Today? Why, today I saw a T. Rex with a dead body in its mouth. Or maybe it was using lingual luring.
What Of The Moral Cowardice of WaPo and The Los Angeles Times With Regards To Presidential Endorsements?
Yes, those are aggravating: billionaires playing at being publishers, protecting their own rather than providing the leadership that is the legacy of their predecessors.
That said, I don’t think endorsements from legacy media or their replacements has much effect on independent voters.
Hey, What’s OnMessage?
OnMessage is a pollster with a 1.1 rating, that’s not a typo, from FiveThirtyEight. Surveying UMB, I see OnMessage has been cited once before, working for a Republican-aligned sponsor, and, now, it’s working for a different Republican-aligned sponsor, Senate Opportunity Fund.
If you’ve been reading these campaign updates & commentary for a while, you are aware there are pollsters out there who are the Horse behind the carriage. That is, by publishing results suggesting their preferred candidate is winning, and to hell with honesty and reality, they hope to influence voters into voting for their preferred candidate, rather than another.
Remember the wisdom of Governor Ventura (I-MN): This isn’t a horse race, folks! You get no points for voting for the winning candidate, and if you do “get points,” you have a legal exposure that you won’t like, because that’s selling your vote. No, remember your duty as a citizen: pick the candidate who will best represent your State in the Senate, one that understands the importance of the various rules of society, from debate to laws, who puts Country above Party.
As to these dishonest pollsters, there’s little punishment, fiscal or legal, likely for them, so they exist on both sides of the aisle, and continue to try to grift the sponsors.
As an example of the ridiculousness of OnMessage, I’ll cite them once, below. But they are definitely static, not signal.
The Fish Are Schooling Thataway
- In Pennsylvania, Emerson College (2.9) is giving Senator Casey (D-PA) an insignificant lead of 47%-46%. over challenger David McCormick (R-PA?). Emerson College is working for RealClearPennsylvania, which is reputed to lean right. I know I’ve said that highly rated pollsters shouldn’t, for good reasons, skew their results to please their sponsors, but Emerson College does seem to skew right in general, this time around. Or the other top-rated pollsters don’t know their business. Which is certainly possible, as the polling landscape is shifting, from data collection to modeling, and inevitably some pollsters with good reputations will be caught up in the grinder and left a little flat, a bit down the pollster community hierarchy.
Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research (2.4), aka F&M, also has a tight race in the cards, with Senator Casey leading 49%-48% for likely voters (LV), and 49%-42% for registered voters (RV). These disparate measurements from the same pollster would seem to imply that those who might vote for the Senator lack the enthusiasm of those who’d vote for the inexperienced Mr McCormick. That seems quite odd and makes me wonder about this poll; also, I have seen very little output from this pollster. A Day Later: Darrell Lucus on Daily Kos casts a shadow over this pollster in Pennsylvania in a larger analysis:
With this in mind, it’s rather telling that no NRCC or “red wave” polling has come out from this district [PA-07] either. Maybe they know Muhlenberg [College] has long been among the best pollsters in the business, ranking 11th [which is a 2.8 rating] at FiveThirtyEight. Indeed, the only internal poll for this district was in July, right around the time Biden was facing pressure to pull out. After all, in the event of a red tsunami, [Representative] Wild [(D-PA) of PA-07] would be among the first Dems to go.
All of this is why I took Franklin & Marshall’s poll of Pennsylvania with a huge grain of salt. While Harris led registered voters 48-44, Trump led likely voters 50-49. Pennsylvania elections analyst Joshua Smithley noticed that Franklin & Marshall all but admitted they changed their methodology to keep from underestimating Trump.
There’s an explanation of F&M’s change in methodology as seen from the outside at the link if you’re willing to search for it, and it may explain the oddball difference between their RV and LV results for the Senate race.
- In Wisconsin, Emerson College (2.9) has Senator Baldwin (D-WI) and challenger Eric Hovde (R-WI?) tied at 48%, and are sponsored by maybe right-leaning RealClearWorld.
- In Maryland, Emerson College (2.9) appears to be putting a stake into former Governor Hogan’s (R-MD) campaign for the open Senate seat, according Democrat Angela Alsobrooks (D-MN) a 57%-43% lead. The Washington Post/University of Maryland Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement (2.5) is also giving Alsobrooks a substantial lead, 52%-40%.
- Ohio has been surveyed by a new pairing: Bowling Green State University Democracy and Public Policy Research Network/YouGov. The latter’s rating is 2.9, while the former is not listed by FiveThirtyEight, so take their combined rating for what you will; or it may be reasonable to consider the former the sponsor and the latter the pollster. In any case, they give Senator Brown (D-OH) a two point lead of 47%-45% over challenger Bernie Moreno (R-OH). While the rightward leaning pollsters have been trying to hint that Mr Moreno holds a slight lead, the respectable pollsters continue to have Senator Brown leading with a week and a half left, albeit within their margins of error.
- As Promised Above: In Nevada, Senator Rosen (D-NV), widely expected to beat challenger Sam Brown (R-NV) in a landslide, is tied with him at 48% – if you believe Republican-aligned OnMessage (1.1). See the intro for more on OnMessage. And don’t take this result too seriously unless it repeats on Election Night.
- The Florida Senate Democratic candidate has picked up an endorsement of possible significance:
Democratic Senate candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell has lost some ground to Republican Senator Rick Scott in their Florida race, as the latest polls show the incumbent has a lead in the mid-single digits, a better performance than previous surveys.
Nevertheless, the Democrat is making her final push with less than two weeks to go before election day. And she just got a new endorsement from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the country’s oldest Latino civil rights organization and a group that until 2024 had refused to endorse candidates. [Latin Times]
The problem? The Latino community has displayed a limited interest in identitarian politics, as the punditry terms it, finding more of interest in questions of illegal immigrants getting a leg up that legal immigrants didn’t get – and they resent it. Not that this plays into this question, but just simply that an endorsement of a Latino organization might have a limited impact.
- Missouri gets another rare poll as Emerson College (2.9) gives Senator Hawley (R-MO) a ten point lead over challenger Lucas Kunce (D-MO), 50%-40%. No upset here unless Emerson College is severely undercounting the young woman vote, as asserted here.
Ignorance Is Bliss
Not cited except as object examples: OnMessage (1.1) and Cherry Communications (1.0).
Feeling Uncertain?
Hey. Erick Erickson is convinced the Harris Campaign has given up. The progressives are certain of a Harris victory.
You are probably in a large club. They offer warm milk and chocolate chip cookies. Until next time, eat healthy.
