Category: Election 2024

Can America Be Saved?

David Ignatius, a columnist at The Washington Post, offers for our adulation a RAND study, “The Sources of Renewed National Dynamism” (a link in that page leads to a free, downloadable version of the study). Here is some of what Ignatius (“breathlessly”) says about it:

Though the report is mostly written in the dry language of sociology, this is explosive stuff [emphasis added]….

What has led to “the relative decline in U.S. standing,” as the report asks? The opening chapter explains America’s problem starkly: “Its competitive position is threatened both from within (in terms of slowing productivity growth, an aging population, a polarized political system, and an increasingly corrupted information environment) and outside (in terms of a rising direct challenge from China and declining deference to U.S. power from dozens of developing nations).”

This decline is “accelerating,” warns the study. “The essential problem is seen in starkly different terms by different segments of society and groups of political leaders.” There’s a right-wing narrative of decline and a left-wing one. Though they agree that something is broken in America, the two sides disagree, often in the extreme, on what to do about it.

Unless Americans can unite to identify and fix these problems, we risk falling into a downward spiral. “Recovery from significant long-term national decline is rare and difficult to detect in the historical record,” the authors note. Think of Rome, or Habsburg Spain, or the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, or the Soviet Union. “When great powers have slid from a position of preeminence or leadership because of domestic factors, they seldom reversed this trend.”

What causes national decline? The Rand authors cite triggers that are all too familiar in 2024. “Addiction to luxury and decadence,” “failure to keep pace with … technological demands,” “ossified” bureaucracy, “loss of civic virtue,” “military overstretch,” “self-interested and warring elites,” “unsustainable environmental practices.” Does that sound like any country you know?

The challenge is “anticipatory national renewal,” argue the authors — in other words, tackling the problems before they tackle us. Their survey of historical and sociological literature identifies essential tools for renewal, such as recognizing the problem; adopting a problem-solving attitude rather than an ideological one; having good governance structures; and, perhaps most elusive, maintaining “elite commitment to the common good.”

Unfortunately, on this “fix it” checklist, the Rand authors rate U.S. performance in 2024 as “weak,” “threatened” or, at best, “mixed.” If we look honestly in the national mirror, we’re all likely to share that assessment.

So what’s the way out? Rand provides two case studies in which urgent reforms broke through the corruption and disarray that might otherwise have proved catastrophic.

The first example is Britain in the mid-1800s [from which I will not quote]….

A second case study can be found in the United States itself, after the binge of the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. That industrial boom transformed America, but it created poisonous inequalities, social and environmental damage, and gross corruption. Republican Theodore Roosevelt led a “Progressive” movement that reformed politics, business, labor rights, the environment and the political swamp of corruption.

“Progressives had a ‘yearning for rebirth’ and sought to inject ‘some visceral vitality into a modern culture that had seemed brittle and about to collapse,’” note the Rand authors, quoting historian Jackson Lears.

The message of this study is screamingly obvious. America is on a downward slope that could be fatal. What will save us is a broad commitment, starting with elites, to work for the common good and national revival. We have the tools, but we aren’t using them. If we can’t find new leaders and agree on solutions that work for everyone, we’re sunk.

The first thing that you should notice is Ignatius’s persistent use of “we” and the ludicrous metaphor of a “national mirror”. There is no “we” (let alone a “national mirror”). There are many “we’s” in America — about as many as there are American citizens.

There’s certainly nothing remotely resembling a consensus about any of the topics addressed by the RAND study. Even the RAND analysts who concocted the study admit as much. But that’s the sum and substance of my praise for their work.

As a guide to the fate of the nation, the study is uselessly superficial. The fate of a nation is like a system of equations with dozens if not hundreds of variables whose values and interrelations are unknown and mostly unknowable. The authors even admit to the omission of what is probably a key variable:

[T]he wider project identifies many ways in which flourishing markets and grassroots (rather than centrally directed) solutions are essential to national competitiveness and parallel ways in which ossifying centralized bureaucracy can choke off national dynamism [p. 42].

Aside from the obvious fact that there is and is unlikely to be a consensus about how to save America, no study of the kind produced by RAND could be useful. Case studies reflect the biases of those who conduct them.

The authors of the RAND study evidently believe that the Progressive movement was responsible for some kind of national resurgence. But the Progressive movement was largely about the aggrandizement of the central government and the proliferation of regulations, both of which have slowed slightly a few times but have never been seriously reversed. There is statistical evidence that the Progressive movement and its aftermath choked economic dynamism (see “The Bad News about Economic Growth“), though the full effect of efforts to combat “climate change” is yet to be felt.

There is ample (and mounting) evidence in the news of the past few decades that government intervention in social and educational matters (the leftist takeover of public education, same-sex marriage, gender fluidity, anti-religious, racist in the guise of “anti-racism”, etc.) is deeply divisive and therefore an obstacle to any kind of revitalization through consensus.

