There is something very wrong with American polling systems.
Pollsters got it wrong in 2018, 2020, and 2022.
Polling practices these days are often just unsupported assumptions tested against too few people with badly worded alternatives.
Some, like the GOP-funded Trafalgar Group, wrongly pronounced swings to the GOP among millennials and Hispanics when the opposite happened. You wonder whether they were truth-seeking or propaganda-making?
Readers should take the margin of error stated on the poll, double it, and see whether the difference between the two candidates is within the doubled margin of error. If it is, then it is hard to conclude which candidate is actually ahead in the race.
For balance, we have two soothsayers who both have impressive records. One is calling November for Biden, the other says Trump has a chance.
In the Biden corner, we have Allan Lichtman.
Lichtman shocked the world when he forecast that Donald Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. So did I, but no one cared. He then accurately forecast the victory of Biden over Trump. In fact, he has accurately predicted every US presidential contest since 1982, based on his “13 trends” key system. It is not a data-heavy model (thankfully) but it considers the political and social power of the different categories of a candidate’s appeal. A disadvantage of that is that some of his keys are a bit subjective. For months, he has been saying that Biden will beat Trump.
He has been called the ‘Nostradamus’ of US presidential elections.
In another corner, we have Michael Moore.
A brilliant film-maker, he shocked everyone when he predicted that Trump would beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Now, he is saying that Trump can win again, boldly declaring that "Trump is smarter than us."
"We don't want to say this out loud, but I'm going to say it. The reason why we need to be concerned is that Trump is smarter than us."
"I'll just let that sink in for a second," he continued. "I know, I know, you're calling the people to come to find me — the guys in the white uniforms with the big net — and take me away. 'Are you crazy? What do you mean he's smarter than us?'"
"I'm talking about the way throughout his entire life he's been able to pull shit off and get away with it," Moore said. "It is an amazing record. You know the record. I'm not going to run through the whole litany of it … You know the whole list, and he's gotten away with it. You must marvel at how somebody that stupid is that smart when it comes to the performance of his evil and his ability to never have to pay for it."
Moore has a point. Trump looks boxed in now, but he picked the Supreme Court in which his cases will be heard. He can bail at the last minute on any charge.
Drilling down into Lichtman’s counter-claim, his 13 keys are:
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party [Dems] holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. [this goes to Trump; the Dems held 222 seats in 2020 and 213 in 2022. It doesn’t matter that the Dems had one of the four best midterms for the party controlling the White House in the last century.]
Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. [This goes to Biden]
Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. [Biden]
Third-party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign. {Biden; RFK is 30 points behind Biden]
Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. [Biden]
Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. [Biden]
Policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy. [Biden]
Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. [toss-up call, based on Gaza or MAGA]
Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. [Biden]
Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. [another toss-up, depending on your perspective on Gaza and Afghanistan]
Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. [toss-up]
Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. [toss-up]
Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. [to Trump]
Lichtman observes that Biden holds the Incumbency key and, following his victory over insignificant challengers in the Democratic primary, also secures the Contest key.
“That’s two keys off the top. That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”
The Third Party key, the two Economy keys, the Policy Change key and the Scandel key also fall into Biden’s lap.
A fast note on the Economy keys: The polls claim that 60% complain that Joe has not made progress creating more good jobs in their community, even though he has overseen the fastest pace of job growth in US history and unemployment sits at its lowest level since 1969. Again, what are the polls measuring?
So Biden gets five more keys. Added to the other two, Biden has seven keys already – a majority. If he has six or more he is the winner.
Trump only has two: Party Mandate and Challenger Charisma.
Social Unrest, Charisma and Foreign Success are in up to the observer, depending on how one views Ukraine and Gaza. Foreign failure, Military success and Incumbent charisma are also toss-ups, depending on your viewpoint.
Trump, or any other Republican stand-in, can’t win, even if he picks up every one of the remaining keys.
In 2016, Lichtman says, candidate Trump had only six "keys" against him, but in 2020 "Trump the incumbent, had seven Keys against him."
