The media is focused more on horse race numbers than the existential threat that Donald Trump and the Republican Party he owns presents to the United States and our people. They are treating these numbers as if it is almost predetermined that this is what the election result will look like despite many reasons that this is unlikely. There are major events which are likely to shake up the race like the federal January sixth prosecution, President Biden beginning to campaign, and the two conventions. If the economy continues in this same path, eventually voters will recognize reality. It normally takes six to nine months for voters to understand that a bad economy has turned around. Moreover and perhaps more important than any other reason, all voters on the left will understand that either Joe Biden will stay in office or Donald Trump will return to office. Anything other than a vote for Joe Biden by people on the left gives Donald Trump a better chance to win the 2024 presidential election. We haven't even had one election in either major political party's primary. Furthermore, it is, in my view, very difficult to imagine voters whom Donald Trump attempted to disenfranchise changing their vote from President Biden to Donald Trump. This is the first election that Donald Trump himself will have appeared in since he was charged with 91 felonies and since he attempted a coup, one of the means being inciting the insurrection. The Republican Party has not had a successful year in federal elections since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2017. Donald Trump picked the Supreme Court Justices who made Dobbs a reality. Our Pro Choice community will not be fooled; we know that Trump ended Roe and we know that we can't trust him to pick a pro choice judge whereas we can be confident that President Biden will choose pro choice judges and Supreme Court Justices if he is given an opportunity. Pro Choice has kicked forced birtherism's ass in election after election. Governor Andy Beshear even campaigned on pro choice and won reelection in Kentucky. Manufacturing jobs will continue to come online. President Biden is polling better than Trudeau in Canada and better than every European leader who has been in office since 2020 and our economic numbers are better. There are, therefore, many reasons to doubt that these insane polls which we have seen recently and which have understandably scared the hell out of those of us on the side of democracy in this upcoming presidential election.
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Molly said, "The media narrative which tends to not necessarily connect with what's actually happening with voters on the ground, the media narrative we're getting right now is that inflation is bad and voters are mad and they think Biden's too old because they can't verbalize they're mad about inflation. I don't think that's necessarily true but that's what I'm, that's sort of the underlying media unintelligible system.
Rick, "And I think there's an awful lot of see how fair we are, we're treating Biden just as badly as we would have treated Trump when he was in office. I think there's a lot of that bothsidism garbage. But you do see , one thing I think a lot of media pollsters and media outlets underestimate is the degree to which the MAGA and Fox News Trump echo system will take an otherwise innocuous poll and turn it into a major narrative because they're much better at setting those narratives. And one of them right now is that you're getting much more coverage on Fox about is young voters have abandoned Biden over Gaza and Israel and young voters will stay home and young voters will do this, when you get down into the sample sizes of the polls so far of these 18-29 years old registered voters, the sample sizes in the numbers are minimalist, they are a statistical joke, by and large. "
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The NY Times / Sienna College Poll
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Nevada
Trump 52
Biden 41
Georgia
Trump 49
Biden 43
Arizona
Trump 49
Biden 44
Michigan
Trump 48
Biden 43
Pennsylvania
Trump 48
Biden 44
Wisconsin
Trump 45
Biden 47
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Does the New York Times even believe that the election results will look like this? This is the first election after Donald Trump attempted a coup. America watched Trump incite a violent assault on the Capitol. This is the first election in which the defendant will have faced an electorate after being charged with 91 felonies. If this were some other candidate, a moderate republican candidate, then this might be believable if the election were held today. Neither party's convention has been held. We're nine plus months out from either party's convention.
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The world has been a pretty awful place the last four years. We had a worldwide pandemic which led to millions of deaths and many more millions of people becoming sick and worldwide inflation. So, voters around the world are in a sour mood. Again, "Republicans fall in line, democrats fall in love. " Republican voters are going to stand behind their leader no matter what. Voters on the left won't. So, there is a structural advantage for Republican Party candidates when the election is this far out. And even on Daily Kos we have nonsense attacks on Israel's Prime Minister Joe Biden. Damn that World President Joe Biden hasn't solved worldwide inflation yet??? It's understandable to be unhappy about people being hurt and killed and living a life below the standard that they should. It's understandable to be unhappy that you have gone through a tough couple of years. It's rational to be unhappy that some things, especially food, are more expensive than normal. And right now, a poll for many people is an opportunity to express their anger at an unfair world.
