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Let’s try to deal with some facts for a change—at least, as facts are reported in <i>polls</i> — 28 Comments

1. Did you mean to put most of the post in italics?

2. Never mind!

3. For what it’s worth, which is not much, I’ve voted the straight Republican ticket since 2008, but I won’t vote for Trump. I won’t vote for Hillary, either. I’ll sit out the election if it’s Trump vs. Hillary, or more likely vote for the Libertarian candidate. If the Republicans are stupid enough to nominate Trump, they’ll lose me from the party permanently.

4. Wooly Bully:

   Boy, you are quick on the draw 🙂 .

   Those italics lasted for about 5 seconds. But you caught ’em, you bully, you.

5. “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”
   CIA asset Osama bin Laden

6. You mean SIS, section T, asset OBL.

   The sugar really stopped flowing after 2011.

   And the Red Chinese will have nothing doing with Islamabad — unless it’s in China’s favor.

7. Overall polling numbers do not matter. State-by-state polling matters do. That is how presidential elections are won.

   Most interesting is the 25% number – blacks for Trump. That is HUGE. And that will make a big difference is purple states or states that went Obama, such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

   Very interesting indeed.

   Also wondering if the women voters will change their minds on Trump once Melania and Ivanka get more involved in things. These are both very smart, accomplished women. Even Barbara Walters was surprised at how intelligent Melania was (I guess she’s your typical feminist who thinks beautiful women must be dumb).

8. The polls are meaningless because if either Trump or Cruz gains the nomination, the GOP leadership will torpedo their election. Why… because both threaten to turn over the proverbial ‘apple cart’.

   But if an establishment candidate like Rubio is nominated, a critical portion of the base may well sit out the election, if they don’t buy his predictable promises on illegals. Another case of, ‘he was for it before he was against it’.

   Add the above to the democrat media advantage and it makes the election of Hillary Clinton highly probable.

   Some deeper background; the GOP’s “splitter strategy” designed to ensure the nomination of Jeb Bush and (probably) Marco Rubio as his VP.

   Trump however, has thrown a wrench into that otherwise certain strategy, so the GOP strategy is adapting.

   Here’s some more; even with am improbable election of either Trump or Cruz, an essentially united Congress will do all it can to frustrate any moves to actually reform the status quo. And, an election of Bush or Rubio is a vote for the continuance of the status quo and thus a vote for America’s slow slide to oblivion.

   Finally, the apparent suicidal dismissal of the GOP’s conservative base by the GOP leadership has puzzled me for quite some time. Yesterday, an article over at the Gateway Pundit led me to an epiphany.

   Ignore the articles hope that Ryan will be subject to being primaried. That’s NOT going to happen.

   Rather, it’s Ryan’s courting of those pushing for “undocumented immigrant rights” wherein the article’s importance lies. In that context, look at the pictures and connect the dots. The GOP’s electoral strategy for remaining viable after 2016 is to replace its conservative base with immigrant Hispanic voters.

9. I’d like to see a poll asking voters if they have firmly settled on a candidate yet and if not who are their top 3 and bottom 3. Trump seems to come out on top because others are deciding between the alternatives an want more time to decide. They are the ones still trying to see how the candidates evolve.
   It might also be interesting to know who people would vote for if they knew their favorite might be VEEP or be up for a cabinet job.

10. Geoffrey Britain:

    I agree that the establishment is very upset at the prospect of either Trump OR Cruz (more upset by Trump, but almost as upset by Cruz).

    However, I’m really sick of people giving all this power to the evil puppetmasters of the GOP establishment, as though they control everything. For example, if I had a dollar for every person who used to say authoritatively that the establishment would engineer Jeb Bush’s nomination, I’d have quite a bit of money. I always said they would not succeed, because Bush had no constituency—he was going to be a bad candidate, and he is. And although I agree that the GOP “elites” don’t like either Trump or Cruz, they are not all-powerful and I predict that they would not be able to torpedo them. Trump and Cruz have to be able to appeal to people more than Hillary, and the “elites” can hamper that a bit but cannot stop it if it’s going to happen.

    However, I make another prediction, and you can bank on this one: if either Trump or Cruz is the nominee, and if that person loses in the general, the angry-at-the-GOP base will say it’s all the fault of the GOP elites, who stabbed the nominee in the back.

11. expat:

    There are questions asking people about their second choice (I don’t recall any that ask about third choice). This is pretty typical, I think:

    Cruz was the top “second choice” (22 percent) of all the candidates, followed by Rubio (15 percent), with Carson and Trump tied at 13 percent.

12. Polls are snapshots. In the early stage of the primary process its a state by state race until one or two or perhaps three candidates break free of the pack. Patience grasshoppers, patience.