America’s economic decline and social divisions are paralleled by its military decline at the hands of “liberals” and pseudo-conservatives (e.g., the Bushes). I will say little more here; I treat the subject at length in “Grand Strategy for the United States“. I will only add that military decline is of a piece with economic and social decline because it rests on the naive view of the world that is enshrined in leftism and indulged by pseudo-conservativism. (I address that worldview in “Human Nature and Conflict“.)

In a non-naive view of the world, there are four major signs of America’s decline:

  • deep internal divisions about the role of government (the deepest they have been in my lifetime of more than 80 years)
  • deep internal divisions about permissible behavior and the lax treatment of (what real grown-ups consider) anti-social behavior — from drug use to murder and many heinous things in between
  • the aforementioned loss of economic vitality
  • decline of standing (including but not limited to military predominance) among other nations.

Because of the internal divisions — in particular, the division about the role of government — there is no way for government (or elites who are identified with a particular view about the role of government) to unify the nation. As long as the government is large, intrusive, and dedicated to certain behavioral norms (e.g., rewards and lack of punishment for its favored groups, the demolition of long-standing social norms), stultifying economic policies, and inadequate or even abject defense policies — and as long as government pursues those norms and policies (and imports potential voters to sustain it in power) — the nation will remain deeply divided.

There is a way out, though it is a long shot at this point. If more and more Americans come understand what is happening to the country and come to understand why it is happening, there could be a kind of revolution at the polls. The revolution would consist of such an overwhelming and lasting turn to the right that the vast left-wing conspiracy would not be able to overcome it through chicanery.

A second way out, which is a longer shot, is de facto secession leading to a voluntary partition of the country (a national divorce). The de facto secession would begin subtly, with more and more States refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of directives from Washington (e.g., Texas enforces the southern border, Florida and others ignore Biden’s Title IX travesty). If the Democrats in Washington prove unwilling to enforce their directives with armed force (as they haven’t thus far in Texas), further disobedience would be encouraged and it would spread to more and more States and a broader array of issues. Finally despairing of keeping the right in check — especially as geographic separation of right and left proceeds apace — the left might agree to (or even suggest) a negotiated partition of the country. (See VI.A and B in “Constitution: Myths and Realities“. See also “The Supreme Court Recognizes the Legality of Secession“.)

There is, of course, the possibility of a civil war. I address it — and its likely failure — in “How Will Civil War II Start?“. The predicate in that post is Donald Trump’s losing the election of 2024, though that now seems less likely to me than it did only a few months ago (see “Trump vs. Biden: 12“). But if Democrats retain control of the central government (a necessary prerequisite),

all hell will break loose. By “all hell”, I mean the full-scale construction of a fascistic state, which will be accomplished by executive fiat and friendly judges even if the GOP somehow controls at least one chamber of Congress….

All hell having broken loose, (solid) Red State governors and legislatures will engage in acts of resistance of the legalistic variety. These will fail because (a) their success would require judicial support, which will be lacking, and (b) the Democrat administration will simply ignore rulings that are unfavorable to its agenda. (The Biden administration’s flouting of immigration law, work-arounds to blunt the effect of Dobbs, and refusal to protect conservative Supreme Court justices’ homes are harbingers of the lawlessness to come.)

Red State hot-heads will then be unable to resist the urge to engage in futile acts of violence against the regime. The effect will be to justify harsh “anti-terroristic” measures that will result in unbridled censorship and jailing of conservatives for the mere “crime” of pointing out the regime’s lawlessness. But that would just be the start of full-scale suppression of dissent.

Red State governments that try to resist the regime will be found to be unconstitutional according to some kind of legalistic argumentation. The central government will then declare them null and void, invoking the Constitution: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government….” (Article IV, Section 4). Armed resistance, where it is attempted, will be squashed by superior force and rewarded with draconian punishments.

So … the answer to the question posed by the title of this post is that Civil War II won’t start. It will be aborted by the pro-abortion party.

That scenario won’t be far-fetched if Biden wins re-election — especially if his win is blatantly fraudulent.

There is, finally, the remote possibility of a military coup against a left-wing regime. Here is my assessment of that (from “A National Divorce“):

Military personnel are disciplined and have access to the tools of power, and many of them are trained in clandestine operations. Therefore, a cadre of properly motivated careerists might possess the wherewithal necessary to seize power.

But … a plot to undertake a coup is easily betrayed. Among other things, significant numbers of high-ranking officers are shills for “wokeism”. A betrayed coup for liberty could easily become a coup for tyranny.

America can be saved and restored, at least in part, to something like the America that I discuss in “What Happened to America?” and “1963: The Year Zero“. But it will happen only if enough voters wake up to what is happening and stage a lasting electoral revolution. And if they do, “we” on the right might enjoy the blessings of a national divorce.

