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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Unite and Win Rally in support of Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at the Wyndham Hotel in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Aug. 19, 2022. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)
A top Democrat in Palm Beach County, Florida, endorsed Gov. Ron DeSantis for governor by saying there is “too much on the line” during the 2022 midterms.
“Endorsing Gov. @RonDeSantisFL was the obvious choice this election cycle. Gov. DeSantis’ Dem opponent has called for reallocation of resources away from law enforcement. FL cannot afford people like Charlie Crist who wants to defund the police & make our communities less safe,” Dave Kerner, the commissioner of Palm Beach County as well as its former mayor, wrote on Twitter this week.
DeSantis is running against Democrat Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida, in the state’s gubernatorial race.
Kerner further stated that his endorsement was, in part, driven by Crist’s comments that he plans to reallocate funds to instead deploy mental health professionals to assist police on domestic violence calls. Republicans say that such a move would be akin to defunding the police—a common refrain that was used during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests and riots.
He included a video of a press conference in which he spoke alongside DeSantis, giving the Republican governor his endorsement.
“Every day until Nov. 8th, I will campaign for Gov. DeSantis, and on Nov. 8th, I will vote for Gov. DeSantis,” Kerner said at the Police Benevolent Association in West Palm Beach. “I will not remain silent. There is too much on the line in this election,” he added.
DeSantis also spoke at the event and targeted the Democrats’ “anti-police movement.”
“We are focused on protecting victims and not coddling criminals, and no one knows that better than Dave, who served Florida’s communities. Commissioner Kerner knows first-hand the threat of the ‘defund the police’ movement and understands the important role that our local law enforcement officers play in keeping Florida safe,” he said.
Palm Beach County is the third-most-populous county in Florida. In 2020, President Joe Biden won about 56 percent of the votes in the county, according to election data.
Crist, who was the governor of Florida between 2007 and 2011, was a member of the Republican Party before he became an independent in 2010. He later switched to the Democratic Party in 2012 before he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 2016.
In late August, Crist resigned from his House seat to focus on his 2022 gubernatorial campaign. Florida’s now-vacant 13th District will remain without a representative until the November election. Former President Donald Trump-backed Republican candidate Anna Paulina Luna and former Obama administration official Eric Lynn, a Democrat, are vying for the seat.
Trafalgar’s poll results in Minnesota and elsewhere this year stand out from the pack, as they have done generally in recent years. Dan McLaughlin’s excellent NRO column on Trafalgar’s methodology as explained by Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly includes this comment on the current state of play:
On the issue environment, Cahaly says that he hasn’t seen any issue in a long time that motivates people as much as opposition to Biden’s student-loan forgiveness — “nothing touches it.” But he has also heard from people who scoffed at its comparatively small size relative to their overall debts. He sees a lot of general anti-incumbent sentiment, and believes that safety issues (crime, border security) are particularly driving opposition to Democrats in blue states.
We decried the student loan giveaway the day it was announced and have wondered if it was something less than a political stroke of genius. I find Cahaly’s comment interesting in itself. His comment about the percolation of anti-incumbent sentiment and the salience of “safety issues” is reflected in the Alpha News/Trafalgar poll of Minnesota’s statewide races and leading issues reported here earlier this week by Alpha News.
Happy Wednesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Gareth’s Jello molds have lacked precision and pizazz ever since the disappearance of this pet opossum.
(Write me at morningbriefing@pjmedia.com for a chance to make it into Friday’s Mailbag of Magnificence.)
I don’t know about most of you, but I lead tame life for a guy who is supposed to be a violent extremist. Sure, I yelled a lot at the college football game last Saturday night but there has been a decided lack of setting things on fire, rioting, or plotting my next move as one of the greatest dangers to America.
The Democrats’ ongoing fairy tale about the nonexistent right-wing domestic threat is on my last nerve now, especially since we all know that the real dark evil in this country is lurking on the left. It’s not even on the fringes. A couple of weeks ago we saw the president of the United States deliver an unhinged screed and declare ideological war on half the voters in the country.
As we’ve mentioned here, many of the citizens of this great Republic aren’t wowed by Old Joe’s lack of control over his anger issues. Ryan wrote yesterday that the bad news about that for the Democrats just keeps rolling in:
The speech was divisive, disturbing, and downright scary, and Biden set out to paint “MAGA Republicans” as true enemies of the state. While it might have worked to some small degree among the radical factions of the left, a bombshell new poll has revealed that a majority of Americans — politics aside — believe that Biden’s nasty, evil speech was terrible form.
