Uninformed Commentary on the Uninformed

 

I have a basic rule for this blog: unless I have some special insight, I do not comment. Why waste your time?

I’m breaking that rule right now.

I have no idea what is going on with the polls in the US right now. They all show Biden winning handily. It makes no sense to me.

The favoured explanation on the right is “shy Tory” voters. Voters afraid to admit they like Trump, in this current climate in which admitting as much risks losing your job or getting shot. But even if the polls are somewhat wrong, I can’t see why Trump isn’t walking away with this election.

I had long thought that Biden was the wrong candidate to run against Trump. You shouldn’t run a buffoon against a buffoon. If people want a buffoon, Trump is best at it. If people want a return to normalcy, you want a candidate who suggests quiet competence.

You might respond that the Democrats don’t have any such candidates. Sure they did. These are the very candidates their establishment turfed out of the race: Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. Mike Bloomberg might have worked. But Gabbard or Yang could also have contrasted with Trump on youth versus age.

On top of being a bad contrast to Trump on persona, Biden is evidently senile. How can anyone responsibly vote for a senile president?

On top of that, there are the allegations of groping and rape against Biden. I have always felt that sexual misconduct is irrelevant to public office. Nevertheless, how to justify the double standard? Whatever happened to #Metoo?

Biden has barely been campaigning, while Trump is holding mass rallies. When Biden does show up, few voters seem to. At a recent event in Arizona, featuring both Biden and Harris, campaigning together for the first time, nobody showed up. Trump gets large crowds. How does this tally with the polls?

Nobody is paying much attention to Biden’s platform. Nobody can really know what he will do in office, because he has changed many positions even since the primaries. If he has broken all previous promises, why would you expect him to keep any now? Voters are essentially giving him a blank cheque.

Biden will not even give a position on packing the Supreme Court. “You’ll find out after I’m elected.” In other words, he and the Democrats are actually explicitly demanding a blank cheque. How can a responsible voter accept this?

Biden offers no sense of unifying vision or theme. No “hope and change,” no “make American great again,” no “morning in America.” Nothing, at least, that resonates. He has “build back better.” Which is mostly an appeal to the past. It seems to be only “vote for me, and return to the status quo ante, because I’m not Trump.” By the standard rules of political persuasion, this should not work. People want optimism and a sense of purpose.

Studies of the positions of the two parties show that the Democrats have moved away from the centre and further left over the last few years. The Republicans have not moved, and are on the whole closer to the centre. If Biden is fairly moderate, Harris is not, and Biden is not obviously in command of his party. By all the standard assumptions of politics, this should mean the Democrats lose support; they should not have gained support since 2016.

Trump won in 2016, many say, because he broke the taboos of political correctness. And people were fed up with it. Political correctness has become more demanding since, and polls show the general population is at least as opposed to it as ever. So why would the general population turn against Trump now?

The core reasons Biden gives to justify his candidacy are that Trump is a racist, and that Trump botched the response to COVID-19.

But neither of these charges are coherent.

Biden’s evidence that Trump is racist, at least his core example, repeated often, is that Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “fine people” after the Charlottesville demonstrations. Yet Trump actually said that neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be condemned totally.” There is video; there is a transcript. How is he getting away with this? How has this not been generally exposed, and why has Biden’s campaign not imploded as a result?

Meantime, Trump is making an open play for black and Hispanic votes, and reputedly doing better than any other Republican among them. He is pushing school choice, the ultimate solution to the plight of African-Americans, and something most African-Americans want. He has moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. How can this charge of “racist” stick?

Biden’s second charge, that Trump botched the response to COVID-19, also makes no sense. Nobody knew what we were dealing with or how best to respond. Why would Biden have done better? Biden’s stated plan for dealing with the virus is actually, in all details, the same as Trump’s. All Biden has is the slogan, “listen to the experts.” But the experts disagree on everything, and their advice changes by the week.