I remain pessimistic but not without hope.

Trump vs. Biden: 12 (Further Adjustments and Updated Results)

UPDATED 04/30/24

The latest results for the so-called battleground States are positive for Trump. I’ll get to those after I review the national polls. I’ll then remind you how Trump can win the election even if he “loses” the meaningless nationwide tally of popular votes.

NATIONAL POLLS

I introduced a new metric in Trump vs. Biden 11: the change in each pollster’s results from poll to poll. For example, Trump was tied with Biden in the Quinnipiac poll that was conducted on April 18-22, and was down by 3 points in the Quinnipiac poll of March 21-25. That counts as +3 on the average date of the later poll: April 20. The full tally for all polls reported at RealClearPolitics since August 2023 looks like this:

Keep your eye on the red line. It spent a lot of time in negative territory from the middle of March to late April. But it’s now back in positive territory.

Now, for the overall polls. I am dropping the “poll of polls”, which aggregates all national polls reported by RCP, regardless of bias and frequency. It is too easy for polls often-published polls with a strong bias (usually pro-Democrat) to make things look worse for Trump than they actually are. (Demoralization of Trump voters is a main objective of such polls.) From here on out, I’m sticking with two, more selective, bias-adjusted measures of the nationwide balance between Trump and Biden.

First is a collection of all polls report by RCP, with two adjustments. I use only the latest results from each pollster, to avoid overrepresentation. I adjust the results by the average of the anti-GOP bias reported by RCP for 14 nationwide polls. I add that value (3.3 percentage points) to Trump’s 5-poll average. Here are numbers, which include the results of all nationwide polls reported by RCP as of today:

 

Trump slipped somewhat from the middle of March to early April. The trend since then is positive.

The other collection of nationwide polls that I am keeping tabs on is a smaller set, in which each poll is adjusted for the amount of bias shown by the same pollster in 2020:

In this case, Trump’s rebound is clear and convincing.

“BATTLEGROUND” POLLS

The other bit of good news for Trump is that he is doing better in the “battleground” States than he was when I last wrote about them (here). All of the polls underlying my previous report were conducted in March. There is now a new round of polls, conducted in April. In general, it looks better for Trump:

THE BOTTOM LINE

Can Trump win the election without “winning” the meaningless nationwide tally of popular votes? Of course he can, thanks to the Electoral College. He did it 2016, when he “lost” to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percentage points. He almost did it in 2020, when he “lost” to Joe Biden by 4.5 percentage points. And he would have won in 2020 except for “election interference” by the Democrats on a massive scale. You can read all about that here. I’ll save you the trouble of wading through more than 200 links. Here’s the punch line:

Through a combination of information control, partisan management of election processes, outright fraud, ballot harvesting, and failure to apply election laws on the books, the presidential election of 2020 was stolen by a cabal of super-rich elites, crooked politicians, crooked lawyers, and judges who either didn’t want to hear the truth or were blinded to it by partisan considerations. For a systematic treatment of much of the chicanery mentioned in the preceding sentence, see Mollie Ziegler Hemingway’s Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech and the Democrats Seized Our Elections. Regarding outright fraud, see “Last Thoughts on Voter Fraud” (The Adventures of Shylock Holmes, December 11, 2020) and “The Most Secure Election in American History?” (Gatestone Institute website) for thorough wrap-ups.

Let’s hope that an army of better-armed poll-watchers and lawyers working for the GOP can keep it from happening again.

In any event, it’s my view that if the average of the final ten (unadjusted) polls gives Trump a lead of 1 or more points, he will win the election.

Stay tuned.

Trump vs. Biden: 11 (A New Metric)

In “Trump vs. Biden: 10” I highlighted the tightening of the race (according to nationwide polls). Changes in the 15 days since that post have been slightly in Trump’s favor. Below are results, which I have parsed in three ways:

  • all polls, unadjusted for bias (with polynomial fits for smoothing)
  • the latest version of each pollster’s result, unadjusted for bias
  • the latest version of each pollster’s result, adjusted for bias (using each pollster’s bias in 2020)

Here’s a fourth way to look at the results:

The values represent the change in Trump’s lead (or deficit) since the preceding poll by the same pollster. The typical margin of error for a poll (statistical estimate of the accuracy of the poll) is plus or minus 3 percentage points. Most of the movements are within that range. Therefore, what all of the preceding graphs point to is a race that is now essentially tied.

Well, it’s tied if the polls aren’t picking up “hidden” Trump voters — Trump voters who aren’t telling pollsters their true intentions. If there are enough such voters to swing the election to Trump, it won’t become evident until the votes are counted.

Until then, I can only tell you what the polls are saying.

