Every election cycle is unique—one of a kind—but not many (or any) have taken place at a time (short of wartime) in the kind of climate of unprecedented uncertainty we find ourselves in now. Add to this the unbridled hostility of most of the media to President Trump and where we stand 97 days away from the November 3 General Election is far different from the assurances from Democrats and their media enablers that the election is Biden’s to lose.
In one sense, that could be true. Biden’s bunker campaign is a reflection of his very, very, very unsteady performances when he does pop his head out. As we’ve discussed more than once, there will be an all-hands on deck blitz to “explain” why we should not have three presidential debates but only one—if indeed, we have any. Exposure is the pro-abortion former Vice President’s Achilles heel.
But as NRL News Today has discussed (most recently here ), whatever the surface numbers may say—and they say Biden is ahead in almost all polls but by much narrower margins in “battleground states”—you have to plunge deeper to grasp the underlying reality.
An absolutely classic example of what are called the “toplines” showing one thing and the cross-tabs (where the pollster probes underneath the toplines) showing something remarkable different is this week’s AP/Ipsos poll.
Here’s how HotAir’s Ed Morrissey summarizes the toplines. When “leaners” are included, the poll shows a “46/34 advantage for Biden”; 8% “don’t plan to vote at all”; and “and another 10% think they’ll go with a third-party candidate in November.”
With all due respect, these numbers are preposterous, but moving on…
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The Hill newspaper looked at the crosstabs for the all-important “enthusiasm” component. What’d Zack Budryk find? Here are his first four paragraphs (all underlining is mine):
Supporters of President Trump are more enthusiastic about their candidate than those who back presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to a new poll.
In The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey, 42 percent of Trump supporters polled described themselves as excited heading into the election, while 31 percent of Biden supporters said the same.
Nearly three-quarters of Biden’s supporters, 72 percent, also described themselves as anxious about the election, compared to 52 percent of Trump backers who said the same.
And 65 percent of Biden supporters surveyed said they are frustrated about the upcoming election, compared to 45 percent of Trump supporters.
The enthusiasm gap is hardly new. It’s been a constant, regardless of whatever else is taking place. Despite a concerted and non-stop media campaign to discourage Trump supporters, they remain enthusiastic, far less anxious than Biden supporters about the outcome of the election, and far less frustrated.
Take this in the context of what’s been discussed of late by nervous Biden partisans, as we wrote on Monday.
First, they know that the margins in the battleground states (also called “swing states”) are much, much closer than the national numbers—just as was the case in 2016.
Second, as David Catron explained, while Biden is ahead in almost every poll, when people are asked who will win, Trump prevails. Catron wrote
Lately, pollsters and pundits have been nervously pondering the following question: “If Trump is behind in the polls, why do most voters say, in the same surveys, that he will win the upcoming election?” As Harry Enten recently noted at CNN, “An average of recent polls finds that a majority of voters (about 55%) believe that Trump will defeat Biden in the election. Trump’s edge on this question has remained fairly consistent over time.” This is far more than mere statistical curiosity by number nerds. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that surveys of voter expectations are far more predictive of election outcomes than polls of voter intentions. [My underlining.]
A final related thought. A recent poll conducted for the Cato Institute found that far more conservative and moderates feel “The Political Climate Prevents Them from Sharing Political Views” than do liberals.
There is a hidden Trump vote. How large, no one knows. But it is there which means the election will likely remain far more closely contested than our friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN and MSNBC would have us believe.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