A new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll published exclusively at The Hill revealed that a whopping 60% of Americans believe Biden’s speech “divided the country and set it back.” In comparison, only 40% believed his speech “united the nation and moved it forward.”
But wait, it gets worse — for Biden. Fifty-six percent of respondents said they opposed Biden’s speech, and 44% supported it. Those aren’t the numbers an underwater-polling president needs so close to a major election.
Democrats aren’t big on learning from their mistakes these days. Paula has this from the Senate race in Ohio:
But until this week, Ryan was running a disciplined campaign and had even distanced himself from Biden in order to gain the support of Republican and independent voters. Polling shows the race in a virtual tie, with Vance edging out Ryan in the RealClear Politics average by just 2.3 points, a month out from the start of early voting in the state. Ryan’s internal polling must be much worse, because on Tuesday, he turned a sharp corner and went full Joe Biden, lashing out at Trump supporters on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“We have to kill and confront [the MAGA] movement,” Ryan told host Willie Geist, adding that only “normal mainstream Republicans” are worth working with. He said this moments after (laughably) proclaiming that he’s “one of the most bipartisan members of Congress” and insisting, “I want to work across the aisle.”
Calling for the death of a movement that represents roughly half of America doesn’t seem like a good strategy if you’re touting your bipartisan bonafides, yet Ryan went there.
Yes, these are the same Democrats who love to blame “Republican rhetoric” for every crime under the sun. A picture of a target on a mailer from Sarah Palin was once blamed for a mass shooting.
Democrats have a lot of things to be angry about these days, to be sure. Biden’s mask is slipping more often, and they are having difficulty pretending that he’s functional. The strain of lying to themselves about this train wreck economy has to be taking its toll as well.
We know that they don’t have the guts to act up in red states and cities, but the commie places are probably ramping up for some election time powderkeg action. The Dems do love a good riot to deflect from their failures.
The domestic threat from violent extremists is very real. What’s really scary about that is that most of them are in the Biden administration.
While some pollsters show the Republican lead in the generic ballot shrinking away, other polls make it difficult to understand how most Americans will vote for anyone supporting the Biden agenda. According to a new poll from Rasmussen, only 28% of likely voters think the country is heading in the right direction. This week’s finding is down two points from a week ago. On Sunday, an NBC News poll had a similar result, with only 27% of respondents saying the country was on the right track. The latest YouGov poll found 25%.
Meanwhile, Rasmussen found that 65% of voters believe the nation is headed down the wrong track, up three points from a week ago. Rasmussen closed this survey before President Biden’s 60 Minutes interview, which was an unmitigated disaster. The president committed U.S. troops to war against China if it invaded Taiwan, contradicting longstanding U.S. policy, among other blunders. He also had no honest answer to the inflation plaguing the country, using month-over-month numbers to tell Americans it isn’t as bad as they think. Anyone who has been grocery shopping knows he is lying.
After the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden has maintained the approval of about one-third of the electorate. A year ago, Rasmussen found that 32% said the United States was heading in the right direction, while 62% said it was on the wrong track. The daily Presidential Tracking poll shows that 43% of likely voters approve of President Biden’s job performance, with less than one-quarter strongly approving. His net approval is -19, the same as on September 19 of last year.
So while the generic ballot seems to be shrinking as undecideds start to make their selection, it is hard to believe Democrats will cover the gap. Voters are less happy with the direction of the nation than they were a year ago and no more pleased than they were with President Biden. Like it or not, he is the leader of the party, and he is setting the direction for the country.
The New York Times is already wondering aloud if the majority of polls will be as wrong as they were in 2016 and 2020. As Nate Cohn notes, the polls look eerily similar to the last two elections, when most polls overestimated Democrat leads. When he constructed a model that built in the previous polling error, Cohn concluded:
The apparent Democratic edge in Senate races in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Ohio would evaporate. To take the chamber, Republicans would need any two of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada or Pennsylvania. With Democrats today well ahead in Pennsylvania and Arizona, the fight for control of the chamber would come down to very close races in Nevada and Georgia.
Regardless of who was favored, the race for Senate control would be extremely competitive. Republican control of the House would seem to be a foregone conclusion.