Israel vs. Iran: 2

The New York Times reports:

President Biden and his team, hoping to avoid further escalation leading to a wider war in the Middle East, are advising Israel that its successful defense against Iranian airstrikes constituted a major strategic victory that might not require another round of retaliation, U.S. officials said on Sunday.

The administration’s position is one of these two things:

  • Disinformation, which is meant lull Iran into the belief that the U.S. doesn’t want war with Iran and will not help Israel if it attacks Iran. (What would happen in the event of a counterattack by Iran?)
  • The real position of the administration, which is meant to deflect Iran from acting against the U.S. or its overseas interests if Israel attacks and Iran counterattacks. (Again, what would happen in the event of a counterattack by Iran?)

I believe the second to be the administration’s real position. It is consistent with its efforts to mollify Iran. It is consistent with the eternal belief of leftists that mortal enemies can be reasoned with and bought off. It is of a piece with the delusion that the elimination of capital punishment and general leniency in sentencing will result in less crime.

In neither case does the administration acknowledge the central fact that Iran (among other countries and non-state actors) wants the elimination of Israel in particular and of Jews in general.

Israel’s leaders today grasp that central fact. If they ever lost sight of it, the events of October 7, 2023, have emblazoned it in their souls. Given that, Israel will not relent in its efforts to eliminate the threat posed by its main enemy: Iran.

The only question in my mind at this point is what Israel will do to accomplish the demise or defeat of the Islamic regime in Iran. For that is what it will take to at least blunt if not eliminate the threat from Iran, and the support that Iran gives to other states and non-state actors who seek Israel’s demise.

Ignore what the Biden administration says about Israel vs. Iran. Keep your eyes on Israel.

Election 2024: The Bottom Line

As promised.

Joel Kotkin’s “The Coming Revolt against Woke Capitalism” gets at much of what’s at stake in of the coming election:

In virtually every field, the midwives of [the West’s] demise are not working-class radicals or far-right agitators, but, as the late Fred Siegel called it, the ‘new aristocratic class’, made up of the well-credentialed and the technologically and scientifically adept.

Virtually every ideology that’s undermining the West has its patrons in these ruling cognitive elites. This includes everything from the purveyors of critical race theory and Black Lives Matter to transgender activists and, perhaps most egregiously, campaigners for the climate jihad. In each case, these elite activists reject the market traditions of liberal capitalism and instead promote a form of social control, often with themselves in charge. The fact that these ideologies are destructive, and could ultimately undermine the status of these very elites, seems to matter little to them….

The current cadre of elites seem uniquely hostile to meritocracy and individual rights – values that once stood at the heart of liberal, capitalist societies. Rather than promote upward mobility for the plebs, they want to divide them into ‘identity’ groups based on race, sexuality and gender. Black Lives Matter, the enforcers of critical race theory, for years enjoyed lavish support from top tech companies, including Microsoft, Cisco and TikTok. It also became a poster child for a host of nonprofits, like the Tides Foundation, which in turn gets much of its money from oligarchs and their descendants, including George Soros and the MacArthur, Hewlett, Ford, Packard and Rockefeller foundations.

Nowhere is the gap between the elites’ political activism and the interests of the public more evident today than when it comes to the overhyped climate crisis. To a remarkable extent, the current ruling oligarchy in tech and on Wall Street have embraced the ideology of Net Zero, even though this threatens to undermine Western industrial power and raise the cost of living for the masses. Elite opinion, in general, is far more engaged on climate issues than the general population. In one recent poll, those living with graduate degrees in big dense cities and making over $150,000 a year are far more likely to favour such things as rationing meat and gas than the vast majority of Americans….

The clear hypocrisy of the greens does not go unnoticed by the masses. Those same elites who demand climate austerity for the many are widely known to enjoy the use of private jets, build $500 million yachts and own numerous, often enormous mansions. The fact that the most recent climate confab, COP28, had a session on ‘responsible yachting’ tells people all they need to know about the hypocrisy of the super-rich.

The damage being done by the oligarchs’ green agenda is now fuelling a rebellion from the beleaguered European, British and American middle and working classes. Many are becoming increasingly sceptical of elite environmentalism, just as they have been consistently hostile to woke ideas on law enforcement, transgender issues and racial quotas.

Public hostility towards what Adrian Wooldridge has labelled ‘the progressive aristocracy’ is now all too clear. In the US, there are declining levels of confidence in large corporations, tech oligarchs, big banks as well as the media. Similar patterns can be seen in the EU and the UK. This disquiet has led to such things as the 2016 election of Trump, the Brexit vote and the rise of populist parties and farmers’ protests across Europe.

So far, the elites seem barely aware of this discontent. This may stem from the fact that the oligarchs and their minions live in a very different reality from most people. They are shielded from the consequences of the policies they promote, whether from the job losses brought about by eco-austerity, or the rising crime and disorder resulting from efforts to ‘defund the police’ and the refusal to penalise street crime. They live in closeted, gentrified urban neighbourhoods, elite leafy suburbs or country retreats.