13. neo,

    I agree that Bush never had the needed constituency and thought that too from the beginning. Those who manipulate and scheme can miscalculate. Had Trump not entered the race however, I suspect Bush would have his needed 20%.

    Sorry, I wasn’t referring to the GOP’s ability to torpedo Trump or Cruz as the nominee but as President.

    Enough Congressional democrats and republicans can easily turn a Pres. Trump or Cruz into a lame duck President from the very beginning of their Presidency. And, if necessary… they will.

    As for your prediction, given the level of justifiable frustration, it’s a safe one. As is the prediction that the GOP’s support for a Trump or Cruz nominee will be lukewarm. Unless… behind closed doors, they provide guarantees that, if elected as President, they’ll ‘play the game’.

14. The Daily Caller has an interesting article “Are Polls Underestimating Trump’s Appeal”. These polls you quote are based largely on the use of cell and landline polling contact only, and exclude internet polling, the internet polling showing a stronger appeal for Trump.
    Wolly Bully Says “If the Republicans are stupid enough to nominate Trump, they’ll lose me from the party permanently.” Get your voter registration form handy for that change.

15. For me, defending against Islamism is my most important criterion. Before 9/11/2001 illegal immigration was most important. I care most about security for me and my loved ones. The absolute worst thing that could happen in the 2016 general election would be a win by the Democrats. Maybe just as scary would be a win by a loose cannon like Trump, who doesn’t seem to even have a coherent ideology. Rubio seems quite a bit more able to beat Hillary than any of his rivals. So, I am pulling for Rubio; I would rather have him along with his attachment to the GOP establishment than Hillary.

    I understand the uncertainty of polls. Nevertheless, I think that Rubio’s likability, youth and Hispanic background will enable him to attract more independents of all kinds.

    I also think that Trump will have a very hard time attracting beyond his base. Personally, I find him quite dislikable and doubt that I could vote for him. Glen Beck said he would not vote for Trump.

    More than ever, I fear for my country and Western Civilization.

16. G.B’s thesis is interesting: The GOP is transitioning to become the Latino party. Let the Dems have the blacks. If I understand him correctly.

    And to hell with the conservatives, the Tea Party crowd, the Constitutionalists, all people of working class mentality. Who needs them? The GOP may hang on to them because they sure cannot find a home with the Dems, but they can be ignored. They are in fact being ignored.

    It could work. A new balance is being set.

    So let’s hear it for Rubio!

17. Still a long way to Tuesday, November 8th, 2016. I wonder how well Hillary Clinton will continue polling, as people get to know more of her and her past. She may have nowhere to go but down.

    And I still think there is a good chance Hillary will be indicted for the e-mail server scandal. Or the FBI Director may resign if the Justice Department does not do anything. Remember, the current Director is the same guy who prosecuted Martha Stewart–how can he ignore something more serious like this?

18. Alan F,

    Rubio’s actions conclusively demonstrate himself to be a political opportunist. Such men do not defend anything but their own fortunes.

    Frog,

    Yes, that’s my thesis. IMO, there’s lots of supportive circumstantial evidence. Our current demographic trends and a wide open southern border indicate that Hispanics will become an ever greater electoral presence. The GOP knows it is losing their conservative base. To retain political power, it has to replace those lost voters. It’s a strong indication that the GOP leadership has no interest in constitutional governance.

    Yankee Republican,

    I’m highly doubtful that anything will happen should the FBI Director resign in protest over the DOJ refusing to prosecute Hillary for her criminal use of a private email server.

    And its highly likely that the DOJ will not prosecute, as SecDef Carter and SecDef Kerry have reportedly done the same. There are rumors that Obama has done it too. Rot starts at the head and this entire administration is gangrenous.

19. Geoffrey,

    Even if I accept all the criticism of Rubio, I would still much prefer him to Hillary. Just after I posted above, I saw Karl Rove on Fox with poll analysis that showed only Rubio with a clear edge over Clinton. Early on, I sent money to Perry, Fiorina and Walker (but not Rubio), to encourage them to get traction.

    I think it is a disaster that Trump entered the race, especially for Cruz. Trump is making the GOP look bad to the necessary middle. I disliked him from the start, even though he crudely champions my key issues.

20. Geoffrey Britain Says:
    Enough Congressional democrats and republicans can easily turn a Pres. Trump or Cruz into a lame duck President from the very beginning of their Presidency. And, if necessary… they will.

    Then let Cruz pull an Obama and reverse everything Obama’s done by Executive Orders/Memos and order the bureaucracies to either rescind or ignore their own egregious regulations enacted during Obama’s eight years. There’s plenty of precedent for it now.

