We are only days away from election day. Polling by news outlets and other reputable sources is pretty much done at this point. ‘In the can’ so to speak. Any meaningful polling results by entities that report their results was released early this week and mostly reflects how things stood last week. For the average person and even the typical political junkie it’s all over the place! If you scroll through headlines in a news feed or go through social media you can find a poll that confirms what you believe will happen. Or want to believe will happen. However, there IS a kind of polling still taking place that’s ongoing (still) and it’s often more reliable than what gets reported in the news. I’m talking about campaign’s Internal Polling and it’s often more targeted and also often asks different questions to measure certain things the ‘big name’ polls don’t dig into as much.
According to an article from Salon Team Trump has concerns. Significant ones. Here on PZ Murfster is our expert on polling and he’s great at going past the ‘main numbers’ and digging into all the sub-tabs of polls but even he doesn’t get info. on the campaign’s internal polling. That stuff is closely held. ‘Double Secret Probation’ level Top Secret. Still, some people in the political consulting biz talk off the record with friends. It’s its own little world and they keep in touch. Margaret Hoover inhabits that world. She’s a long time GOP strategist and says the Trump campaign might be scrambling due to their own internals regarding turnout and missed targets. Remember what I said about campaigns looking more specifically for certain things? Hoover had plenty more to say:
In a Wednesday evening panel on “The Source” hosted by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, the GOP campaign strategist wondered whether the campaign’s own detailed internals were spelling doom.
“I think if you’re the Trump campaign, you’re not looking at CNN’s numbers, you’re looking at your own internals,” Hoover said. “And I honestly think their internals are actually giving them pause.”
Hoover also pointed out something else. She said CNN and other outlets look at things like enthusiasm and turnout and get a good glimpse of things. However she also made a point of noting campaign’s more sophisticated ability to measure these things:
“I have heard from Republicans that there is concern at the Trump campaign, amongst the operatives that actually do know the political wherewithal that the turnout and enthusiasm numbers are not where they need to be,” the Bush-era operative said.
Team Trump of course is saying all is well. Hell, what else CAN they say both to voters and the guy who’s paying them. As long as Trump is paying them if they have to they’ll bottle up sunshine from hundreds of miles away to blow up his fat orange ass. Here’s what I find interesting though.
Believe it or not there are in fact some people working on the Trump campaign who know sh*t. Who are professionals who know what’s what and how to get things done. Of course Trump being who he is doesn’t care what anyone else thinks and we all know blowing off good, sound advice is part of his DNA. However these people want to keep working after this campaign is over. We all know getting anywhere near Trump tends to cover people with his stinky orange coating of whatever the hell sloughs off. So to preserve some credibility they might well be confiding in trusted associates what they are seeing – and just as importantly advice they’ve given based on it that was NOT listened to by Trump and his closest advisors!
It’s for that reason I think what Hoover said on CNN might turn out to be something:
“They’re probably seeing the same things that you guys are talking about, which is that there is a real groundswell in the early vote, there is real enthusiasm, which is hard to measure,” Hoover noted.
Well, we will get the polling numbers that actually matter once the actual election polling places have all closed on the west coast Tuesday. As in how people actually voted. As the old saying goes the only poll that matters/counts is the one taken on election day. In the meantime if people working on the Trump campaign are quietly talking ‘out of school’ to the point where Hoover is in prime time saying what she did I’d say yes, there’s some freaking out going on down at Marmalade A Go.
You mean *former* GOP strategist who now works for a liberal outlet, grooomer. Next we’ll take Tulsi Gabbard’s word as proof that Democrats are losing.
She may be *former* as far as you’re concerned, but she’s still described as a Republican with Libertarian principles, per Wikipedia..
And, really, “groomer”??? That reeks of DeSantis style anti-woke rhetoric – so yesterday.
Especially when we’ve seen so many reports (and recently, even) of right-wing “Christian” ministries having to remove their own leaders for “inappropriate behavior” with minors.
I think “antidote” needs to look up the word “projection.” It’s one of the right-wing’s main keywords.