who are struggling to pay for food and gasoline for their vehicles.
This is reflected in the political polls, which show Biden has lost about 6% overall since he won in 2020[1], and its worse in 7 swing states[2] (Wikipedia n.d.; RealClearPolitics 04/30/24). He is on the defense in every swing state he won in 2020, and if the election were held today, he would lose most of them, and with them the election. Clever arguments about the economy, and treating the electorate as morons, will not win him a second term.
US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 04/10/24. Consumer prices over 7.5 percent over year ended January 2022. Consumer prices up 7.5 percent over year ended January 2022: The Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov)
[1] Biden beat Trump 51.3% to 46.8% in 2020, a margin of 4.5%, but in the RCP average Trump currently leads Biden in a 5-way race (including the third party candidates) by 1.6%, showing a statistical shift of 6.1%.
[2] As of this report Trump leads Biden by more than the margin of error in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Georgia; Trump leads Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania but within the margin of error. This is based on an average of recent polls.
President Biden’s foreign policy mantra is to avoid escalating current conflicts. To use his favorite word: don’t. Don’t do anything that will upset America’s enemies, don’t properly defend American troops abroad, don’t do everything possible to protect American interests, and certainly don’t upset the not-so-mainstream media, upon whom his re-election, in large measure, depends. But history sadly shows us that such weakness causes the very escalation such policies seek to avoid. Trying not to risk expanding conflicts generally leads to expanding those conflicts. One word admonitions scare no one and accomplish nothing, except to make the United States look ridiculous. The US is confronted with multiple wars and serious threats, yet the White House seems oblivious to the lessons of history.
English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain famously engaged in a policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler prior to WWII in an attempt to avoid a major conflict. Hitler had taken the Rhineland, Austria, and part of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Chamberlain met with Hitler to appease him in order to avoid war and both signed the Munich Agreement in 1938. Hitler agreed to no more territorial acquisitions and Chamberlain stated, “I believe it is peace in our time.” But in 1939 Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland, starting WWII.
By the 1850’s the US Congress had made several agreements between northern states and southern states about the extension of slavery as the country grew westward including the Missouri Compromise (1820) and the Compromise of 1850. The war with Mexico, ending in 1845, reignited the slavery issue as Texas would be entering the union as a slave state. Northern abolitionists opposed the extension of slavery and southern slaveholders insisted on it. The Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case in 1857 made the situation much worse by ruling that Congress did not have the authority to prevent the extension of slavery into the new territories. President James Buchanan, a northern Democrat with southern sympathies took office in 1857 but failed to resolve the slavery issue, taking a passive stance and leaving the issue to the radicals on both sides of the issue. He did not run for re-election in 1860, eleven southern states seceded and the Civil War started in April of 1861. More Americans lost their lives in this conflict than in all other wars combined. Buchanan didn’t think those states had the right to secede, but he did nothing to stop them, nor to resolve the conflict. He left office in April 1861 with the country in shambles.
There are other historical examples. The price of weak leadership is extraordinary, but the Biden White House is trying to make sure that whatever we do, we do nothing to expand any of the currently expanding conflicts. We don’t want to further upset anyone. We issue warnings and have demonstrations of force but do little. Evidently the policy is we can get mad at them, but we don’t want them to get mad at us.
The Biden administration is preoccupied with how our enemies feel, so the president makes sure the US doesn’t overreact, even when American interests and American friends are under assault. Terrorist organizations have attacked American bases in the middle east over 100 times, Russia has killed thousands of Ukrainians in a war of conquest, the Chinese Communist Party is working overtime to wreck the US economy and on October 7 Hamas put on a freak show that would have embarrassed the Gestapo. There are college students demonstrating in support of this ridiculous terrorist organization. How crazy do you have to get before these students see how bad this is? Biden does not want to upset these college demonstrators and the Palestinian supporters either, so he simultaneously supports a middle east ceasefire to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians but then states again he is “rock solid” behind Israel. Then no one gets mad at him or the US. But as it turn out everyone is mad at America.
Weakness solves nothing, and as Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) stated “more sheep is not going to solve the wolf problem.” Biden cannot ignore the consequences of appeasement and inaction. This toxic dissonance results in bold moves by American enemies abroad, and nationwide demonstrations at home. Biden has the same title as Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, but he is not in the same league.