Biden and allies have made much of the Woodward revelation that Trump “knew” the virus was airborne and highly infectious already in early March, and did not tell anyone. This is nonsensical, because the CDC and WHO still will not confirm that it is airborne. If they do not know now, how did Trump have some privileged information then? Where did he get it, if not from them? How would he have known more than Congress, or the CDC, or the WHO? Or if they all did know this, why was it incumbent on him to tell everyone, and not on them?

Can’t anybody think any more?

Until COVID hit, Trump’s record was impressive. Despite unprecedented harassment from the House of Representatives and the “deep state,” the Russia hoax and the partisan Ukraine impeachment, Trump has presided over a great economy and record low unemployment at home. Abroad, he is the first president since Carter to engage in no new wars. Despite this, he wiped out ISIS as a territorial entity in weeks, without a single US casualty. He has cut new trade deals with Canada, Mexico, and China, apparently improving the US position. There are signs of a breakthrough to general peace in the Middle East.

Objectively, aside from partisan considerations, who has ever done a better job in their first four years?

It should be obvious to anyone that Trump bears no responsibility for COVID itself: it came from China, and everyone in the world has been hit. It makes no sense that COVID should change our perception of this record. Yet Biden has actually accused Trump of responsibility for every single American who has died of COVID. How can he get away with it?

There is widespread disorder in the streets. Biden and the Democrats have been, on the whole, encouraging and supporting it. They have called for defunding the police. Trump is calling for a reimposition of order. I cannot fathom how people cannot be alarmed by this. Why are they not supporting Trump on this basis? How can Biden get away with blaming Trump for violence against Trump? Are Americans really going to vote for a protection racket?

There are reports and poll results showing Trump with record levels of support, for a Republican, among African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Why does this not show up in the general polls? Is it really plausible that he is losing, at the same time, a larger number of white voters? Are white people who voted for him last time really less likely to vote for him this time? His personality has not changed; and his record since seems to be one of accomplishment.

If this is all explained by “Shy Tory” voters, they must be present in unprecedented numbers. But perhaps they are: we have never before seen a climate as poisonous as this one, for those who do not toe the “progressive” line. At the same time that the “progressive” line has grown narrower. The times are unprecedented.

It might also be that those opposing Trump are low-information voters, unengaged and unaware. They haven’t really been paying attention; they are only reacting to finding Trump’s manner abrasive, or to what they hear everyone on the mainstream media telling them they are supposed to think. They may not even have seriously looked at Biden.

There are signs the Democrats are making this assumption. For example, when Biden actually refuses to give his position on the issues because this would be a “distraction.” And the cynical ploy of redefining “pack the court” to simply mean appointing judges. They seem to be assuming their supporters are not going to know the difference, or bother to look it up.

It is terrifying, and an indictment of democracy, that such voters might determine the election. If they can determine this one, they presumably determine all of them. And they are easily conned.

I have never understood the idea that people should be urged to get out and vote, or should consider it their civic duty. It seems to me the opposite is true. If you do not have a good command of the issues or the candidates, your civic duty is to abstain.

On the hopeful side, this type of voter is indeed less likely to actually get out and vote. They may show up in the polls, but not at the polls. Especially given the fear of COVID.

New rules have expanded the ability to vote by mail instead. This is an awful idea on several levels; but the process for doing so correctly is apparently complicated. This may also weed out careless or uninformed voters.

I have no insight here.

It looks something like a national IQ test; and, sadly, as someone once said, you never go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the general public.

Here's Someone Who Sounds Like He Knows What He Is Talking About

... saying two surprising things about the polls:

1. Obama has been trailing all along;

2. The Vice Presidential Debate really shifted the polls to Romney.

In saying he sounds as though he knows what he is talking about, I'm really saying I buy his arguments. Point 2 especially rings true to me: never underestimate the likability factor. As I said, Biden seemed to swing a wrecking ball on the likability of his entire ticket.

Early Voting in Ohio

Early voting in Ohio gives a new clue that the polls might be wrong. They are almost all predicated on a significantly higher turnout of Democrats than Republicans, similar to 2008.