The bad news for Cohn is that the Democrats’ comfortable leads in Arizona and Pennsylvania are evaporating. The latest poll from Trafalgar Group shows incumbent Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) is now clinging to a 1.2% advantage over Republican challenger Blake Masters. In the Arizona gubernatorial race, Trafalgar shows Republican Kari Lake with more than a four-point lead over the Democrat challenger. It is hard to believe Lake does not have coattails sufficient to push Masters over the line.
Trafalgar shows the Pennsylvania Senate race is neck and neck between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz. Fetterman increased his public events, and voters are starting to see how badly a stroke earlier in the campaign cycle impaired his communication ability. Recent interviews also displayed some of Fetterman’s more radical policies, like support for releasing one-third of Pennsylvania inmates. His once double-digit lead is gone.
As one of the most accurate pollsters for the last several cycles, Trafalgar also has North Carolina at +3 for the Republican in North Carolina’s Senate race and +5 in Ohio, indicating the leads may have already evaporated in those states. Trafalgar and two other pollsters have Republican Herschel Walker leading in Georgia, and the RCP average shows Republican Adam Lexalt up one point in Nevada.
As most likely voters are unhappy with the country’s direction, all of the Senate candidates would do well to tie their competitors to President Biden’s deeply unpopular agenda. Rasmussen also shows that 84% of likely voters are concerned about the economy, including 55% who are very concerned. Sixty-two percent also believe they will be paying more for gas in six months than they are now.
As one now grizzled old Democrat strategist once said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Biden’s economic and energy policy is bankrupting middle America. Republicans should beat that drum loud and clear for the next 49 days.
Polls may significantly undercount Republican voters and supporters of former President Donald Trump following President Joe Biden’s speech that attacked “MAGA Republicans” earlier this month, according to a top independent pollster.
Trafalgar Group chief pollster Robert Cahaly wrote on Sept. 17 that Biden’s speech will make it more difficult to survey or even estimate Trump-aligned voters than in prior years. He noted that in 2016, a number of presidential polls and predictions regarding Trump and opponent Hillary Clinton proved to be inaccurate.
“In 2016, Trump supporters were called ‘Deplorables’ and other unflattering names,” Cahaly said on Twitter. “This was a major contributor to the ‘shy Trump voter’ phenomenon that ‘most’ polling missed, which resulted in a major loss in public confidence for polling flowing the election.”
In 2020, “people who supported Trump or espoused conservative values out of step with ‘Woke’ culture found themselves being ‘canceled’ or ‘doxed,’” he continued.
“This led to ‘hidden voters’ that ‘most’ polling under counted, therefore Trump support in key battleground states exceeded expectations. Now [the] Biden administration has essentially classified ‘MAGA Republicans’ as a threat to democracy marshaling federal law enforcement to focus on them,” the pollster wrote. “This move has created a new type of voter that will be even harder to poll or even estimate.”
He was referring to Biden’s Sept. 1 speech that targeted “MAGA Republicans” as a threat to U.S. institutions, just weeks after the FBI raided Trump’s Florida residence. Speaking in front of a red backdrop and flanked by two Marines, Biden claimed Trump and his supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, on Sept. 1, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Describing this new group as “submerged voters,” Cahaly wrote that these people “aren’t putting stickers on their cars, signs in their yards, posting their opinions, or even answering polls.”
“At this point, I think it’s fair to say that Biden’s pursuit of and attacks on ‘MAGA Republicans’ has created an army of voters who will be virtually impossible to poll (even for us) and more difficult still to estimate,” he wrote.
For 2022, GOP voter turnout will most likely be higher than what the polls and other election models are showing, Cahaly said. Polls, including those carried out by his Trafalgar Group, are underestimating the effect of the “submerged voter” phenomenon, the pollster concluded.
His prediction comes after The New York Times’ chief political analyst, Nate Cohn, warned that mainstream polling is likely overstating support for Democrats.
“The apparent Democratic strength in Wisconsin and elsewhere is a mirage—an artifact of persistent and unaddressed biases in survey research,” Cohn wrote earlier this month. “If the polls are wrong yet again, it will not be hard to explain. Most pollsters haven’t made significant methodological changes since the last election.”
Officials at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
The Democrat-enabling media are currently highlighting a Republican tactical rift on whether to support a national ban on abortions in the later stages of pregnancy. They are not spending much time on an obvious tactical rift among Democrats. Should Democrats be boosting "MAGA Republicans" as President Joe Biden screams in speeches that they're killing democracy?