Incidentally, it is strange that the key work better as a predictive tool than the actual popular vote. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary by nearly three million votes – but the Electoral College system threw him the win.
Also of note: the Keys give no weight to the Running Mate. People evidently don’t care who the VP is.
And yes, Biden’s 80 years old, but 80 today is equivalent to 60 a few decades ago. My own father was a spry 103 before he passed, so 80 does not impress me. As they say “80 is the new 79.” And as people get older they generally get happier…especially if they get a chance to beat Republicans.
Even though only about half of Democrats polled said they wanted Biden to run again, 81% said they’d at least probably support him in the general election if he did run.
And there is a counter-weight to the ‘age’ issue…a real elephant in the room.
For the 2024 election, it is certain that reproductive rights will be the championship issue. It is not one of Lichtman’s measurements but in my view, for this unique election, it is the ram that will knock open the door, keys be dammed.
That has not changed since I began writing about it after Roe. The mainstream media is still pushing back on this message. But in the latest round of voting, in an election centred on abortion rights, the Republicans have been crushed in major state votes. Virginians were an especially bad omen for the Republicans, as Virginia is an accurate foretaste of what will come nationally, and Virginia went Democratic.
“Voters showed up at the ballot box and sent the GOP a stark warning — betting big on the MAGA agenda doesn’t fly with everyday Americans, and it will cost them once again in 2024,” asserted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison.
Since then, a shadow has spread from the Middle East: the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in Gaza has upset many Americans. United Nations officials have described the onslaught by Israeli forces on the besieged enclave as a “crisis of humanity” and a “graveyard for children.” Israel is perceived by many as an attack dog that has slipped the leash and is raging outside American influence. There are evils on both sides. But the essential question here is what impact this might have on Biden in November? Will it hurt him?
I believe not, as some polls have show. More to come in my article on Monday, “Palestine Support Spreads”.
Election results for the Virginia Legislature over the past few cycles have been shown to correlate with what happens in the following year’s national elections.
This is very bad news for the national Republican Party, because both Virginia legislatures have gone Democratic in recent elections!
“Voters showed up at the ballot box and sent the GOP a stark warning — betting big on the MAGA agenda doesn’t fly with everyday Americans, and it will cost them once again in 2024,” asserted Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison.
Evolution rode on the coattails of women’s rights…something else that the old Confederacy would have abhorred. Now 80% of Americans do not want the abortion ban. In Red states, voters have repeatedly rejected abortion bans, only to have male-dominated GOP legislatures force them through anyway, even by blocking the rights of voters to weigh in directly.
First there were rights for Blacks, now Women…next you would have Republicans believe that Trump didn’t win in 2020!
This election will drift away from Lichtman’s model a bit, because of the overriding importance of that onee issue…
Abortion has been the key issue for three-quarters of those who voted Democrat.
As the Washington Post acknowledged: “Those who underestimated the impact of the Supreme Court’s repeal of nearly 50 years of abortion rights should reconsider how central that issue is to the lives of tens of millions of Americans.”
The other undeserved factor in his favour is his opponent. Who is running against him?
Four-time loser Donald Trump.
In the 2020 election he raised almost a billion dollars and still lost.
They are trapped into their enthusiastic support for abortion bans.
They have no economic policy.
Their only supporters are a diminishing and increasingly radicalized base of cruel MAGA red-state voters, caught in the Fox denial loop.
The only thing this diminishing choir of hate-mongers can do is to try to prevent democracy from changing America.
They can trap the state legislatures into abortion bans that cannot be lifted.
Try to prevent kids from reading books that Republicans disapprove of…
Jam up the processes in Washington to try to prevent progressive legislation.
All of this is ultimately futile, of course.
But Nothing is coming over the horizon to help the Republicans.
Each year, American society gets more liberal, more diverse and more Democrat-leaning.
Immigration is slowly changing the colours of the states from Red to Blue.
Economic forces are crushing the old ways of living.
So what is their plan?
They do not have one.
If Trump is supported by the anti-abortion/pro-gun sector, he will lose by more than 100-million votes.
