John The Virginian: A RED WAVE coming
New polls and articles come out everyday now on the Presidential election and some aren't worth the paper they are printed on or the bandwidth needed to store them online. For example, a New Reuters/ Ipsos poll has 47% democrats in their sample. The poll shows Biden leading Trump by 9 points nationwide.
I'm convinced they keep foisting garbage polls like this on us in dread fear that we are going to actually start looking at the real data from reputable sources. The actual makeup of the 2016 election was 37% Democrat, 33% Republican and 30% other. The Rasmussen poll uses that turnout weighting and shows a 1 point lead for Trump. See how that works? You skew a poll sample by 10 points and voila, you skew the result by 10 points. It is not accidental. They are doing it on purpose because this race has changed and they don't want you to notice.
The first likely voter poll by Rasmussen was released just before Independence day and it showed Trump trailing Biden by 10 points- 40-50. At the same time, they released a Presidential approval poll showing Trump at 42% Approval and 58% disapproval. These were awful numbers to be sure. If Trump had stayed in the range of these numbers, he would surely have lost the election. In a strangely ironic way, these numbers actually highlight the remarkable weakness of Joe Biden. Here President Trump was at a -16 net approval and yet nearly 40% of those dissatisfied voters were voters Biden could not win to his side- even temporarily. In fact, this year has been such an exclusively anti-Trump campaign that I wonder if history will even remember who the Democratic candidate was. Some want to pretend this race hasn't changed but it's only themselves they are fooling. We aren't buying what they are selling.
Just how much it has changed- and continues to change- is more than shown in even the dramatic shifts that meet the eye, dismissed by the talking heads as "tightening". The entire conversation, framework and trajectory has changed in such a dramatic way that it is time to start a serious discussion as to the very real possibility-even probability- of a wave election. There have been a couple of alarms heralding this for weeks but yesterday and today, I have become convinced by looking at two new polls from Rasmussen. These polls are the same head-to-head and Presidential job approval numbers polls that looked so dismal in June and July. They look very different now, let me tell you...as Trump would say.
The front-line numbers are pretty dramatic. The head-to-head poll that showed Trump down 50-40 going into the July 4th weekend, now has him up 47-46. A net improvement of 11 points or about a point a week. The job approval is even more dramatic. Yesterday's result had him at 52% approval and 46% disapproval. That is +6 or a net improvement of +22- about 2 points a week gained. There are some really eye-opening internals in these polls that tell the real story behind the top line numbers. Let start with the top line numbers themselves. Notice that the percentage of voters disapproving of Trump- 46% - is the same percentage supporting Biden. Even though the pool of those in-between/ not-sure voters is a significant 7%, Biden is not able to win them over.
In the July poll, Biden had a 50% number and a 10 point lead with another 10 points unsure/unaffiliated/undecided. Now Biden has a 46% number and a 1 point deficit. Not only has Trump pulled 4 points from Biden, he has added 3 more points from the unaffiliated column. This has allowed Trump to gain a net 11 points in 2 1/2 months. At the current trajectory, Trump would add another 4 points to his total and Biden would lose at least another point and we would be looking at a 6 point Trump lead. That 6 point lead would eliminate the hesitant or shy voter causing the discrepancy between the two poll numbers and they would converge to the same numbers. In other words, the 52-46 spread suggested by the approval poll is the prediction, if you will, that the head to head poll is on track to meet.
Over the last 3 polls, Trump has recorded 45, 46 and 47 so he is moving in that direction. Biden has tracked 48, 47, and 46 so his trajectory is also on track for the eventual 6 point Trump win. This is where you really have to think about what these numbers are saying because there is an electoral college bias that favor the republicans. That bias is growing, not shrinking. 2 times in this young century, Republicans won the electoral college while losing the popular vote. Right now, that bias is about 3 points. This means that in 2016, Hillary won the popular vote by 2 but factoring in the bias gave Trump about a 1 point win in the Electoral college. If I am right, and Trump is on course for a 6 point win in the popular vote, his likelihood of winning the electoral college would be the same as the democrats having a 9 point lead in the popular vote.
So, what makes me so confident that the polls will continue to converge in this way? Much. First- Republican support. In the Democratic head-to-head number, Biden is shown getting 80% support from his own party. That is consistent what he has gotten all year long in primaries and polls. Trump is also showing 80% support in the head-to head numbers from members of his party but that is not at all consistent with what he has received all year. In terms of his primary support, 80% is below his floor of support and his ceiling was 96, 97, 98%. He is crushing Biden in small donor contributions and there is no comparison in the numbers turning out in rallies. The overflow crowd at his convention speech was many times the total number at the Biden speech.
Poll after poll has shown the tremendous enthusiasm advantage. Trump enjoys Republican support like no other President in history. It's easily in the upper 80' s if not the 90's. For now, let's look at the approval numbers. According to that poll, 83% of Republicans approve of his job, That 3% is not going to Biden. They are coming back home. That metric alone adds another point to his lead, raising it to 48-46. He has already won back nearly all of the support he lost due to the absolute chaos of the spring and summer and now and incredible convergence of both positive and negative factors are working to his advantage.
Economic confidence is on a tear and has skyrocketed to levels not seen since March. The stock market has made an incredible recover from it's first quarter swoon. The Nasdaq and S&P have hit records and the Dow is closing in on one. The economy has added more jobs in 4 months than Obama and Biden added in 8 years. Trump's economic approval number now sits at 52%. It is the highest of his Presidency and 11 points higher than Obama and Biden at the same point. Not one, but two historic mid-east peace deals have Trump's Foreign policy approval also at the highest point of his Presidency. The numbers also exceed the highest numbers recorded by Obama and Biden and won him the nomination for the Nobel Peace prize.
The lock-down left Governors in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Virginia have infuriated voters and pushed them into retaliation mode. Trump's fortunes have dramatically increased in all those states. The Democratic cowardice in the face of almost endless riots and the almost naked assault on the police have resulted in another colossal backlash in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota. 6 Minnesota Democrat mayors endorsed Trump. Rasmussen released a poll showing, by a staggering 59-29 margin, that voters believe war has been declared on the police.
Another poll shows that those who have experience the violence in their communities, support Trump 3 to 1. More and more hysterical claims by Democrats, such as blaming Trump for riots in Democratic cities or fires in poorly managed Democrat forests are Trump's fault. Opposition to fracking and energy independence is hurting Democrats in states like Pennsylvania. Biden's caustic and racist rhetoric and policies that support crime and illegal immigration and socialism are causing him to hemorrhage support from blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.
Black approval of Trump is at 38%. Other Non-whites support him at 65%. In Florida, Trump actually has a 50-46 lead among Hispanics. If these numbers hold sway and his core numbers continue to come back, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona are gone and Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and even New Mexico are in play. Young black men especially are breaking strong towards Trump. Independents and unaffiliated voters are breaking for Trump like crazy. He now has a 56% approval among independents and has gone from -9 to +9 among unaffiliated voters in 2 1/2 months. Again, the trend is astounding. He is on track to win this demographic by 12-15 points.
The gender gap is vanishing. Trump is +12 among men but only -2 among women. The Democrat scandal-a-day against Trump is falling on deaf ears. The Vaccine is coming. The indictments in the Barr probe are coming. 3rd quarter economic numbers are coming. The debates are coming. Folks.... It sure looks like a wave to me.
