And what does the squall of polls mean? Maybe we can hope for one in Mississippi? Or am I getting my hopes up?
You Can Here Hear Their Engines Overloading
This seems to be the week for frantic tilting by suspected conservative pollsters, such as Redfield & Wilton Strategies and InsiderAdvantage. We saw this sort of thing in 2022, as I’ve mentioned before, but it’s not clear to me that it does anything more than ruin the reputations of the pollsters. Maybe it forestalls failures in House and downballot races by misleading voters about just how badly the campaigns are going?
And Here We Are, At Niagara Falls
- Ballot Splitting, Anyone? According to SurveyUSA (2.8/3 at FiveThirtyEight), Nebraska may favor Mr Trump, 54%-37%, over Mz Harris, but when it comes to the regularly scheduled Senate seat race, it’s no romp: Senator Fischer (R-NE) leads by only one over challenger Dan Osborn (I-NE, Democrat-endorsed), 39%-38%, certainly within the ±3.5% margin of error. Poll sponsor Split Ticket’s analysis includes this:
This is almost entirely due to Osborn running as an Independent. His overperformance doesn’t seem like it is due to his own favorability rating (which stands at 34% favorable and 24% unfavorable), as 42% of voters simply haven’t heard anything about him. It also doesn’t seem like it is wholly attributable to Deb Fischer’s ratings — at 42% favorable and 41% unfavorable, her rating is still net positive, and it’s actually better than Pete Ricketts’ 44% favorable and 45% unfavorable image. But Ricketts leads by 17, while Fischer leads by just 1, with the only real difference between their races being their opponents’ party identification.
So it appears that in Nebraska the Democrats are to be loathed brain-washing has been at least partially successful. Split Ticket’s conclusion?
We’d still think Fischer is extremely likely to win, given the time left in this race, the number of undecideds, and the mystery box that Osborn is to many voters at the moment. In fact, we think she’ll gain significantly as the election nears. But that hasn’t happened yet, and at the moment, our poll finds something very similar to what Osborn’s released internals are yielding: a very unexpectedly competitive race. We’ll see if that holds.
Seems reasonable enough. Two months to go.
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On The Issues: Senator Pete Ricketts (R-NE).
The same pairing of SurveyUSA and Split Ticket doesn’t find comparable drama in the other Nebraska Senate race to that of Senator Fischer’s race, as Senator Ricketts (R-NE) leads challenger Preston Love, Jr. (D-NE) 50%-33%. That’s a pity, given Rickett’s adamantly hard-line conservatism is inappropriate in an institution that should be built on compromise and humility.
- Commenting on the Arizona Senate race no longer seems worth the time, even if Republican candidate and election-denier Kari Lake’s authoritative commentary on a previously reported poll is this:
Lake on Thursday called the [Fox News] poll [showing Lake to be down by 15 points] “absolute garbage.”
“Nobody wins by 15 points,” she told KTAR’s Mike Broomhead. [azcentral]
So I shan’t, unless Gallego falls off a cliff. But since I’m here, Redfield & Wilton Strategies (1.8) is giving Gallego a mere five point lead, 42%-37%, which I’m choosing to consider a piece of evidence that Redfield & Wilton Strategies leans heavily conservative. Another suspect, InsiderAdvantage (2.0), is also giving Gallego a five point lead at 49%-45% (a bit of rounding, no doubt), proving, perhaps, to be another friend of Mz Lake. With friends like these, the humiliation of losing by twenty points, which is not out of the question, just becomes more intense.
- Florida has acquired its own abortion Amendment to the State Constitution, known as Amendment 4, to be approved by the electorate. I understand it to be a compromise, as its language (from Ballotpedia) is, in part:
… no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.
… before viability … makes it a compromise, of course. Indeed, some might call it a faux-compromise, as many obstetrician-gynecologists would find themselves in the uncomfortable situation of having to interpret an amendment of dubious composition, often under a time pressure. But it does function as a defense of some abortion rights, which explains the pro-life movement’s hostility towards it.