The media, both liberal and conservative, would have us believe every paranoid notion they foment, like Biden will sell us out to Iran and Trump will be a dictator. Believing this nonsense is the intellectual equivalent of going to a bar at 2AM and taking notes. Journalism, as we used to know it, was about providing information on the critical topics of the day. Now it’s an opinionated free-for-all with a can-you-top-this attitude in sensationalism where commentators cannot pile it on enough in a desperate attempt to bash the other side on a daily basis. They are down to name calling on a level that would embarrass the occupants of a junior high school locker room.
So CNN beats up Trump and Fox beats up Biden. Every day. All day. Each candidate is described in the most horrific, belligerent terms, and each is labeled a criminal and an existential threat to democracy, depending on the media outlet (oh yeah, and our guy is the savior). They would have us believe (whichever side they are on) that we certainly could not survive the election of the guy they don’t like. Yet we just survived a combined seven years of both.
Too many politicians, like many media types, cast ethics to the winds, and have no more respect for civility and honor than a storm has for the grains of sand on a beach. The negative lessons for the young may have lasting effects, as many continue to be lost in the dark hole of the internet/cellphone void. Yet, oddly, the percentage of voter turnout has been on the rise in recent elections. Below is a chart of the presidential elections since 2000:
US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION TURNOUT
2000-2022
YEAR
TURNOUT
2022
66.6%
2016
60.1%
2012
58.6%
2008
61.6%
2004
60.1%
2000
54.2%
ave.
60.2%
This represents an increase from the 1990s and 2000s when the average turnout was in the mid-fifty percent range. Perhaps voters are driven by party loyalty, anger, or fear but certainly not by respect for the political system. Below are the average approval ratings for the last 3 presidents in their third year in the White House:
Biden 40%
Trump 42%
Obama 44%
All three were disliked by more than half the country. All were in office during the attack-media period. Not that the media was all that kind in previous years, but it has gotten much worse.
It is routine to tune into one of the major media outlets and witness outright bashing of politicians and candidates, even making jokes about them in these “panel” discussions of so-called experts. They make up alternative realties to suit their tribal narratives, and facts don’t seem to be a concern. To add fuel to the neurotic fire social media is a sea of uninformed opinion, vindictive hyperbole and hysterical vitriol and it seems more like a therapy session on steroids than a marketplace of intelligent ideas.
So where does the voting public go from here? Perhaps the one critical issue that is not mentioned is the need for political education, so people know more about how government works and what the candidates really stand for. Maybe then voters can intellectually separate legitimate policy ideas from the hysteria.
It’s the silly season (again) and all the punsters and pollsters are making predictions as to who is leading and who will win. How do they know? The answers they use are in the almighty polls, but what do those polls really tell us?
The consensus is that voters begin to seriously focus on the election after Labor Day, so the early polls may provide an indication, but we need to look deeper to understand what the polls may mean. Polls are not necessarily predictive but are designed to provide qualitative data on popular sentiment. Gauging a number of polls over time yields trends, which are retrospective, not prospective. In other words, political polls look at the present and the past, not the future. Yet many play the prediction game because we think that what is probable today might tell us what’s going to happen tomorrow. Not necessarily.
Political polls are public opinion surveys, and thus we have to be concerned with the data collection methods as well as the data parameters. For example, in order to collect data many polls use a technique known as Random Digit Dialing (RDD) to ensure all voters in a population have an equal chance of being called. The survey staff must be properly trained and supervised, and samples should be large enough to be statistically meaningful or they may suffer from small sample size validity issues (which may lead to results that are true, when they are false, called Type II error in statistics).
For instance, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll (04/15/24) showed that 833 registered voters preferred Biden to Trump by 41% to 37%. The margin of error (MOE, the statistic that indicates how far off a survey may be) was 4% with 22% of those polled having no preference/might not vote/favoring a third party candidate. So what does this really tell us? The media would report that Biden has 4 point lead, but is that accurate? Does this poll have any realistic predictive value?
