Presidential Horse Race Polls – And A Big “Grain” Of Salt

Well this is interesting. A new Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll shows President Biden and Trump tied!  The results show the voters are in most respects unchanged from their views back in April. Roughly two-thirds think both are too old, but realizing what their choices are also haven’t changed much when it comes to who they’ll vote for. President Biden and Trump are in a statistical tie. This, AFTER two weeks of post debate OMFG Biden is a barely sentient vegetable from the chattering class and even some prominent Democrats. If you paid attention, yes voters were stunned by the President’s performance (or lack thereof) in the debate but with his constant lying they thought Trump sucked too!  So let’s unpack this. Not the debate between President Biden and Trump, but all the post debate “debate” crap going on.

It’s said that Trump changed all the norms when he became a candidate for President. Not really. Some things remain the same. Journalists/News Outlets lust for a repeat of the spectacle of a “brokered convention” a la Democrats in 1968. Even more so with the advent of 24-cable news. They also (for ratings) crave a “horse race”, an election where the polls have it too close to call right up until election day in November. And if it doesn’t seem likely then by god they WILL start during the primaries (if not before) to shape the news to create one. Well, they’ve got their “horse race” or so it seems. I’ve said and still believe they are obsessed with creating a brokered Democratic convention.  With so many cycles under their belt they figure no matter what happens they can shape public opinion to create their “horse race. So they are furiously going all-in on driving President Biden from the race.

I’ve already written about how bad it’s gotten. There is borderline anger starting to show from journalists and pundits – voters are ignoring THEM and making their own decisions.  I wish I could remember the name of a pundit I saw (I think it was yesterday) insisting that voters, including and especially Democratic ones were deserting the President in droves.  Egos are showing major butt-hurt that their “wise” “pronouncements” are being treated as gospel. Let me tactlessly remind everyone that not a single pundit (including this semi-pundit) has a blemish free record when it comes to predictions and/or what will matter to voters when it comes time to fill in a ballot. Everyone is wrong sometimes and most a lot more often than they want people to know!

Now lets change topics for a bit and talk about polling. For much of my life it was actually fairly solid. Reputable pollsters could build a good sample and took care to craft questions that would yield what would turn out to be accurate results. Even in 2000, often noted as the year polling was “proven” to be b.s. the fact is the polls were pretty much accurate even in Florida. If not for that ballot snafu in Palm Beach country Gore would have won the state by at least several thousand votes if not more.  However panic set in, not to mention a host of new polling outfits jumping into the game. Since then it’s become more and more of a blur. In addition to lax if not shaky methodology in building a sample and the drafting of questions people became less willing to even talk to, much less be completely honest with pollsters.

This came to a head in 2016 with Trump. Granted, he lost the popular vote by almost three million but he got just enough in a few of the states he really needed and the disclaimer “margin of error” is forever burned into our collective consciousness. In addition to that we have 24 hour news and cheap-assed executives who don’t want to hire large numbers of actual investigative journalists. It’s easier and cheaper to have a handful of “talent” who can talk on TV and speculate. And it helps if they’ve got a bunch of polling data on which to pontificate. The quality of the data doesn’t matter. In fact, skewed (whether intentionally or not) actually provide fodder!

All that brings me to one of the things that even in the era since Trump has NOT changed.- Voters have opinions to be sure once the primaries get underway but with Independents in particular they don’t really start paying close attention to the Presidential race until AFTER the conventions.  That means polling taken even now has to be taken with a grain of salt. Or, as the title pic suggests a HUGE grain, or block of it.  Hence the title about horse races and grains of salt.  We simply don’t know all that much. Not yet.

I also again want to refer you to what I still think was the most important data point after the debate. It wasn’t flash polls or punditry over the President’s performance (that blew past all Trump’s lies) but rather focus groups both the night of and the day after. Across the board it was clear that those who watched thought President Biden seemed “out of it” but got better as the debate went on, and they didn’t like Trump constantly lying. For different reasons, a pox on both their houses so to speak.

Still I think the poll I’ve linked to is worth keeping in mind. It’s a solid polling outfit and it asked a lot of the same questions in April and now. How little things have changed despite two weeks of near hysterical news coverage has to have an awful lot of people scratching their heads. Things were within the margin of error back then, and they still (apparently) are!

If those in the news business have wet-dreams over a brokered convention the thought of TWO of them and in the same year leaves them in a puddle of… well let’s not go into that. You know what I’m getting at. However they’ll settle for one. Given the number of GOP voters who voted for Haley (and others) during the primaries one would think the GOP would be ripe for a “replace Trump” convention but this is the GOP we’re talking about. Even before Trump the old saying went ‘Democrats fall apart. Republican’s fall in line’ and this is very much Trump’s GOP. The only way he’d not get nominated (with no floor fights even) is if he choked to death from swallowing a half-masticated bit of ‘hamberder” because he hit a big bump with his cart on the golf course. Trump could be on life support with a flatline brain and he’d still be nominated so newsies aren’t wasting time and effort on that score.

That leaves the Democrats and given our history of hand-wringing and sometimes outright panic journalists have, on ORDERS from the Executive Suites been HAMMERING the “is Biden too old” theme since forever. While virtually ignoring the same question about Trump who makes nonsensical comments and speeches all the time. And has done so all along.  Like Republicans who hoped, even prayed that RBG would die while Trump was still President, lots of people in the news biz did the same with President Biden – hoping for one big moment in the spotlight with a huge audience where he’d be off his game in a major way.  They got their wish.

I’ll wrap this up. I’ve said before that before the debate the President was doing his job (and well) and making campaign appearances now and then and that starting the day after the debate it’s been the same thing. The debate itself was a “WTF?” outlier. Voters it seems have the same view I do. It’s infuriating that the pundits, and now Democrats with important voices refuse to see what it seems voters see.  Just as Trump and the GOP have tried to convince us not to believe our “lying eyes” with regards to the Capitol Riot, we have journalists/pundits and too many Democratic leaders trying to convince us not to believe the evidence of our eyes when it comes to President Biden.

Again, the evidence is that prior to those ninety minutes of “debate” the President was going about the business of being President and a Presidential candidate and fully engaged in his duties. And he has been since. I’ll guarantee you every Democratic politician doing the “he has to step aside” routine has more than one town hall or other campaign event where they laid a smelly rotten egg. They just didn’t do it on national TV. Every pundit has a “100% take it to the bank” prediction that turned out to be spectacularly wrong.

And every big-time actor has at least one role they hope remains forgotten.  Hey George Clooney, remember Batman and Robin? How would  YOU like for your career to be judged on your work in that movie?  Ninety minutes (or whatever) of critically and audience panned crap?

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