On Sept. 12, "PBS NewsHour" reporter Laura Barron-Lopez laid out just how cynical Democrats are in backing these alleged monsters. In New Hampshire's GOP Senate primary, they spent $3.2 million attacking more moderate candidate Chuck Morse as a Mitch McConnell stooge to smooth the path for Trump-loving Don Bolduc to win. Now they think the reelection of Sen. Maggie Hassan is a fait accompli.
This is happening all over the country. In Maryland, Democrats spent $627,000 to elevate "election denier" Dan Cox, so they can finally elect a Democrat governor in a state that Biden won by 33 points.
But the snow-topped summit of cynicism came in Michigan's third congressional district, where Democrats poured $435,000 into promoting "election denier" John Gibbs. Gibbs then beat freshman Rep. Peter Meijer, who boldly voted for the second impeachment of Trump after the Capitol riot.
On PBS, Barron-Lopez turned to anti-Trump Republican strategist Mike Madrid, who called this a "moral travesty" that is feeding "toxicity." She did not find a Republican who would say Meijer was foolish to strike a pose that Trump should be removed from office with a week to go. Or provide time for a Republican who would note this is how cynical Democrats are — that they can honor you for your "courage" in opposing Trump, like you're one of those "good Republicans," and then spend a pantload to defeat you.
Then, PBS turned to Democrat strategist Martha McKenna, who continued the cynical dance by blaming Republicans for all this. GOP voters are elevating the MAGA candidates, and not those millions of dollars in Democrat ads.
We were told this is the same strategy played by Claire McCaskill, who boosted Rep. Todd Akin in the Missouri Senate primary in 2012. After Akin won the primary, he was severely pummeled by the national media for suggesting women didn't get pregnant in a "legitimate rape." In every election cycle, you can count on the media to play up GOP gaffes and pretend they've never heard a Democrat say anything stupid or morally obtuse.
Then at the end of this long cynical enterprise, the Washington Post Opinions section sent out an email headlined "Mainstream Democrats romped in the primaries. Republicans went full MAGA." Assistant editor Drew Goins repeated the theme: "In short, Democrats won on moderation. Republicans went full MAGA."
This is boiling balderdash. Take abortion, the issue the liberal journalists are touting as the midterm manna in the Democrat desert. Is Hassan "moderate" on abortion? No. Is Hillary Scholten — the Democrat who lost to Meijer in 2020 and is running again — an abortion "moderate"? No. How about Wes Moore, who's facing Dan Cox in the Maryland governor's race? No, he adores NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Democrats cynically backed candidates that their media buddies can paint as scary "hard-right" kooks while they pose preposterously as the sensible essence of moderation. They are so aerobically cynical that they can align this whole exercise with Biden's "restoring the soul of the nation."
These trashy tacticians should just admit they would do just about anything to win. That's where their moral compass is pointed.
After any training event in the military, or even in combat, you conduct what is called an AAR (After Action Review). The purpose is to assess the positives and negatives of the evolution just encountered. Especially in combat, this is necessary because the victor on the battlefield is the one who can improvise, adapt, and overcome. As we say, "no plan survives first contact" and "the enemy always has a vote." Therefore, as we are less than 60 days from the 2022 midterm elections, I think it is critical to reassess the constitutional lessons learned from two years ago. It is not my intent or desire to talk about who won, voting machines, and allegations the elections were stolen. I want to address that which we objectively know is true.
First, from a constitutional perspective, we need to never allow anyone, elected or not, to believe that a so-called emergency suspends the rule of law. As well, a virus with a 99.5 percent recovery rate is not exactly what one would classify as an emergency; then again, as Rahm Emanuel aptly asserted, "never let a good crisis go to waste.”
The only people, according to our rule of law, who can make or amend laws are those in our respective legislative branches. However, in 2020 we saw many seize emergency powers, unconstitutionally in most cases, and alter respective election laws. These people were governors, judges, and some secretaries of state. Sadly, even in my home state of Texas early voting was unconstitutionally extended an additional week by the governor who had far exceeded his 30-day "emergency" powers. There were other states where these unconstitutional actions occurred, such as Georgia, where a secretary of state entered into a consent agreement with a political activist to reference signatures on mail in ballots. In Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona there were questionable actions taken that affected standing election law...all without legislative involvement. This cannot ever be allowed to happen again in our constitutional Republic.