    Additionally, if the Tea Parties get riled up enough maybe they’ll start primarying lots of squishes and RINOs. McCain has a challenger, one announced against Tillis today, and I’ll bet there will be lots more.

21. GB said:
    Enough Congressional democrats and republicans can easily turn a Pres. Trump or Cruz into a lame duck President from the very beginning of their Presidency. And, if necessary… they will.

    Everyone is focused on the presidential race, but don’t forget that there are a lot of Republican Senators up for re-election. If Trump is any indication, they may finally be angry enough to burn out the dead wood.
    Even if that turns out to be incremental, a Cruz presidency followed by GOP Senate intransigence will guarantee another cycle of culling.
    The GOPe can ignore the loss of any one member, but they can’t ignore whole batches of RINOs being shot down. I would also bet that regardless, this is McConnell’s last term in office.

22. This rings pretty true to me. Trump’s campaign success thus far explained:

    “Trump’s fling-it-all-at-the-wall tempo of attacks and messages is unique. It starts with the fact that essentially everything that comes from the Trump campaign comes from Trump himself — his rambling, stream-of-consciousness speeches, his interviews, his tweets that he clearly writes himself in his distinctive style.

    This gives Trump’s message approach a remarkable thematic and stylistic cohesion at any tempo (despite its underlying incoherence in terms of facts or principles, neither of which concern him). It extends to the fact that–bluntly speaking–Trump’s basic style is “BS,” in which he is interested neither in the truth nor in lying to his audience, but just in riffing on a theme without much connection to the facts and certainly without bothering to fact-check anything he says before he says it. Trump has repeatedly shown his willingness, to a degree unprecedented in politics, to heave personal insults at his opponents, mocking their appearance and their poll standing with put-downs.

    These are all approaches Trump has been using for years and years. He didn’t improvise them from study of the battlespace, but just went with what he already knew how to do. But he was also able to gain unusually rapid traction because–unlike the typical insurgent–he had already been nationally famous for three decades and a fixture on network television.

    (As we shall see throughout this review of Trump’s M.O. while he has executed some shrewd maneuvers, his success thus far says more about his ability to exploit his adversaries’ OODA Loops than having a particular mastery of his own.)

    ***************************************
    The signs we have seen so far of Trump suggest that, while he’s very shrewd and swift in observing, orienting, deciding, and acting when he’s on familiar terrain, he draws information from a fairly closed loop, and is not well-suited to expanding to a broader, less familiar battlefield. Therein lies his vulnerability in a primary or general election, as well as his deficiency as a potential commander-in-chief despite his natural grasp of the basic precepts of strategy, tactics, leverage, speed, and ambiguity.

    The way Trump has dealt with facts in his public statements is a tipoff. Political speech routinely incorporates assertions of fact that range from debatable to unverifiable to provably false, and sometimes this is a sign of shrewd cynicism rather than self-deception.

    But Trump has repeatedly made statements that he and his team had clearly made no effort to verify in advance, drawn from sources whose credibility should have been huge red flags, even though they were outside the common cultural and media conventional wisdom and therefore likely to be challenged.

    In political debate, that represents a vulnerability waiting to be exploited; in international affairs, where presidents must routinely cut through misinformation and direct their staffs to do the same, it can be fatal.

    Trump has repeatedly made statements that he and his team had clearly made no effort to verify in advance, drawn from sources whose credibility should have been huge red flags.

    The recent dustup over Trump’s claim–which was, at best, severely exaggerated–that he had seen video of thousands of Muslims celebrating 9/11 in Jersey City is a classic example of this. So is the fact that Trump cites Infowars reporting in campaign speeches based solely on having clicked a link on the Drudge Report, and has gone on Alex Jones’ conspiracy-theory-soaked show to trade praise with Jones.

    Trump’s willingness to pitch public battles on the turf of things he reads on the Internet without even remotely credible confirmation suggests that–despite his savvy in evaluating information when dealing with the U.S. national media environment and the economic bargaining tables he’s excelled at–Trump is vulnerable to psyop disinformation campaigns once he gets outside his comfort zone.”

    It’s long, but well worth reading it all:

    http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/16/military-strategist-explains-why-donald-trump-leads-and-how-he-will-fail/

23. @J.J.

    I stopped reading near the end.

    Cruz’s third and fourth strategic choices are improvisations in response to how Trump reshaped the battlespace. They show more flexibility and learning capacity than Cruz’s critics might suspect. Cruz’s major vulnerability is being painted as an unelectable Goldwater-esque extremist even within the context of the GOP, let alone the general electorate.

