Trump Internal Campaign Polls May Be Doctored: Not Adding Up

Campaigns need to get the right message to the right people at the right time as they move toward election day. There are some givens that are simply common sense and don’t require polling. One must knock out the big Midwest swing states, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to win – no poll needed. But gathering more specific and necessary nuggets require paying for private polling – the type that ask key questions resulting in previously unknown key information. Campaigns guard these polls at the highest security levels. Very few campaign workers ever see the results – a “need to know” approach. Strangely, the Trump campaign recently released some internal polls, evidently wanting to send a message that would carry momentum. Except, weird or not, message or not, the polls don’t make a lot of sense and cannot withstand cursory review. So what momentum?

It is established fact that black men are turning to Trump at an astonishing rate – a big problem for Harris. At the same time, Trump is bleeding support from white voters with a four year college degree or more.The actual numbers – not the pattern – associated with these categories make up the critical information that a campaign must use. Except Trump’s numbers are hopelessly confused at best, and flat wrong at worst… as seen from the Trump campaign.

From Rawstory’s reporting from The National Reivew’s article entitled “Trump’s Tricky Math” we see some of the strange numbers that don’t add up. The internal poll shows Trump ahead by two points in battleground states, but as the authors write:

“Trump’s own polling must show that he’s losing ground among white voters. That’s what the public polling averages show. The Cook Political Report keeps a running average of the polls by key demographic groups, and it shows Harris with a 17-point lead among whites with at least a four-year college degree. That’s nearly double the nine-point advantage the data on the Cook side said Biden had in 2020.“

So the Trump campaign’s polls may be under/over counting gains among black men and-or they are under-counting the gains (BIG gains) in college educated white voters. But if the numbers are a wash, why would it matter?

Well, it is pretty obvious that they are almost surely not a wash, one or both are wrong. It could result in the wrong message going out at the wrong time. Perhaps Trump should be campaigning less in Latrobe Pennsylvania – shoring up rural white votes, and instead pounding the pavement in Philadelphia getting even more votes from black men. Can the Trump campaign trust information that doesn’t add up? Evidently even that is a problem.

To trust the information, the campaign needs to know exactly where the math went wrong. It would seem that it is over-counting the votes coming from black men:

“The problem is that college-educated whites are most important in the Midwest, where Trump’s minority-driven gains are weakest. Factor these losses into the equation, and while Trump still leads or is tied in each of those states, he leads by frighteningly close margins. And the memo’s figures show much larger gains among non-whites than most public polling. If Trump is really only 15 points better on the margin with blacks and 20 among Hispanics, for example, those narrow leads turn into narrow losses — again.”

To be sure, one has to read the above quote three times for it to make any sense but it boils down to the fact that the Trump campaign is over-counting gains in black men as compared to nearly every national poll. The resulting numbers – a two point Trump advantage in the Midwest – are then just flat wrong. Instead of being up two points in battleground states, Trump may be behind by two points.

As if that were the only problem. It’s just as true that Trump may find himself in Georgia where his internal polling may show him tied and less worried about Michigan, when perhaps it should be the opposite. He won’t know because they’re all premised on the wrong numbers in categories.

There is one other possibility in all this that isn’t discussed in the article but must be considered. It is entirely possible that top, top, top, campaign officials know damned well that the numbers are cooked and thus add or subtract the real numbers below what is released. It is possible that they do so to mislead the public. And just as  scrumptious, it is possible that they doctor their own numbers to make Trump himself feel better. The campaign managers would still get their critical information and act on it up two, down two, they know – they just have less fear that the boss will break a ketchup plate against the wall.

Perhaps that is why the numbers simply make no sense. Of course, the figures could be doctored even before getting to the campaign. The pollsters themselves know that Trump wants good news.

Ha. Sigh. Working for Trump makes it hard to establish reality. Even math might not add up. Maybe it will. Maybe you’ll never know. We only know these specific numbers make no sense.

Meanwhile, the patterns remain, whether we like them or not. The race is tied and won’t move no matter what news emerges where or who campaigns on what. Black men are clearly moving toward Trump while college educated white people are increasingly supporting Harris. Ultimately, the real information is in the numbers themselves and if they don’t add up, something is wrong.

Thus it is that the Trump campaign could have the wrong strategy. We will see… It is still tied. Easy to see.

God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and @JasonMiciak

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