Speaking of mail in ballots, it was Eric Holder who wrote an op-ed piece for TIME magazine in April 2020 titled, "How Coronavirus Should Permanently Change Elections in America"...ya know, more of that fundamental transformation garbage. Holder, who was head of the National Democrat Redistricting Committee, held a thesis that due to Covid, unsolicited mail-in ballots should be the standard.
Talk about a real lesson learned about the introduction of nefarious voting activities. I think we came to find out that ballots were being mailed to some very suspect addresses. Two years ago, we got seriously confused about what is an absentee ballot, as opposed to unsolicited mail-in ballots, and the infamous drop boxes.
I will admit to being a voting traditionalist. I believe that our national elections should be a holiday. I am not keen on early voting where the rules are often different than those on Election Day. If you are not in country or near your polling location, then you submit an absentee ballot, which is a controlled item. The fact that ballots were freely mailed out to questionable locations last cycle is disconcerting, and it is practice that must not be allowed to continue. Having served in the military I am very knowledgeable about absentee ballots, and folks, we have problems there.
The inconsistencies in mailing out absentee ballots to our Armed Forces must stop. There were states, such as Pennsylvania, where ballots were allowed to just keep coming in well after the election. Yet our military still continues to have their ballots spoiled. Too often military ballots are mailed out late, in some cases purposefully. It is imperative that we protect our military voters as they are deployed serving and protecting our freedoms, way of life, and on occasion, affording others the ability to vote. This is an important issue for the American Constitutional Rights Union. We began our Protect Military Votes Project in 2020.
Another demographic that must be protected when it comes to absentee ballots are our senior citizens. There are many stories of abuse of seniors and the infamous ballot harvesting in senior living centers. The stories that we receive at the American Constitutional Rights Union are very disturbing. It is imperative that we ensure ballots are not being ghosted and filled out by others. Family members, this is a huge responsibility and you must step up and protect your loved ones in their golden years and you can find tools to help protect your family at our Protect Vulnerable Voters website.
If you have not noticed (apparently the White House press secretary has not) we have an issue with 3-4 million illegal immigrants who have entered the United States under the Biden regime. First, this is totally unconstitutional. Second, be advised of the progressive socialist left's attempts to have them vote. That latter position has already been tried by NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and the State of California for local elections. Folks, I have to show a picture ID to board a plane; funny, illegals do not, they can show their arrest warrants. We need to be very aware of illegals being used to vote in this upcoming election...hence no more unsolicited mail-in ballots. If showing a valid photo ID is racist, then every doggone airline in America is racist. Heck, so are all the hotels who ask for picture ID.
Lastly, no more Mark Zuckerberg, or any other leftist elitist oligarch intervention into our electoral process. This fella directly gave more money to the Harris County supervisor of elections office than they are budgeted back in 2020...why? Oh, by the way, Harris County is the largest county in Texas, top five in the country.
Before any military battle you send your scouts out first to gather intel and information about the enemy’s deployment. We need to have a dedicated force of poll watchers and workers who will not be pushed around and told to leave their assigned post by partisan election workers. Truly, if you see something, say something, and we must have a system of reporting questionable, illegal, or criminal activities. The ACRU has developed a hotline (888-820-VOTE) and will assist in tracking and reporting these actions to the proper authorities.
Never forget the quote that many attribute to Josef Stalin, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” That is how Marxists roll, but if we heed the lessons learned from the 2020 election...we won't be fooled again.
A voter casts her ballot with her child at a polling station at Rose Hill Elementary School during the midterm primary election on June 21, 2022, in Alexandria, Virginia. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
While Democrats enjoyed a summer bounce in generic congressional preference surveys, several key indicators point to the Democratic Party sustaining considerable losses in House, Senate, and gubernatorial races in November, similar to results of the 1994 midterms during Bill Clinton’s presidency, election experts told The Epoch Times.
In 1994, the Democrats lost 54 U.S. House seats to the Republicans, culminating in the election of Newt Gingrich to the House speakership, along with the Republican pickup of eight U.S. Senate seats and the gain of 10 gubernatorial seats for the GOP.
“Looking at the aggregate number of people who have cast a ballot in each major party primary, we see a clear turnout advantage for the Republicans, compared to the 2018 midterm election, with Republicans up just under 48 percent in primary turnout nationally, while the Democrats are down just over 18 percent,” private pollster Jim Ellis of Ellis Insight told The Epoch Times.
