Do Me A Favor. FORGET About The Freakin’ Popularity Polls!

Look, as I’ve been arguing ever since 2017, there is nothing wrong with the national polls. In 2016 the vast majority of reputable national polls accurately predicted the popular vote total favoring Clinton within .05%. It wasn’t their job to accurately predict a handful of critical swing districts in a handful of swing states.

Believe me or don’t, it’s a free country. But whether you do or not, please believe this. There is no more useless of a poll than the popularity poll. For a couple of reasons. First, it is a purely subjective poll, based solely on the feelings of the respondent at that moment. There are no follow up questions about why you love or despise the person, just your gut feeling. And that has all the tensile strength of daffodil fluff scattering in the wind.

Here’s a quick example. When you’re 8 years old, you love your mother to death. Her popularity in your eyes is two points short of beatification. There is nothing you wouldn’t do for her. But if she tells you that you don’t get that triple chocolate cake for dessert if you don’t finish your broccoli first, you wouldn’t vote for her to be elected dog catcher in Catsville. That’s a popularity poll.

And here’s why it’s worthless. Because there are no follow up questions as for the reasons or intensity of your negativity. In my previous example, if a pollster asks you to rate your mother’s popularity, 41% would be generous. But if the pollster follows up with, Would you rather live with your mother, or go into an orphanage?, what do you think the answer would be?

Just another couple of examples to show just how useless and ridiculous this poll is;

• When I was a teen, high school had about a 25% popularity rating with me, on a good day. But I went to high school every goddamned day, because if I didn’t graduate, I’d be out on the street on my ass, and my parent’s weren’t kidding
• I love the Annie Potts line from Ghostbusters, I’ve quit better jobs than this. Me too. But while my boss’s popularity may have been so far underwater you needed a diving bell to find it, I went to work every day because I needed the f*cking money!
• If you go to your doctor for tests, and he comes back with a cancer diagnosis, with you he’s immediately less popular than the cancer itself. But do you stop going to him for treatment because he gave you bad news?

This is the problem with a popularity poll, it lacks balance and perspective. And yet right now, there are tons of weak kneed, weeping Nellie Democrats, desperately looking around for a pint of gin and a fainting couch, simply because his popularity rating is at 41%. This is imbecilic.

Normally, a national election for a 2nd term is a referendum on the sitting President’s first term. And that’s the way the opposition party plays it, to the bone. The incumbent’s party shines their accomplishments to a fine luster, and then dumps on the opposing party for their insane policies and ideologies.

But for the 2nd straight national presidential cycle, that analogy no longer applies. Simply because the GOP is no longer a viable national party, it is a cult of popularity. They have no issues, programs, proposals or ideology. There is nothing in the normal paradigm with which to compare.

This election comes down to a simple binary choice. Do you love democracy? Do you like electing representative and Senators, knowing that you can always vote the bums out in the next cycle if they piss you off? Or do you want to change to an autocratic dictator who will dismantle the government and rule by executive fiat? That’s what it all boils down to.

You want me to start paying attention to popularity polls? Let the pollsters start asking salient follow up questions. There are millions of independent, GOP and Democratic voters who personally like Biden and his policies. But because they think that the cost of gas is too high, and eggs cost too much, they disapprove of Biden’s job performance. Ask a simple follow up question. In a November presidential matchup, who will you vote for, Biden or Trump? And then publish that little fact.

In yesterday’s primaries, Trump got 80% of the vote in Florida and Ohio. Haley and DeSantis split 20%, that bleeding is unsustainable in a general election. And with Trump now running unopposed, there is no reason for him not getting 94% of the vote. Primary voters are base voters. If they don’t vote for Trump in the primaries, then at least half of them won’t vote for him in the general election. And he can’t afford that.

Right now in the Democratic primaries, Biden is running into an average 10% of registered Democrats voting for undecided. Let’s call this what it is, it’s a protest vote. Muslims, their affiliates, and young voters don’t like Biden’s apparent subservience to a war criminal like Bibi Netanyahu. News Flash! Neither do I, and I back their protest movement 100% as a signal for Biden to change course. And it’s already working, if a career Israel shill like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer comes out on the floor of the Senate and calls for new elections to allow Israeli citizens to express themselves. It’s working.

But at heart they are still Democrats. And when November rolls around, they’re right back at that binary choice. Gaza notwithstanding, who do they prefer? A moderate progressive President like Biden who has already accomplished more in four years than most Presidents do in eight, or a far right fascist sociopath that wants to turn the United States into Germany in the 1930’s? Bitching aside, the vast majority of them will come home for democracy. Fortunately, I can’t honestly say the same thing for the anti Trump voters.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.