The elites’ arrogance could turn out to be their greatest liability. Those outside the charmed circle may often seem ill-mannered, but they are not stupid. They know they are being assaulted by people with greater resources, who favour ever more controls on everyday behaviour, on small businesses and on speech….

Like French aristocrats before the revolution, the oligarchs talk largely among themselves. They seem unaware that they may be financing fashionable causes that may threaten ‘their own rights and even their existence’, as Alexis de Tocqueville said of the Ancien Régime….

Already among Democrats, the party with most oligarchic support, more of its registered supporters favour socialism over capitalism. At the same time, the echo of 1789 was evident in the so-called gilets-jaunes (yellow-vest) protests against higher fuel taxes in the winter of 2018-2019. Recent protests by farmers in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy all reflect concerns about the impact of elite policies on ordinary people’s livelihoods….

For all their faults, the elites of industrial-era Britain and America at least provided opportunities for the middle and especially the working class. They helped create powerful economies that, ultimately, and with some political cajoling, produced unprecedented mass affluence. In contrast, today’s oligarchs and their ‘expert class’ allies offer nothing more than subsidies and handouts – or what Karl Marx referred to as ‘the proletarian alms-bag’.

In the coming decade, we need a politics that rejects the assumption of superiority and right to rule from our oligarchic rulers. There is still time, despite the power of the elites, to champion democracy, liberal values and the dream of upward mobility. ‘A man may be led by fate’, wrote the great Soviet-era Russian novelist Vasily Grossman, ‘but he can refuse to follow’. The future course of history is never inevitable, if we retain the will to shape it.

Ironically, the coming presidential election is almost certain to pit a billionaire who detests the elites against a professional politician-kleptocrat who is in thrall to them.

Kotkin’s piece is excellent insofar as it lays bare the hypocrisy of the elites and the damage that they are doing and will do to the lives and livelihoods of hard-working citizens. Among those things, to which Kotkin gives fleeting mention are:

  • massive, almost unhampered immigration from the south, which flouts the law and burdens the working classes while providing cheap labor for the upper classes;
  • governance by the administrative state, which is becoming an arm of woke capitalism (especially when Democrats are in charge);
  • the effects of the administrative state and “woke capitalism” on three main engines of liberty and prosperity: open and candid discussion of ideas, discrimination on the basis of ability and performance (not skin color or political views);
  • and markets that reward those who meet the demands of consumers as against the demands of woke capitalists and the administrative state.

Also at stake is the defense of law-abiding Americans from mobs within and enemies without. Woke capitalists and their political cronies seem bent on loosing the mobs and collaborating with the enemies.

For much more about the choice ahead and about what will happen if Trump loses, see “What Happened to America?“, “James Burnham’s Misplaced Optimism“, and “The Suicide of the West Accelerates“.

See also (just for starters): “Economics: The Bad News about Growth“, “1963: The Year Zero“, “The Hardening of Ideological Affiliations in America“, “The Pardoxes and Consequences of Liberty and Prosperity“, “How the Constitution Was Lost“, “Leftism: The Nirvana Fallacy on Stilts“, “Why Trade Doesn’t Deter Aggression“, “The Black-White Achievement Gap and Its Parallel in the Middle East“, and “Grand Strategy for the United States“. For much more, go to “Index of Posts” and browse to your heart’s content.

Trump vs. Biden: 10 (The Race Is Tightening)

Contrary to cherry-picked results presented on some right-wing sites (and I don’t use “right-wing” as a smear phrase), Trump is sliding relative to Biden.

Let’s start with the small picture, Trump’s standing in the so-called battleground States: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Here’s are the trends in each of those States, going back to October 2023:







I used 3-poll averages because of the paucity of polls in some States. Only in Pennsylvania is Trump clearly improving his edge over Biden.

The results in most of the battleground States mirror the national results, which I have parsed in three ways:

  • all polls, unadjusted for bias (with polynomial fits for smoothing)
  • the latest version of each pollster’s result, unadjusted for bias
  • the latest version of each pollster’s result, adjusted for bias (using the pollsters’ bias in 2020)

The results, in that order, are below. Because of the greater number of nationwide polls, I have used 5-poll averages.

 

These aren’t pretty pictures if you don’t want Biden to win.

Finally, there are the betting odds. Trump had a 16 percentage-point lead over Biden in the immediate aftermath of the Hur report, which depicted Biden (accurately) as a befuddled old man with a poor memory. That edge has shrunk to 5 percentage points — the smallest it has been since mid-November.

All of this is bad news if you are (as I am) fearful of the outright repression that would follow Biden’s re-election. What do I mean by that? Stay tuned.

