House of Eratosthenes

The polls have Biden up over Trump. And the gap, I’m told, is consistently much greater than Hillary’s lead four years ago, which turned out to be phony. This Biden-advantage gap is also durable. Time to start worrying.

Some conservative bloggers, fearing a momentary episode of 2012-like disillusionment that could impact the future of the country for generations to come, have taken to characterizing these polls as inaccurate. They have their justifications, but I’m not going to churn up reasons to doubt the accuracy of the polls. I wouldn’t believe in this; the polls are not inaccurate.

But they are plagued with problems.

1. A nationwide poll doesn’t gel with the Electoral College. We have suffered massive and predictable confusion every four years from nationwide polls and the skew always goes in the same direction. A huge chunk of our blue-state electorate is all pooled up in places like California, Washington State, Oregon, New England…these don’t move the needle, nobody is wondering about them. A state like, say for example, Oregon sending its slate of electors to the Electoral College to vote for Biden, is a disaster that can only happen one time. If the state’s voters have gone 90% Biden it’s no different than if they’re 51% Biden. So the other 39% is, effectively, a waste. The Biden column has a lot of waste here. The Trump column, not so much.

2. Oversampling of democrat voters in the pool. The pollsters keep getting surprised the same way and they just keep doing it. I don’t know why. You have to ask them. Oh, I have my ideas. I think they’re in the entertainment business and not the news business, whether they know it or not. More on this below.

3. Liberals run the polls, and liberals inhabit liberal echo chambers. That has traditionally been safe, because the tinge of the echo chambers tends to drizzle outward, like the blue thing you toss in a toilet tank coloring all the water. But it’s different now because public trust in our news media has dropped to an historic low. It hasn’t been this low, in fact, since…2016. Yup.

4. The Bradley Effect, or The Wilder Effect. Historically, this has to do with people lying to pollsters about their vote for a black candidate, and then on Election Day voting for his white opponent causing an eight-to-ten point surprise. This year it’s more of a “shy Trump voter” effect but the principle is the same: People are lying to pollsters. They’re consistently lying to pollsters in the same way. They will vote Trump/Pence, but they don’t report that to the pollsters because they just don’t want to get into it. They got interrupted while they were cooking & getting ready for dinner.

5. The Flotilla factor. There is a serious enthusiasm-gap problem plaguing the Biden/Harris camp. If our polling resources were trustworthy, they’d at least discuss it, but they aren’t discussing it. Meanwhile, there aren’t any Biden signs out there. No Biden bumper stickers. No Biden flotillas to counter the five thousand boat Trump flotilla. That’s something.

6. Supporters of Biden/Harris have lead in their pants. It has always been true that people tell the pollsters they plan to vote, and when the time comes they just stay home and watch reruns. It’s a safe generalization to make that Trump/Pence supporters are not going to do this. In 2020, the bulk of the lead-in-pants vote is “committed” to Biden/Harris…and they’re going to screw that ticket. Again, if the news were trustworthy, they’d discuss this. They’re not discussing this because they aren’t trustworthy.

7. Contrasted with that, Trump/Pence supporters do not have lead in their pants. This may seem redundant with “The Flotilla Factor,” #5 above, but it’s not. Things are different in 2020 because the stakes are much, much higher and everybody understands this. If Trump/Pence loses, it’s not just a matter of putting up with smarmy liberal jackass nephews at the Thanksgiving table. Pedophiles are roaming the streets burning down the businesses, some of which are family businesses that have been built with caring, dedication and love across the generations. People are getting hurt and killed, because we have a need for law and order that far exceeds what we have. This isn’t a mystery and it isn’t something that’s affecting some unknown person three time zones away. It’s happening right in front of us and it’s real. Most elections, each side is motivated by revulsion and fatigue with the other. This election, only The Left is motivated by fatigue. The Right is motivated by self-preservation, political and personal.

The democrats do not process a dopamine flow the same way normal healthy people do. To a democrat, the dopamine flow is everything. Remember the Saturday Night Live sketch, when “Biden” put “Trump” on pause with a remote control? When strong-woman Kamala came out to lecture the two of them? Not “parody,” because these events bore no resemblance to anything that actually happened. That’s the liberal brain for you; they can’t distinguish between “It makes me happy to have this thought” versus a funny joke. And they can’t distinguish between their happy thoughts, and reality. They’re that hooked on the dopamine flow: Fantasy, reality and punchlines are all in the same Vitamix blender together and that sucker is revved up on high. This is why news can’t be trusted. They’ve given up real news, and have gotten into the business of delivering liberals their dopamine.

I don’t know that all this means Trump/Pence will win, or if any of it means that. I do know it’s a mistake to try to predict what will happen by what we have been told, without taking into account the above factors.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

The Polls Have ProblemsFriday, October 9th, 2020

The Polls Have Problems
Friday, October 9th, 2020