My observations are as follows: any sample of less than 1,000 respondents is too small to have much statistical power, and the results are within the margin of error as well. Also, 22% undecided is too large a group to give us confidence in the determination as to which candidate may be leading. This is just the tip of the statistical iceberg. Many polls suffer from considerable statistical issues:
Registered voters vs. likely voters: polls that measure registered voters only are weak as they measure people who may not vote; likely voter responses are more meaningful
Timing: polls from last month may be out of date in an age of fast paced news cycles
Sample size: it’s doubtful that a sample of less than 1,000 voters could be representative of the voting population of the United States
Undecided responses: the Reuters/Ipsos poll mentioned above had 22% choosing something other than Biden and Trump, with only a 4% difference between the two with seven months to go to the election – this makes it very difficult to draw any meaningful inferences
Margin of error: rates over 4% are usually too large to provide confidence in the result, and leads within the MOE means no one has a lead
Outlier polls: a result that is far from the average of the other polls – the media on either side loves to quote polls that show their guy in the lead, even if it is way outside the average
So to revisit the Reuters/Ipsos poll, a result that seems to favor Biden: it’s a small sample of registered voters only, a result within the MOE, with a large amount of undecided. If you’re looking for a prediction, don’t bet any real money using this poll.
Another issue is using the average of polls, a method which is supposed to give us a solid basis as to who is leading whom. Perhaps the most popular is the RealClear Politics (04/15/24) average of polls (widely quoted by the media) which is an unweighted average, meaning it’s a simple average of polls with different sample sizes. Here is a recent report:
But when the samples are weighted by the number of voters (a sample of 1,438 is given more “weight” than a sample of 833), Trump’s lead doubles. Also, note how many of the polls are “RV” or registered voters, and that some of the polls are older, meaning from prior news cycles. The age of a poll is an issue as in just one month Biden may have any number of mumbled gaffes, Trump may insult another dozen people, and another war or two may break out. All of these sway public opinion and affect the polls.
Anyone who draws firm conclusions from these polls is engaging in a neurotic level of wishful thinking. But there is hope, many surveys over a period of time (longitudinal, in statistical language) generate more confidence than one-off polls (cross-sectional). There are no simple answers, we have to do the work. For example, most recent polls show Trump with a lead outside the MOE in the swing states over a period of time, and we therefore can have some confidence in that result. In recent history polls tend to tighten as we get closer to election day, and much can happen. We will see what events move the arc of the current trajectory.
In the United States we have two political parties, but two major groups each within each of those two parties. The Republicans still have the mainstream, traditional GOPers, and also the Freedom Caucus-Trump nationalist types. The Democrats have their own mainstream, left of center group plus the progressive left wing. There are a scattered number of liberal Republicans (e.g., Sen. Susan Collins) and conservative Democrats (e.g., Joe Manchin) in Congress. Each party is thus divided, and therefore the country is divided. In Lincoln’s famous speech in 1858 he warned of such political divisions and feared for the country: “it will become all one thing, or all the other.” His way of saying be careful what you ask for.
Where does this leave voting Americans? There are still many who are unenrolled (note: we register to vote but enroll in a party) in a major party or have cast their lot with minor parties. The independent and minor party voters make up almost 40 percent of the electorate. But a Pew Research Center survey (2019) suggests that even among independents, most lean to one major party or another (see Political Independents: Who They Are, What They Think – Pew Research Center), but choose to remain officially unaligned. Why is this?
We may infer an inherent distrust of the two major parties among many independents as both have displayed a good deal of corruption in recent years. The duplicity and animated rhetoric test the tolerance of even the most loyal members outside the base of each party. The language is abhorrent, and the ethics are scandalous. Its win at any cost: say anything, do anything, just get and maintain power. Once in power each side investigates the other and weaponizes government institutions, the media and public policy, on a massive search and destroy mission of their opponents. They just can’t stand each other, and the American public suffers from an overload of bitter, vindictive rhetoric designed to damage each member of the other side to the maximum extent possible. Lincoln warned, in the same speech, of a such a “battle” in the political arena raging “under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy…”
Thus the two major political parties divide America as they themselves are also divided. It becomes a free-for-all in a rule or ruin atmosphere and a vulgar display of exactly how the founders did not want our government to work (“of the people, by the people….). The hot topics exacerbate the fight: abortion, the border, inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, and others. Each side leverages virtually anything to force the hand of, or better, to bury the other side. The outright lying is ridiculous and the media on both sides have become wholly owned subsidiaries of their political masters. Each party forces a different reality that excludes the other, and that reality is further parsed by the division within each party. And there is no end in sight as we are eight months away from the general election. There are many reasonable people in politics, yet the current conversation is dominated by shallow thinking, paranoid types like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Marjorie Taylor Green.
The electorate needs to better educate itself on the issues as well as the candidates. The test for those who choose to vote is to resist the party label, to see beyond the ideological divide, and to vote for reason, thoughtfulness, and a better chance for a decent future.
Blue Star Press 