‘Enthusiasm Gap’
The turnout numbers highlight an important “enthusiasm gap” that could again leave the public media pollsters—as opposed to private campaign pollsters—with egg on their faces in November, according to experts interviewed by The Epoch Times.
“The numbers, they seem pretty accurate from being on the ground,” said Conor Maguire, a principal and managing director at WPA Intelligence, a polling firm that specializes in electing conservatives.
In the primaries where WPA participated, they saw massive turnout by GOP voters, he said. Maguire also noted an additional indication of the trend away from Democrats in 2022.
“We saw 20-25 percent of the Republican primary voters had never even voted in a Republican primary before they had come out for the first time this year,” Maguire told The Epoch Times.
According to Maguire, WPA, unlike many of the public media polls, does surveys that help inform candidates how to win races, and contain a lot less ideological bias than widely distributed media polling.
“It doesn’t behoove us to give our candidates a rosy picture of the situation. That’s not how we win,” Maguire said, noting that if candidates are down by 5 points, they need to know about it.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in support of Doug Mastriano for governor and Mehmet Oz for U.S. Senate at Mohegan Sun Arena in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3, 2022. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump Still Net Negative with Undecideds
A recent analysis of 40,000 swing voters active on social media shared exclusively with The Epoch Times indicates that former President Donald Trump is struggling for support among undecided voters. Only 14 percent of those surveyed view Trump in a positive light, while 37 percent view him as negative and 49 percent view him neutrally, with a net negative rating of 23 percent, social media research firm Impact Social noted.
That compares unfavorably to Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, a possible challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
Undecided social media users gave DeSantis a net positive rating of 2 percent, with 33 percent viewing the Florida governor as positive, 31 percent negative, and 36 percent neutral, according to Impact Social’s analytics.
However, conservatives, in general, seem to be doing well as part of a longer realignment in American politics, the campaign experts say.
“While the 2022 midterm elections may be shaping up to be a victory for Republicans, conservatives must still act as though they are behind,” cautioned Lilian Rodriguez Baz, chief legal counsel for Ready for Ron PAC, a group that’s trying to get DeSantis to run for president.
“The midterms only mark the beginning of the fight for a return to the America First agenda.”
Still, Trump has marked an important point of departure for the GOP with minorities, which should benefit the party overall, one campaign strategist said.
“I think Trump gave blacks and Hispanics and Asians a lot of reason to think about the Republican Party as a reliable alternative to Democrats, who have taken minorities for granted for years,” said Tony Marsh of Savannah Communications.
Marsh helped Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin with minority outreach last fall as the GOP swept statewide elections in Virginia.
“In that regard, Youngkin ended up getting almost 17 percent of the male black vote, which was impressive. If we can do the same thing among females, and I think we can, particularly on the issues of faith and abortion and education, it will be tough for Democrats to win elections,” he said.
The turnout numbers already serve as a proxy for the enthusiasm of the voters this year, the experts said. As such, they indicate the Democrats might in trouble.
The turnout numbers shared by Ellis, the private pollster, might be skewed just a bit because they include primaries where Democrats didn’t have competitive races at the top of the ticket, but in general, they are an accurate reflection ahead of the midterms, according to Dick Morris, an author and independent pollster.
“But even excepting for that, the difference in turnout in favor of the GOP is extraordinary, something like a 4-to-1 advantage,” Morris said.
Morris said that two things are making the Democrats appear more competitive than they really are. Both are structural biases in the way polling is done.
The first bias is political.
“Sometimes, some of these polls are really built with the [ideological] end goal in mind,” said WPA’s Maguire, warning that media polls are often as much about clickbait as they are about measuring the political horseraces in elections.
The second bias, said Morris, is mathematical and fails to account for relative party voter turnout.
That’s one reason why national media pollsters have consistently underrated Trump.
While the 2016 election is the most egregious example of getting turnout wrong, with pollsters claiming even on Election Day that then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton had a 90 percent chance of beating Trump for the presidency, the 2020 election polls weren’t much better.
With less than a month to go before the 2020 election, an ABC News/Washington Post poll said that Joe Biden enjoyed a 12-percentage-point lead over Trump in an election that was ultimately decided officially by 4 points.
The premium is on getting people to participate, and not on the quality of data, Morris said about most media polls these days.