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.The simple fact is that since Donald Trump narrowly won the Electoral College in 2016, the Republican Party has lost every national election or underperformed. In 2021, the Democratic Party candidates won the only federal elections. The two big gubernatorial elections were split, a consistent pattern was upheld in the one which the Democratic Party lost, the Republican Party candidate campaigned as a moderate and was NOT endorsed by Donald Trump and did not seek Donald Trump coming down to campaign for him. In the 2022 election, that candidate, Governor Youngkin, placed a large bet on his personal appeal resulting in Republican Party control over both chambers. He had hoped that might propel him to a successful run in the Republican Party 2024 Presidential Primary. The exact opposite happened; the Democratic Party took control over both chambers and no announcement from the governor has been forthcoming. Then Dobbs hit. The Democratic Party has been dominant in special elections since then, winning by greater margins than the partisan index would have predicted or losing by less. We were told by Senator Ted Cruz that we should see a red tsunami with a 50 seat majority emerging in the result of the outcome of the 2022 US House of Representatives elections and a 5-7 seat majority coming from the US Senate 2022 elections. Inflation was far worse then compared to now. President Biden's approval polls were as bad then as now. It appears to be extremely dumb to believe that President Biden is much more unpopular than the Democratic Party he leads. He is the most well known democrat. Most people get their image of the Democratic Party from him. The Democratic Party chose him to be their standard bearer. Why is it believed that the Republican Party has fared so poorly since Donald Trump was elected president? Because he represents the party.
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A Donald Trump that thumped President Joe Biden by eleven points in Nevada and won five of six swing states is one that wins a majority of the vote. Anybody really believe that? Donald Trump's candidates have fared worse than a generic republican. In 2016, Donald Trump won 46.1% of the vote and this was the only general election he won . Donald Trump's greatest percentage of the vote he has won in a general election in Nevada was 47.7% in 2020. He only won 45.5% of the vote in Nevada in 2016. But now after inciting a violent insurrection and attempting a coup and after being credibly charged with 91 felonies, he is going to win 52% of the vote. In 2016, Donald Trump won 47.5% of the vote in Michigan, beating Secretary Clinton's 47.27%. In 2020, Donald Trump lost Michigan by almost three percent, 50.62% to 47.84% Even the NY Times recognizes Trump's actual problems in Michigan in a story in their paper titled, 'How Trump's election lies left the Michigan GOP battered and broken'. But Trump is going to win Michigan by four percentage points. The gory details are below:
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The battleground has steadily grown safer for Democrats. No Republican has won a statewide election there since Mr. Trump won the state in 2016. (Republicans have won nonpartisan seats on the State Supreme Court.) G.O.P. officials in the state are growing concerned that they do not have a top-tier candidate to run for the open Senate seat.
“It’s not going real well, and all you have to do is look at the facts,” said Representative Lisa McClain, a Republican from Eastern Michigan. “The ability to raise money, we’ve got a lot of donors sitting on the sideline. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. It’s just a plain fact. We have to fix that.”
She added: “Everyone is in the blame game. We’ve got to stop.”
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Here's what ballotpedia has to say:
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The Democratic Party controls the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature. As of November 21, 2023, there are 22 Republican trifectas, 17 Democratic trifectas, and 11 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.
https://ballotpedia.org › Party_contr...
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Donald Trump faces an uphill climb in 2024. A state he lost in 2020 and then proceeded to attempt to disenfranchise, he faces a partisan voter registration disadvantage:
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Partisan identification in the electorate
On July 10, 2023, the Pennsylvania Department of State reported that there were 3,890,435 (45.2%) registered Democrats, 3,432,657 (39.9%) registered Republicans, 929,364 (10.8%) registered unaffiliated and 346,280 (4.0%) registered with other parties.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org › wiki
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Donald Trump's problems with women, especially college educated suburban women started to manifest in 2018
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In CNN's latest polling, Democrats top Republicans among white female likely voters with college degrees by a 67% to 31% margin.
The Kavanaugh nomination "just keeps reminding women that he doesn't have respect for women," she said. "He doesn't see women as equal. Anything he does say in support of women is just lip service. His actions do not support it."
