Yesterday I posted my first story at this site. I truly appreciate your overwhelming response, which encourages me to write more. Thank you.
The first part of this treatise referred to polls and numbers. Today I want to examine some other issues that are fueling my optimism. But first a couple of add ons. 538 dropped a number of polls this morning which continued the narrative of a tight and deadlocked race. I was not displeased with them, because they all came from right wing pollsters. If they say it is tied, that is good.
After receiving so many replies yesterday evening, I thought about what I may have missed. Here is one thing. After being burned in previous elections, it is plausible that the pollsters downgraded certain cross tabs such as the youth (under 30) vote. That would have worked out fine three months ago. With Biden doing poorly with this group, it would not have mattered. But what if they forgot — or didn’t bother — to change their methodology after Harris took over the reins? That would be a serious oversight. The surge in new registrants is being anchored by young people.
Okay, let’s run through some other factors. Some don’t require a lot of analysis. 1) Money. We have a lot more. 2) Ground game and GOTV. We have a robust infrastructure in place. They have close to nothing. And everybody knows that elections almost always come down to turnout.
I like to chase down small and local stories, easy to miss, but often telling. One I saw earlier this week came out of Dallas County, Texas. It was the last day to register to vote and at 7AM long lines of both pedestrians and vehicles were forming. And there were still such lines at 10PM. I have no clue why people wait to the last minute like that, but it is irrelevant. One thing is certain. These are not Trump voters rushing to join the fray. And they are definitely not lacking in motivation. All we know at the moment is that there has been an enormous spike in new registrations which are running heavily Democratic. Voters who are not getting polled and would never be included as likely voters. I have heard some skeptics suggest that the whole thing will soon fly out of these “girl’s” heads and they will blow off voting. But it doesn’t work that way. The hard decision is to make that first step and register. Once that obstacle is overcome, they are going to vote.
That brings us to 3) Enthusiasm. The big enchilada. In 2016 Trump was holding large rallies with energetic crowds. Many on our side believed that this was not indicative. The numbers in the crowd maybe not, but the enthusiasm was real and in the end it did matter. Since Kamala stormed onto the scene, the script has flipped. She has drawn packed crowds everywhere and the enthusiasm has been off the charts. I have never seen anything like it, not even in 2008. We are hungry, hungry to save our Democracy. And Kamala Harris is the perfect messenger. Trump rallies, on the other hand, have the creepy feeling of a crypt. Enough said.
There are three main voting groups in this election. MAGA, most of whom would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump. However there is a small, but real subset here, MAGA people who are so brainwashed with the rigged election meme that they may just give up and stay home. Donald Trump did that. There is no rational reason that Georgia has two Democratic Senators. No other former Confederate state has any. Trump with his skepticism managed that improbability single-handed.
A smaller group sits uncomfortably in the middle. So-called non-MAGA moderate Republicans and conservative leaning Independents. Some of them will vote for Harris, some will vote for Trump because they always have voted Republican, and many will not vote at all. What most characterizes this group is a lack of enthusiasm. Speaking of them, there is supposedly a very small group of undecided voters still out dithering around. There is little to say about them, except that in the end they will either vote for Harris or they won’t vote at all.
The largest group is us. Traumatized and determined. It is not necessary to talk about turnout. We will be there, no matter what the polls and media have to say about it. Enthusiastically. And that certainly includes women and particularly young women who are on a mission to protect themselves. And that is why I say to chill, to ignore the polls and media and to proudly make your voice heard. We’ve got this.
I’m going to close with a couple of random items. Probably most of you have now read about western North Carolina. With the exception of the little Blue island of Asheville, the remainder of this region is bright, big time. Red. Tens of thousands of these Republican voters are in dire straits. Cut off by washed out roads. Without power or services. No resolution date in sight. It is easy to imagine that voting is not very high up on their priority list. State Republicans are peeing all over themselves. They are desperately trying to put special rules and exceptions in place to make it easier for these people to vote, even as they have spent years trying to make it harder for everybody else. Suddenly they are talking about fairness. What percentage of 2020 voters in this region will not be voting? It is hard to believe that the number could be lower than 10%, easy to imagine that it could be higher. And that fact coupled with the icky Mark Robinson factor is going to doom Trump in NC. Which will also doom his candidacy.
Finally a little anecdote. I am not big on anecdotes. Who knows if they are true or what is the agenda of the narrator?
My brother-in-law and his wife are smart, educated and sophisticated. They are also what you would call longtime moderate Republicans, meaning fiscal conservatives but social liberals. I am not sure how they voted in 2016, but I suspect it was Trump — with little enthusiasm. I know that in 2020 that neither of them cast a vote for President. I spoke to her at a recent party. Specifying that she should feel free not to answer, my pollster self asked the question. I said that my gut was telling me that John was once again not going to vote, but that she would be voting for Harris. Startled, she replied that they had been discussing this same subject on the way over to our den of enthusiastic Democrats. “Are you psychic,” was her response? All I can say is that there are a host of voters just like them. I will leave you with that.