Pollsters are doing most polls online, which brings in a lot of tech-oriented people who have a bias to vote Democratic, Morris said.
“Also pollsters are providing financial incentives, which gives people rewards like the 1,000th person to participate wins a free trip to Hawaii,” he added.
“So some of these polls have the same people participating over and over.”
Key States to Watch
Ellis said that there are key states to watch in the midterms based on turnout data.
“Alaska, where we will see a rerun of the congressional race that drove primary turnout for both sides; Arizona, where each major party saw significant increases from 2018 (Republicans: 26.9 percent; Democrats: 17.9 percent); Georgia, where Republicans were up almost 110 percent while the Democratic increase was 29 percent; Kansas (Democrats up 76.8 percent, Republicans: 42.2 percent); Oregon (both parties up: Democrats: 25.6 percent; Republicans: 19.9 percent); and Pennsylvania, where the GOP turnout factor was up 92 percent and Democrats’ 58 percent higher in comparison to their 2018 performance.”
(Data provided by Ellis Insight)
Nevada should be worrisome for Democrats, Ellis said, with the Republican turnout up 26 percent and Democratic turnout down 20 percent over 2018.
“Other states to watch are Ohio, where Republicans were up 28 percent in primary turnout and Democrats were down 26 percent despite having a competitive gubernatorial election, and Wisconsin where Republicans were up 56 percent in turnout while Democrats were down 7 percent,” he added.
Data shared with The Epoch Times by Morris from pollster John Jordan also highlighted some states where U.S. Senate races may be more competitive than some people think.
President Joe Biden speaks at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pa, on Aug. 30, 2022. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Colorado, Connecticut More Competitive
In Colorado, only 44.1 percent of likely voters said that they think incumbent Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet deserves to be reelected, with just 33.8 percent saying they’d definitely vote for Bennet on Election Day. Of the sample, only 40 percent approve of the job being done by President Biden, after 55 percent of the Rocky Mountain state voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential general election.
Bennet is being opposed by Republican newcomer Joe O’Dea.
Colorado, in particular, demonstrates why it’s dangerous to read too much into the top-line results right now.
A recent poll by Public Policy Polling, one of the higher-rated Democratic media polls, showed Bennet up 46 percent to O’Dea’s 35 percent, the Denver Post reported on Sept. 10 before it highlighted the problems with the data.
“But, notably, [the poll] doesn’t filter by likely voters and 11% of respondents said they either didn’t vote or voted third-party in the 2020 presidential election. The 2020 general election set a record for voter turnout, with nearly 87% of active voters casting ballots. Only about 2.5% of votes for president were for third-party candidates.”
Instead, the newspaper recommended a poll cited by the Washington Examiner that surveyed just likely voters and found the campaign to be a dead heat.
In Connecticut, the story also isn’t boding well for the Democrats.
Of likely voters surveyed in the Nutmeg State in a poll by John Jordan in late July, 41.4 percent think that Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal should be returned to the Senate, with 47.2 percent saying it’s time to pick someone new. Only 43.4 percent of likely voters polled in the state approve of the president’s job performance after Biden got 59 percent of Connecticut’s presidential vote in the 2020 general election campaign.
Blumenthal is being challenged by the GOP’s Leora Levy, a Cuban American businesswoman.
Actual Votes Favor GOP
While the outlook for Biden in both Colorado and Connecticut may look less than ideal, the voters surveyed in the Jordan polls still prefer Biden over Trump, which explains why the Democrats are putting added emphasis on Trump on the campaign trail, according to Marsh.
“I think Trump missed some opportunities as president to take credit for things that he legitimately deserved credit for, because he let his personality get in the way,” Marsh said, adding that Trump sometimes falls into traps that his enemies set for him.
And the Democrats and their media allies then are only too happy to continue to represent polls that make it appear as if the things the Democrats do on the election trail actually work, Maguire said.
“So much of it today is to get clicks, is to get people to read a story or to engage something to make a statement or to draw positive attention,” to the Democrats, Maguire said of public polling, even though the polls may not be an accurate depiction of what is really going on.
There is one last distinction between polls and primaries that ought to worry Democrats who are anxious about the midterms, Ellis says.
“While polling is an important informational tool based upon sampling, probability, and current factors, the primary turnout figures represent actual votes,” he said.
And, thus far, the actual votes are favoring the GOP.
Officials at the Democratic National Committee didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.