Mr. Trump, as a Florida resident, can vote on the Amendment if he so wishes, and when he did not express complete and total opposition to it in response to an interview question, Erick Erickson and other right-wing extremists had a panic attack:
Now, [pro-lifers] are losing with Donald Trump, who yesterday, when everyone on the right had the opportunity to rally behind him and enjoy watching Kamala Harris beclown herself, had to interrupt the news cycle to announce he did not like a six-week fetal heartbeat ban in Florida — existing law that had broad appeal among conservatives.
Pro-lifers interpreted that as Trump endorsing the public abortion referendum on the ballot in Florida. His campaign tried to spin it, but the damage was done.
NBC: “So you’ll vote in favor of the amendment?”
Trump: “I am gonna be voting that we need more than six weeks.”
There is the six-week existing law, or there is the pro-abortion amendment. The amendment, to be voted on by voters on election day, would legalize all abortions until the moment the last toe of the child has left the birth canal.
Of course, Erickson misstates the Amendment, but let’s ignore that. If the pro-life movement walks away from Mr. Trump, he is finished, in Erickson’s opinion. I agree. Mr Trump then issued a retraction, again according to Erick Erickson:
Yesterday, on my show and here, I said Donald Trump needed to come out and say he opposed Florida’s Amendment 4. More specifically, on my show, I said he needed to do it before pro-life Christians got in church on Sunday and started talking to each other.
I’m under no illusion that I had anything to do with Mr. Trump’s clarification, but I am glad he did it before the sun set on Friday.
Not only should that help kill Amendment 4 in Florida, but it should help Mr. Trump with pro-life voters.
Mr Trump may have saved the allegiance of the core of his base, the pro-lifers. But that does not doom Florida’s Amendment 4; Erickson remains blinded by his flawed stance against abortion, and his belief that he somehow has the right to inflict his flawed reasoning on everyone else, even those whose lives are endangered by it. Mr. Trump understands, in a way Erickson does not, that women resent Erickson’s belief system that results in their ephemerality.
That means voters opposed to the loss of abortion rights will still show up at the polls, probably vote against Mr Trump, and certainly for this flawed Amendment – and, for the purposes of this post – against Senator Scott (R-FL) and for former Rep Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL). If the latter wins, she can send a Thank you! note to the Amendment 4 organizers, and then to Mr Trump.
In other news, Redfield & Wilton Strategies (1.8) gives Senator Scott a lead of only three points, 43%-40%. over former Rep Mucarsel-Powell. If Redfield & Wilton Strategies does lean conservative, Mucarsel-Powell may actually be ahead. But that’s only speculation.
- West Virginia’s Senate race has a poll, but FiveThirtyEight does not recognize the pollster, Research America, and the sponsor is West Virginia MetroNews, which doesn’t scream a bias. Justice is given a huge lead of 62%-28%, but since the credibility of the pollster is impossible to assess, I can’t take this seriously, yet. Mr Justice losing this race is nearly inconceivable, but I’ve been more impressed by the paucity of polls of West Virginia voters.
- In Michigan, Redfield & Wilton Strategies (1.8) gives Rep Slotkin (D-MI) a lead of 42%-35% over former Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI) for the open Michigan Senate seat, which may be conservatively slanted. EPIC-MRA (2.0) has Slotkin ahead by a smaller margin, 46%-42%. WoodTV.com, reporting on the EPIC-MRA poll, notes and compares to a recent Emerson College poll, which is nice, although they don’t note Emerson College’s rating of 2.9, easily exceeding these two polls. On the other hand, I’m a little suspicious of Emerson College myself, but they may end up making a monkey out of me.
- My suspicions of Redfield & Wilton Strategies (1.8) are crystallized in their report on Minnesota Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) vs challenger Royce White (R-MN) in which they accord the Senator a mere seven point lead at 41%-34%. If that lead is not tweny-plus points, it’s not, in my opinion, accurate. And why in the world would they think Minnesota is a swing state? They also think Senator Rosen’s (D-NV) lead over challenger Sam Brown (R-NV) is only four, 43%-39%, in Nevada. Recent polling has suggested a ten-plus point lead.
- In Texas unknown pollster Quantus Polls and News gives Senator Cruz (R-TX) an almost plausible lead of 50%-43% over Rep Allred (D-TX). But why should I take this seriously? Ah, well, new pollsters are required to start out under the proper cloud of skepticism. Let’s hope none of those Texas hailstorms are embedded in that skepticism.
Fin.
[Sep 1 2024]