The percentage of voters registered with the Republican Party has decreased to 23.93% from 35% — a dozen points — since the beginning of 2022. Democrats won the popular vote in the latest four elections by the following margins: 9.5 million, 5.0 million, 2.9 million, 7.1 million. Trump’s losing margin increased by over 4 million in 2020. America’s biggest threat is not Donald Trump, it is its own Electoral College system.
With less than one-quarter of the voters going for Republicans, and only 30% of that vote going to Trump, Trump is pulling in 7% of the overall vote. Using the 2020 election as the yard-stick, there was a total vote of 155-million; 25% of that would be 39-million; 30% of that would be 11.6 million.
An April poll did show that nearly 70% of Republicans supported Trump.
After the first indictment that dropped to 50%.
After the second indictment it plunged to to 41%.
That has drifted south a bit from Trump’s previous total of 74 million. Which was still short of victory by 7 million.
This time, he could be short of victory by 143 million votes.
The MAGA types don't care who gets hurt, even themselves or their loved ones... as long as the weak (read: Democrats, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, people of color, etc.) suffer more. Congressional Republicans won’t feel what it is like to be without a pay check.
And their ‘issues’ are paper thin. They keep bringing up the federal deficit as if it mattered. The interest on that deficit works out to 1/24th of GDP. Advanced, productive economies can sustain high levels of debt via steady economic growth - in fact, they need continuous injections of federal capital to build the infrastructures that today’s companies creating AI (e.g.) depend on.
Back to Michael Moore: so how do we beat the MAGA frontrunner if he's so darn — as Moore would call him — "smart"?
"The only thing that can save us is ourselves," Moore concludes. "We are going to have to mobilize."
That holds true whether you believe Lichtman that Biden has it wrapped up, or whether you believe that the abortion issue will bury Trump so deep a beachcomber with a metal detector could not pick up a signal from his leaden heart.
Another key that is not mentioned that would encourage is all, is the “unionization” key. I mention this because it is a hidden lift for all our incomes. If “union Joe Biden” gets four more years, the union movement will continue its upward trajectory and raise salaries for everyone; a drag-along effect. The economy is move steadily upward, the US is growing faster than any other country, and there is plenty of economic surplus to spread around – if we don’t vote for Trump.
Trump would take the surplus and give it to the rich, just like he did with his tax cuts.
The wealthy have enough surplus profit to fund any collection of social investments that you care to name.
Education is one of the key drivers of growth…of our income.
Today, however, we find that the institutions of learning are being swallowed up by corporations to serve as profit centers, much like health care.
Education was never meant to be a profit center. Education can provide profits for companies through the value of the workforce, but the act of education itself was intended by the Founders to be a provision of the state.
There should not be any charge, for example, for people entering college. Society – including businesses – gets paid back when the newly-prepared minds generate innovative ways to be productive.
That is what this election is all about.
Joe Biden will enhance education, cut costs, pay for social programs through new wealth taxes, and ensure the growth of unions.
Along the way, he will enhance the strength of Europe and Ukraine, and thus boost Western democracy.
You can’t ask much more than that.
So let’s get out there in November and prove Lichtman right and assure Moore that Trump is not that smart…
…but we are!
This is personal: we want our children and grandchildren to be smart enough to pay for our retirement!
For our sakes, Vote!
Amen! I am cautiously optimistic about Biden in November, judging by my neighborhood in Florida, which is 75% R and in 2016 most of the neighbors yards were flying all kinds of Trump signs and flags, including Nazi flags. In 2020 less of them did and this year I am yet to see any in prominent display. I think they are finally feeling the shame. It still doesn't mean they will vote for Biden and Florida will remain red thanks to gerrymandering and suppressing the vote. But at least for the 25% D in the neighborhood - we can breathe more freely not seeing the Nazi flags and less Trump trucks in the neighbors driveways. I do not agree with Michael Moore that Trump is "smart", he is just a daring sociopath. Smart people have thoughts and restraints, stupid sociopaths don't. I am just hoping that the real smart people will realize that they can stop sociopaths if they come together.