I’m cautious about polls, not because of accuracy concerns, but because intending to vote for someone isn’t a counted vote. There are a lot of obstacles in the way of voting this year — concerns about vote suppression, voter intimidation, postal sabotage, judicial interference with vote counting, and even legislatures overriding the electors chosen by voters.
So polls aren’t everything. I don’t believe they’re off; the popular notion that polls were wrong in 2016 is a myth (read about that here). I simply think what the polls tell us isn’t the whole story.
Of course, only actual votes count. Until they don’t. Potential reasons why votes wouldn’t matter: Because an election is postponed at the demand of a candidate (not legal), a “winner” is declared before all the votes are counted (not legal), valid ballots are thrown out (not legal), or the people’s choice is overridden by a partisan legislature (legal, but politically problematical).
Republicans don’t believe in democracy. If they did, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to overthrow an election Trump is almost certain to lose. The question isn’t who will get the most votes (Biden will), or even the most electoral votes (Biden probably will), but whether the pro-Trump forces can pull this chestnut out of the fire by legal but undemocratic means (and who knows if they’ll go to illegal extremes).
In considering this question, the polls are relevant, because it’s harder to get away with sabotaging the popular will when it’s overwhelming. If Trump is swamped in the popular and electoral voting ,pro-Trump judges, legislators, and Supreme Court justices may think twice or three times about tampering with the results. That’s why every Biden vote matters, no matter how far ahead he is in the polls. In this election, piling on is crucial to protecting the results.
Turning to the polls — it took me a while to get to this, because I think polls just aren’t all that important, for the reasons stated above — it does look like significant movement away from Trump is happening now.
NBC flagged this on Sunday, October 4, with a national poll showing Biden’s lead doubling after the debate from +7% to +14%. At first this poll looked like an anomaly, because some other polls had Biden up only 1 point or so, just a typical post-debate challenger’s bounce. But then a CNN poll released today, October 6, showed Biden +16% nationally, two other polls had him +10% nationally, and other polls showed him widening his lead in several battleground state polls.
Then NBC News, analyzing its poll in detail, reported a “stark shift” of senior citizens away from Trump. Their Sunday poll showed, “Among [likely voters] 65 and older, Biden led by a startling 27 points, marking a 23-point swing in his direction in one month” (read story here). Trump won this demographic group in 2016.
Numbers like that evoke the analogy of sailors abandoning ship. Seniors should be against Trump because he’s a threat to Social Security and Medicare (I wrote about that here), but if they’re turning away from him now, it’s more likely because they perceive his mishandling of Covid-19 as a threat to their lives. Trump’s brush with Covid-19 this weekend brought that issue, always lurking in the background, to the forefront.
Trump shouldn’t have been president in the first place, and shouldn’t be re-elected, because he doesn’t know anything about government, has no character, and is an abject failure in office. But there he is, a product of our politics descending into irrationality. As to why, I’m inclined to think a segment of the American populace has suffered a collective nervous breakdown. Over several decades, life for many Americans became incredibly stressful, and they snapped. That’s how I see it. The evidence for this explanation is that most Trump supporters are characterized by an intense sense of grievance.
Thus, if this profoundly flawed demagogue’s support is now collapsing, and I certainly hope it is, that’s very encouraging because it suggests that America may be on the verge of returning to political normalcy. That doesn’t imply tranquility, as American democracy has always been fractious, and will remain so. But we can live with that. The ideal is a healthy competition of ideas; the reality has always been somewhat short of that, and sometimes far removed from it, but we live in times of ideology and dogmatism running amok, and what America needs now is a strong infusion of political pragmatism. Where it settles — center-left or center-right — matters less than simply becoming sane again.
Return to The-Ave.US Home Page
Trump supporters cheer outside of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. on Monday, Oct. 5, 2020.(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Polls are useful, but have problems. Most of the problems is how media uses the data. The media have reasons to make everything a horse race, and to hype every possible swing. Even swings that are natural and part of an election like the bumps candidates get when formally nominated. Most forget a poll is only a snapshot of how the people responding if the vote were that day. A certain number do lie, and usually that is balanced out by folks lying the other way. Polls can be biased intentionally or unintentionally. Polls results from candidates should be taken with a grain of salt, as you typically are not getting the real data from the candidates machine. Often that polling is accurate but breaks things down to very small gradients showing the candidates the groups they need to attract votes from.
Right now as in 2016 a substantial number of independents are showing up in the polls that are not decided one way or another. What would throw polling off is if all voters had to go to the polls, maybe they could enter a blank ballot, but that would definitely show that polls don’t really reflect reality.
The largest block are people who do not vote. That turns the concept of democratic on iits head, and both major parties like it that way. The next largest group are independents, then Democrats, then Republicans, then all other parties. In some states one party or the other has a lock on the state. Washington at this time is pretty solidly Democratic. So much so it would be an incredible upset if Culp wins the Governor race, or Trump gets the states electoral votes. If WAshington is a one party state then is it a democracy? Is it even remotely right that I can accurately predict who will get the electoral votes in Washington state in 2020, 2024, and 2028…whoever the Democrats run. So do we even have a democracy in Washington state? Does it matter if Republicans believe in democracy, do democrats? Not likely because no bills were introduced in the legislature to ensure every Washingtonian will vote or at least show up at the polls. We might have to invest a bit into civics classes, but that could be covered by the fines on those who do not show up at the polls or mail in a ballot.
Perhaps adopting the Heinlein’s concept of only those with military or civic service can vote or serve in office. Might work out well, and Socrates and Plato toyed with the idea, and neither were particularly pleased with Democracy except when compared with the alternatives.
Of course we are a Republic and not a democracy and democracy is such a pain, always having to go to the center of government and voting, and majorities having dictatorial powers and minorities having no protection except becoming the majority and changing things.
According to the Greeks Trump is in no way a dictator and the person we may need to be concerned with is the person replacing him. That person could be a true dictator. Particularly when they claim you must vote for me to replace the dictator. True dictators don’t allow elections.
So who is trying to undermine this election? Not the Democrats. For your information, this blog reaches all 50 states, so articles about in-person voting are relevant for our readers. Non-voters aren’t the largest bloc; close to 2/3rds of eligible voters vote in most presidential elections. In 2016, an exceptionally low-turnout election, 55% voted. Washington is no less a democracy because its voters prefer one party over the other. It’s a democracy because they’re free to vote for any candidate or party. The fact your side loses doesn’t make it a dictatorship. That’s the result of the GOP’s failure to put forth candidates and policies Washington voters will vote for. Are you suggesting that if Inslee gets 60% of the votes and Culp gets 40%, then Culp should be the governor? That winning makes Inslee a “dictator”? A “republic” doesn’t mean a minority faction gets to rule the majority. Our system is based on the principle of majority rule with protections for minority rights. If a majority of voters can’t vote someone out of office, that’s a dictatorship.