Trump vs. Biden: 9 (A Fresh Look at the Numbers)

UPDATED 03/18/24 – 03/21/24

Something has been nagging me about the poll numbers that I’ve compiled and reported in several previous posts (e.g., here). That something is the lack of an adjustment for political bias. I’ve been reporting the statistical margin of error, but that’s not the same thing.

Every poll, biased or not, has a margin of error, which is a statistical measure related to sample size. But what the pollsters don’t tell you is that a margin of error, properly understood, is just an estimate of the accuracy of the polling results — assuming a random (unbiased) sample. That’s not what you get from most polls, which are designed (often deliberately) to slant results toward the candidates of a certain party — usually the Democrat Party. A margin of error doesn’t account for bias.

In 2008, Bush’s average margin for polls conducted in the seven days before election day (with no double-counting of pollsters) understated Bush’s margin in the nationwide popular-vote tally by 1.0 percentage point. Similar analysis for succeeding elections yielded these result: Obama 2008, overstated by 0.1 percentage point (effectively equal); Obama 2012, understated by 3.2 percentage points; Clinton 2016, overstated by 1.6 percentage points; Biden 2020, overstated by 3.2 percentage points. With the exception of 2012, when Obama’s cheap (taxpayer-funded) “heroics” in the aftermath of Hurrican Sandy coincided with the final runup to election day, the bias favoring Democrats has grown.

With that background out of the way, I hereby introduce a new metric that I will use for polling trends. First, I will use a 5-poll average. I had been using 10-poll average, which can span polls conducted over a two-week period, or longer. The 10-poll average also (often) includes more than one poll by the same pollster. I then switched to a 3-poll average, with no double-counting of any pollster’s results. But a 3-poll average is too “jumpy” (unstable). A 5-poll average (with no double-counting) seems like a good compromise.

Second, after computing the 5-poll average, I adjust it by adding 3.2 percentage points to Trump’s margin relative to Biden. That value (the final polling bias against Trump in 2020) corrects for growing pro-Democrat bias, which is probably greater than 3.2 percentage points this year. The result, I believe, is closer to the truth than the polls (on average) would have it because of the prevailing bias toward Biden (and Democrats, generally).

Without further ado, here’s how things look:

Trump’s margin actually peaked last fall, dipped significantly, rebounded somewhat, and dipped again. We’ll see if it rebounds again — and if my revised method yields an estimate that’s close to the actual outcome of Election 2024.

Trump vs. Biden: 8 (New Numbers)

UPDATED 03/03/24

My unvarnished view about Trump’s candidacy to the contrary notwithstanding, it is better for Trump to be ahead (rather than behind) in the polls. Polls do have some (limited) value as a predictor of presidential election outcomes — though it is far too early to use them for that purpose.

In any event, with the release of four new polls yesterday and today, the latest numbers look like this:


Source: Polls reported by RealClearPolitics.

To avoid the over-representation of polling organizations that report frequently, the values plotted above include only the latest poll released by each organization. (Polls without margins of error are excluded.) The three-poll span affords a better indication of trends than the 10-poll average that I had been using.

CAVEATS: The average date of the three most recent polls is February 27 — five days before the publication of this post. The numbers shouldn’t be taken as predictive of the outcome of the election. They simply reflect the stated preferences of respondents when the polls were conducted. Also (and positively), a GOP candidate can win even when he is behind in the (meaningless) nationwide popular vote (see this).

The Mar-a-Lago Raid and Election 2024

Earlier today I posted “Trump vs. Biden: 7 (My Unvarnished Perspective)“, in which I said this:

Regardless of the polls and betting odds, I believe (today) that Trump will lose the election….

[Much discussion follows.]

That’s how it looks from here — as of today. Who knows what will happen in the next several months, or how it will affect the outcome of the election? I don’t.

Soon after that, Tristan Justice posted “Former Director Gina Haspel Hid the CIA’s Role in Russiagate for Years” (The Federalist, February 15, 2024). (He calls it Russiagate; I call it Obamagate, for reasons you will understand if you read my page, “Obamagate and Beyond“.)

There are two striking things about Justice’s post. The first is that it points to the kind of event that could drastically affect the outcome of this year’s presidential election — possibly moving the needle sharply in Trump’s direction. Here’s why (from Justice’s post):

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago last summer might have been a plot to protect deep state intelligence officials, according to sources who spoke with a team of independent journalists this week.

On Wednesday, journalists Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag published part 2 of an expose on the role of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in orchestrating the years-long crusade to frame former President Donald Trump as a Russian plant. The article posted on Shellenberger’s Substack, Public, outlined how intelligence officials fretted over the presence of a classified “binder” in Trump’s possession that former CIA Director Gina Haspel had guarded for years….

One unnamed source cited as “knowledgeable about the case” called the binder “Trump’s insurance policy.” Trump was apparently “very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was his road map” of the Russian collusion hoax….

