From Joe Exotic To Mary Trump, All Laugh At NYT/Sienna Doom Poll

Here’s a piece of stellar career advice, for free: Do not get into the business of so-called “scientific polling” or political polling in general. It is an antiquated system and is on its way out the door. And no, I have no idea what will replace it. But like a group of lemon cars assembled on a used car lot, if the stock doesn’t get any better soon, the dealership is going to go under, period.

You’ve all heard about the recent New York Times/Sienna doom poll, which has Joe Biden losing handily to Donald Trump in all the swing states. How can this be, you ask? A number of people, on all points on the political spectrum are chiming in.

I’m taking positive news from any source out there. pic.twitter.com/JBqe1eoKmI

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 8, 2023

The polling size is an issue, yes. That’s the first problem. The second problem is that, once again, it’s registered voters, not likely voters. Those are two totally different pools of people. And there are other technical flaws, which you’ll read about below. But then we get to a third issue, which is basically killing the polling industry and that it is that the industry simply is not taken seriously. People are gaming it. They’re playing it. They’re punking it. And that’s why there is no credibility in the industry any longer. At least that is my opinion, having seen poll after poll go south.

Mary Trump chimes in and the points she makes are valid.

Almost a fifth of respondent [to this poll] didn’t vote in 2020. And the swing of Black voters towards Donald beggars belief: 22% say they’ll vote for him, a number for a Republican never seen in modern American politics. For context, Donald got 8% of the Black vote in 2016. For further context, Donald is a horrible racist.

Whether these polls are accurate or truly representative of how voters feel at the moment, it’s beyond disturbing that, of the two leading candidates, the only one being asked to step aside is Joe Biden. As a country, we clearly are in a very bad place.

Think about it:

In the last three years, Donald Trump has continued to spread the big lie, compounded the treason he committed on January 6^th by promising to pardon the insurrectionists currently serving time in prison, been found liable for rape, continued to align himself with Putin, Erdogan, and Orban, praised Hezbollah terrorists, and is currently facing four criminal indictments—and far too much more to mention.

During the same period of time, President Biden has created almost 14 million jobs, given massive amounts of support to Ukraine in its fight for democracy, championed choice and the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans—and far too much more to mention.

Just as in 2016 and 2020, the media are normalizing Donald’s candidacy—despite his COVID response, the insurrection, and his various crimes—because he is the leading Republican nominee.

Joe Biden has saved the economy, the Western democratic alliance, and (at least temporarily) American democracy, yet he is not afforded the same courtesy.

It is alarming and unfair what’s happening to Joe Biden. Biden has created outstanding results in his time in office yet he’s getting compared to Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson and most recently, Harry Truman. The doomsaying is simply beyond comprehension, considering the success story the man has had. But nobody is reading that. I can only assume that the denial of Biden’s achievements is a result of our dual-narrative version of reality these days and the fact that as the GOP continues to splinter and crumble (and Donald Trump’s legal problems worsen) we are seeing all things political begin to unravel.

Political reporting was the first industry to be severely challenged in the Trump era, now polling is going the way of all flesh. The net effect of all this is that these industries are going to have to adapt or die. It’s like the buggy whip when the car came into being. Buggy whip manufacturers made fishing rods or whatever they could at that point. Adapt or die is the way of the jungle.

I told Mehdi that I think the issue is what the media chooses to focus on. “For example,” I said, “we’ve been hearing endlessly about Joe Biden’s age not just from right-wing media that are in the tank for Donald, but we see it in the headlines of major newspapers. What we don’t hear about is Donald’s increasing inability to remember where he is, or who is president of where, or whom he ran against in the last election. I think that the gravest danger we are facing in this particular context is that Donald’s egregious behavior—from his criminality to his mendacity, to his lack of intelligence and his total unfitness — is assumed to be already baked in to the equation and, therefore, is not considered news; it’s just a given. So, people don’t even pay attention to it anymore. That’s very concerning.”

The corporate media need to do better, but we obviously can’t rely on them to do better. We can hope that Donald’s court losses, including convictions, rack up and erode his support, but we can’t count on that, either. The number of unknowns in this election is vast. It’s important to acknowledge that.

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Caveats about polls aside, should we be worried about the 2024 election? Of course. This election is going to be close no matter what. Some of the reasons for this are structural (gerrymandering and the aforementioned electoral college), some cultural (we share this country with a lot of people who are disconnected, uninformed, awful, or some combination of the three—also, a stunning number of Americans don’t vote); and some institutional (disenfranchisement, the corporate media).

The media want a horse race. So far, it looks like they’re going to get one.

That doesn’t mean we have to put a lot of stock in any poll a year out. Polls have been consistently wrong over the last three election cycles, but beyond that, they shouldn’t change our behavior anyway. Regardless of what polls say, over the next 12 months we need to organize and get out the vote as if the race between Donald and Biden is neck and neck.

That, as always, is the bottom line. 2024 will be a watershed year. There’s little doubt about that. Trump’s issues are going to be resolved one way or the other. If the GOP insists on keeping its wagon hitched to Trump’s star, then they will find themselves losing yet again. MAGA and abortion are not the draws that the right-wing Republicans would have you believe — if tonight’s election results in the states that had elections are any guide to go by.