However, we can now begin to judge that premise against early voting trends. The Washington Examiner reports that in Ohio, the electorate asking for absentee ballots is currently much more Republican than in 2008. In 2008, it was 33% Democrat, 19% Republican. This time, it is 29% Democrat, 24% Republican. That's down from a 14 point gap to a 5 point gap, a swing of 9 points.

Now just consider pulling nine points off the current polls. The RealClearPolitics average of polls, even before the debate blowout this week, showed Obama up by three points. This suggests he went into the first debate behind by six.

Survey Says ...

George Gallup

This is an interesting article in light of the current controversy about polls in the US election. It points out that only 9% of those that pollsters try to contact actually respond to the survey, and this number has been dropping quickly in recent years. A growing number of people have number display and will not answer a number they do not recognize. But even among those who do answer the phone, only 14% will agree to answer the survey.

Those who will not answer are apparently largely motivated by a mistrust of pollsters or the media. But Democrats trust the media twice as much as Republicans do, because of its perceived leftward bias. Accordingly, those who do not answer are twice as likely to be Republican or Independent, this article says, than Democrats.

Hence, using poll numbers is growing increasingly dubious, and hence perhaps the apparent partisan skew in the polls.

Moreover, this issue almost guarantees that there is also a "shy Tory" factor. If that many people are sure the media and pollsters have a left-wing bias, then even among those who do consent to answer the poll, there will be a huge incentive among those with right-wing sympathies to lie: either to avoid offending the pollster, or to deliberately distort his statistics.

So there you are-- a reasonable argument, without any vast left-wing conspiracy, for why the polls may be wrong this time.

Here's another relevant recent article, noting that actual stats for voter registration suggest that Democratic registration is actually down significantly from 2008. So how can the polls be showing that more Democrats intend to vote this year than in 2008?

SOMETHING is certainly wrong with the polls.Two and two keeps coming out as 47. It seems just a question of what it is, and what is causing it.

More on Skewed Polls

Hard to dislike. But can he take a pass?

Okay, folks can’t stop talking about the polls being wrong. The big problem is that they show a partisan breakdown that suggests a good deal more Democrats will go to the polls this time than in 2004 or even 2008, a banner year for Democrat turnout. This seems intrinsically unlikely.

In fact, there is a second apparent anomaly. The polls seem to show a higher percentage of Democrats voting for Obama, and a lower percentage of Republicans voting for Romney, than is the historic norm for either party. There are always some party members who break ranks, but this is usually much less common among Republicans. This year, the polls suggest a big crossover vote for Obama.

Let’s dismiss the possibility of a vast left-wing conspiracy. Yet there is definitely an anomaly here. Rasmussen has been keeping tabs on party affiliation, and he has seen no sudden move in the electorate towards the Democrats. In fact, the Republicans’ support is above that of the Democratic Party—except in these polls, when asked about the Presidential election. What else might explain this?

Here’s a thought: might these anomalies be signs that we are about to see a sizable “Shy Tory” effect on voting day? That is, people are telling pollsters they are Democrats in this poll, when they are really Republicans or Independents, and we can accordingly assume that at least the same proportions, probably more, are saying they will vote for Obama when they really intend to vote for Romney. And they are doing this because it is more socially acceptable, and they are concerned with what the pollster might think of them.

The original Shy Tories Coming Out Party.

It just feels right to me. Granted that we did not get a significant “Bradley” or “Shy Tory” effect in 2008—the voting fit the polls fairly well. But this time may be different. There was good reason then for people to really want change; the fact that it was more socially acceptable to support Obama might not have mattered much, because folks wanted to support him anyway. This time is the time that dynamic might well have changed. More people are less happy with him. We know that. But because he is black, voting against him now, especially among those who voted for him last time, might look to them like racism. And he seems to be a nice guy; I can see a lot of people deciding he cannot handle the job, but because he is such a nice guy, they do not want to say it outright.

How many points does this give Romney that the polls do not show? Any figure is a guess, but my guess is about five. A tied race.