“The documents in question are said to contain information about the legal justification for those investigations, or more specifically, the lack of justification, among other things. Should more of that information be made public, it might implicate a long list of officials in serious abuses,” Public reported. “Questions like these may be answered if the 10-inch thick binder of sensitive documents about the origins of the Russia probe is made public. Fear for reputations and careers, not national security, is what has intelligence officials panicked.”

The second striking thing is that I surmised the true purpose of the Mar-a-Lago raid on September 13, 2022, when I posted “Why the Mar-a-Lago Raid?“. There, I summarized the conspiracy against Trump which I detail in “Obamagate and Beyond“, and added this:

Where does the raid on Mar-a-Lago fit into all of this? The raid was a fishing expedition to see how much information Trump had acquired about the origins and workings of the [Trump-Russia hoax] conspiracy. The unprecedented nature of the raid, the obviously flimsy pretext for it, and the selective leaks by the FBI all suggest desperation on the part of the conspirators.

One of those conspirators is Biden, of course, who was vice president when the conspiracy began and who has much to gain from discrediting Trump, staying in office, and using his power to minimize the consequences of the exposure of his role in the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme.

Trump vs. Biden: 7 (My Unvarnished Perspective)

The polls, on average, favor Trump. Although his lead isn’t statistically greater than zero, that’s okay for a Republican.

The betting odds are going against Biden. Bettors see him as much less likely to win than they did a week ago, mainly because of this passage from Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents:

[A]t trial, Mr. Eiden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

Regardless of the polls and betting odds, I believe (today) that Trump will lose the election. It will happen because of his baggage (e.g., openly vindictive personality and resulting feuds, indictments, possible convictions), which will begin to weigh more heavily as voters actually decide which way to go.

With narrow wins in a few key States, Trump could win the election even if the overall popular vote goes against him by a couple of percentage points (just as he did in 2016). That’s what happened in 2016. I attribute that win to luck and surprise. Clinton’s lead in the polls and betting markets was so large that she seemed to be a shoo-in. As a result, the Democrats didn’t gear up to manufacture enough votes to win the close races that went Trump’s way and gave him an edge in the Electoral College.

Democrats geared up with a vengeance in 2020, with a lot of help from the Covid pandemic which boosted mail-in voting — the happy hunting ground of electoral fraudsters. Democrats will build on their successes of four years ago, while the GOP will try to play catch-up ball. But the GOP will fall short because (for the most part) it will confine its vote-generating operations to legal methods. Democrats (being leftists) will pull out all the stops and officials and judges (mostly Democrats and never-Trumpers) will cover for them.

There are people like me who will vote for Trump if he’s the GOP nominee only because we can’t abide what the Democrats are doing to the country. But there aren’t enough of us, I believe, to overcome Trump’s baggage. Moreover, Democrats still have plenty of time in which to recover from last week’s Biden fiasco — and they find a way to do it, with the enthusiastic aid of most of the media. In the end Biden — or whomever the Democrats nominate — will win in a rerun of 2020.

That’s how it looks from here — as of today. Who knows what will happen in the next several months, or how it will affect the outcome of the election? I don’t.

Trump vs. Biden: 6 (Trump Resurgent)

RealClearPolitics maintains a running tally of presidential election polls. I construct a moving average of the results, where the average represents Trump’s lead (or deficit) for the 10 most recent polls. I also construct a 95-percent confidence interval around the moving average, using the margins of error reported by pollsters. (Having done this for a while and observed some erratic and incredible results from Rasmussen Reports, I removed the results published by that formerly reliable polling organization from my calculations.)

Here’s the trend since late July 2023:

Back-to-back wins in Iowa and New Hampshire boosted Trump considerably. His margin is now (barely) back in positive territory (i.e., the lower band of the 95-percent confidence interval is just above zero).

CAVEAT: This isn’t a prediction of the outcome of the election. The figures simply reflect the stated preferences of respondents when the polls were conducted. Also (and positively), a GOP candidate can win even when he is behind in the (meaningless) nationwide popular vote (see this).

What Do I See in My Crystal Ball?

Nothing good:

The Biden administration overcomes the resistance of Texas and other GOP-led States and continues to allow illegal aliens (potential Democrat voters) to inundate the nation.

Perversely, in response to the resistance from Texas and other GOP-led States, the Biden administration declares a “national emergency” and effectively seizes control of GOP-controlled States. All policies that affirm life and liberty are suppressed (e.g., abortion bans and limits, school choice, effective law-enforcement, and — course — the freedoms of religion and speech).

If the immigration crisis doesn’t result in a “national emergency”, a different predicate will be found. The left’s need for control has is obsessive.

One result of the “national emergency” is the cancellation of the 2024 presidential election and the installation of a “provisional” government, led nominally by Biden (with Obama pulling the strings).