    Maybe Cruz will inherit Trump’s followers, if Trump implodes. They don’t have many options, after all. But I somewhat doubt Trump will implode. As the extremely astute blogger at Conservative Treehouse noted, Trump always owns the downside. As the media is finding out, it is very hard to attack somone who owns the downside.

24. A story linked at Drudge shows a good deal of nuance, regarding measuring Trump support in polls.

    Trump generally has done better in online polls than in surveys done by phone.

    The firm conducted an experiment aimed at understanding why that happens and which polls are more accurate — online surveys that have tended to show Trump with support of nearly four-in-10 GOP voters or the telephone surveys that have typically shown him with the backing of one-third or fewer.

    Their results suggest that the higher figure probably provides the more accurate measure. Some significant number of Trump supporters, especially those with college educations, are “less likely to say that they support him when they’re talking to a live human” than when they are in the “anonymous environment” of an online survey, said the firm’s polling director, Kyle Dropp.

    “Some of the polls that show heavy support for Trump have also shown him doing better among self-identified independents who lean Republican than among regular GOP voters.”
    http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-polls-20151221-story.html

    To me, neither finding is surprising. Nor is the idea that more supporters might be ‘coming out of the closet’ over time, and perhaps accounting for recent boosts in his numbers.

    But while neo puts much trust in polls, I think it’s worth noting that Gallup is sitting out this presidential cycle.

    The Gallup organization has owned political polling since its scientific incarnation began. They were bitten badly last time, and prefer to recalibrate their measurements rather than suffer another hit to their reputation.

25. J.J. jumps in the Trump’s gonna fall bandwagon. Many have called it so – almost all have fallen off it only to say it again.

    Trump has repeatedly made statements that he and his team had clearly made no effort to verify in advance, drawn from sources whose credibility should have been huge red flags, even though they were outside the common cultural and media conventional wisdom and therefore likely to be challenged.

    Or the reverse – as my collection of headline stories that I’ve saved, shows.

    Which suggests that either of us may be – like neo – engaging in confirmation bias.

    My idea: try doing a hard tally before making sweeping assertions of fact.

    Trump has an exceptional memory. He isn’t all just bluster and braggadocio and hyperbole, I’ve found. It’s often
    been surprising to me – and almost as persistent as media distortion and smears of what he’s actually said (which ought to be legion – but who in the MSM keeps honest score anymore?).

    It’s the latter that keeps me in the Trump (and Cruz) camp.

26. …a national sample of 1002 registered voters contacted by cell phone and landline.

    I ask myself, “What kind of idiot would actually answer those questions over the phone to someone they don’t even know?” …let alone pick up the phone from a number they don’t recognize? Are these people that desperate for attention?

27. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to my wife that this Trump fella mihgt have a point, even though I don’t pay much attention to politics this far out.

    She stunned my be saying, “I already decided that I’m voting for him a long time age. I just didn’t want to say anything that might get you upset. Glad to see you are finally paying attention.”

    Last week our Mexican cleaning lady — after saying that she was not only legal but a US citizen and she hated what the illegals were doing, making people think that she was an illegal, too — told us that she & her family were all voting for Trump and only an idiot would vote for that crook Hillary.

    Walked by the TV last night, my wife was watching the news of (I thought) a college game in a huge crowded arena. I asked what the game was, since she doesn’t usually watch sports.
    “Not a game. A trump rally.”

    Two anecdotes. But…. I suspect that next November the election will be a formality, everybody will know the outcome months before.

28. Orson: “J.J. jumps in the Trump’s gonna fall bandwagon. Many have called it so — almost all have fallen off it only to say it again.”

    ‘Twasn’t my intention at all. It was to show some possible reasons why Trump has been so successful thus far. And to point out that he may need to adjust his actions to go after the voters who are outside his present sphere of influence.

    I’m agnostic about Trump. I see many of his strengths, but also his weaknesses. If he is to be a successful candidate and President he will have to continually adjust his MO based on the feedback he gets. He has a strong base of 30-38% of the GOP. At least that’s what the polls say. That means 70-62% are not in his camp. They are spread over the Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Bush, Christie, Fiorina, Paul camps. I don’t see any of the other candidates’ supporters as being easy pick ups by Trump when the winnowing out begins. (Which will be after South Carolina, IMO) Unless Trump adjusts his actions to win some of them over, I can see a scenario where we go into the convention with three candidates (Trump, Cruz, Rubio) – with none a clear leader. That scenario should be discounted by the fact that, thus far, I’ve gotten nothing right in the campaign. But it’s fun to try to be a pundit. 🙂

    As I’ve stated before, I don’t love Trump. But I do think he could be a good President, if he is willing and able to rise to the challenge and not think it is like running his own private company where he is essentially a dictator. I don’t relish the thought, but I would vote Trump over Hillary.

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