One of the most prescient observations about the GOP's troubles with women came earlier this year from former White House strategist Steve Bannon who told Vanity Fair's Gabriel Sherman that "the Republican college-educated woman is done. ... Trump triggers them."
While Trump is clearly repelling many college-educated female voters, UCLA political science professor Lynn Vavreck, notes that antipathy toward the President overlays two longer-term trends that spell trouble for Republicans.
"White women are moving away from the Republican Party, that's been happening. And white college-educated people are moving away," said Vavreck, a co-author of "Identity Crisis," a new book about the 2016 election.
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In a piece in the Hill entitled, "GOP watches as Trump's problems with suburban women go on display" , we see the problem has continued
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GOP watches as Trump’s problems with suburban women go on display
Former President Trump increasingly looks like the favorite to win the GOP’s presidential nomination, but that strength masks what many Republicans see as a huge weakness against President Biden: Trump’s problems with suburban women.
All of Trump’s vulnerabilities with the key demographic were on high display during a rowdy town hall last week with CNN, where at one point the former president called moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person.”Suburban women voters have also largely turned their backs on Republicans since the former president was elected in 2016. According to CBS News exit polling from 2018, 53 percent of suburban women voters said they voted for Democrats in 2018, up from 47 percent in 2014 and 51 percent in 2016. In 2020, Biden won 54 percent of suburban voters in general, according to the Pew Research Center.
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Donald Trump took away abortion rights and suburban women are pro choice
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WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - Abortion rights helped Democrats stave off a hefty defeat at midterm elections last year and the party aims to put the issue at the center of the 2024 fight for the White House.
As Republican candidates propose new measures to restrict abortions and Republican-led states roll out tighter controls, President Joe Biden's re-election campaign last week released a new ad titled "These Guys", part of a $25 million campaign focused on women in key battleground states.
The ad shows former President Donald Trump taking credit for ending Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signing a six-week abortion ban in his state.
Reproductive health care decisions are personal, and "the last people who should be involved are these guys," the ad says.
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I bring up pro choice and suburban women because the four moderate suburban counties play a huge part in determining how Pennsylvania goes in presidential elections.
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But it was Philadelphia's suburbs and their continued shift to Democrats that helped seal Pennsylvania — and the election — for President-elect Joe Biden.
The four counties that make up the city's suburbs — Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Bucks — saw a surge this year in both the size of the electorate and support for the Democratic presidential candidate.
That surge came, at least in part, from people such as Carmen Ferrarello.
Ferrarello lives in Upper Dublin in Montgomery County and teaches English at Upper Moreland High School, the school that soon-to-be first lady Jill Biden once attended. He always considered himself a moderate Republican — until Trump came on the scene In 2018, Ferrarello voted for a full slate of Democrats. He has since given up his Republican voter registration and cast his ballot this year for Biden.
Ferrarello isn't alone in his shift. The Philly suburbs have trended bluer for years. But 2020's increase in turnout and preference for Biden were striking.
Philadelphia suburb counties (Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery) saw strong leftward shifts since 2012.
In 2016, Chester and Montgomery counties shifted to Democrats significantly. This year, all four suburban counties moved further left.
In Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties combined, Biden topped Trump by more than 287,740 votes. For comparison, Clinton defeated Trump by 188,353 votes in the four suburban counties.Montgomery County had the second-biggest surge in voting of any county in Pennsylvania, with over 66,000 more votes cast in 2020. And Democrats captured the vast majority of those gains. In Montgomery alone, Biden received some 57,000 more votes than Clinton did in 2016.
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Therefore, in light of everything discussed in the diary and other reasons, it seems very unlikely in my view that our current polls which understandably have scared the hell out of some of us who are on the side of democracy can be used to accurately predict the actual election results of the 2024 presidential election. Hence, the value and time and effort dissecting these polls would be better spent on the consequences of the upcoming presidential election rather than the current horse race numbers. The simple fact is that if President Biden doesn't win reelection, a fascist intent on destroying our democracy and all we hold dear will retake the White House. The media might want to rethink its coverage after Donald Trump's latest post Truth Social in which he argued that the federal government should shutdown MSNBC. Fascists have no use for a free press.
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