Even if there’s no national emergency or a provisional government, the left will remain in control through electoral chicanery.

Among many things, Biden administration’s egregious policies continue; for example, privileges for violent criminals, blacks, queers, and other “identity groups” (despite their known anti-social predilections and lack of accomplishments and abilities); the impoverishing war on fossil fuels and their efficient use (e.g., in gasoline-powered automobiles, gas furnaces, and gas cooktops); and the aforementioned flood of illegal aliens whose are supported the tax-paying citizens who are also the victims of the criminals among said aliens.

The regime finds a way around the GOP’s efforts to block aid to Ukraine and persists in a war that spreads to Western Europe and thus (via NATO) to the United States — perhaps involving exchanges of nuclear weapons.

The regime fails to take decisive action in the Middle East (and against Iran, specifically), with the result that critical resources and a critical trade route are throttled — re-igniting inflation and imposing real burdens (e.g., soaring energy prices) on working-class Americans.

Israel stands alone and eventually succumbs to the Muslim hordes, which leads to a second Holocaust. The provisional government tut-tuts and does nothing.

Iran, North Korea, and China — having observed the regime’s fecklessness — attack allied nations and international-trade routes, thereby exacerbating the effects of the conflagration in the Middle East. Diminished U.S. armed forces will only stand by as South Korea and Japan are assailed by missile attacks, Taiwan is subjugated to China, and the South China Sea and its bordering nations become China’s possessions.

The regime — under heavy pressure from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea — enters into an alliance of “peace and prosperity” with those nations. The effect of the alliance is the subjugation of working Americans (i.e., the people who produce things, not ideas) to the regulatory state and the gradual reduction of working people’s living standards to the those of the 1940s (at best).

Further emulating Soviet-style “democracy” the labor of the masses (including the illegal hordes) enables the ruling classes and their favorite to live high on the hog.

Continuing the lawfare conducted against Donald Trump and the J6 protestors, Soviet-style “justice” is exacted upon those who openly dissent from the new dispensation. True justice dies with the effective revocation of the Constitution and the emasculation of those courts that might have resisted the new dispensation.

These are my worst fears. I hope that I’m badly wrong.

Related reading:

Brandon Smith, “Cultural Replacement: Why the Immigration Crisis Is Being Deliberately Engineered“, Alt-Market.us, January 25, 2024

Graham McAleer, “Is Conservatism’s Future Strauss or Vogelin?“, Law & Liberty, January 26, 2024

Hans von Spakovsky, “Biden Doesn’t Have Any Legal Authority to Seize Control of the Texas National Guard“, The Daily Signal, January 27, 2024

How Good Are the Presidential Polls?

The results of the final polls in the last five presidential elections have pointed to four winners. Sounds good? You won’t think so after reading this post.

The values depicted in the graphs at the bottom of this post represent 10-poll averages of respondents’ presidential choices in two-way races (i.e., Republican or Democrat). The dates are mid-points of the periods during which the 10-poll samples were conducted.

The solid black lines trace the percentage-point lead (or deficit) for the eventual “winner” of the (meaningless) nationwide tally of the popular vote in each presidential election from 2004 through 2020. The gray lines trace the margins of error claimed by the organizations issuing the polls. (The dashed gray lines for 2004 are estimates derived by assuming a margin of error of 3 percentage points, which is typical of the later polls.) The range from the upper gray line to the lower gray line represents a 95-percent confidence interval; that is, the actual result would be within the range (or at its outer limit) with a probability of 95 percent.

The red diamond at the right in each graph is the “winner’s” actual margin of “victory” in the nationwide tally of popular votes. In every case, the actual margin of “victory” is within or at the outer limit of the final 95-percent confidence interval. (I use “sneer quotes” because there is no “winner” of the nationwide popular vote, which is a meaningless number. Presidential elections are decided State-by-State, and in 48 of 50 cases the candidate with the greatest number of popular votes in that State receives the State’s entire bloc of electoral votes.)

Putting that aside for the moment, the 95-percent confidence interval covers a range of about 6 percentage points. That is, the “winner’s” actual margin in the (meaningless) nationwide popular vote could be as many as 6 percentage points away the final 10-poll average. A margin of 6 percentage points means that the “winner’s” share of the popular vote could be 3 percent higher or lower than the share implied by the final 10-poll average. Given the statistical relationship between popular votes and electoral votes (discussed here), a shift of 3 percent can mean a gain or loss of 30 percent of the electoral vote.

What lies behind such a disproportionate response to such a small shift? It is the fact that a miniscule change in the distribution of a State’s popular vote can (in 48 cases out of 50) cause a 100-percent swing in the allocation of its electoral votes.

To take a concrete example, Trump won the electoral vote in 2016 despite Clinton’s 2.1 percent margin of “victory” in the tally of popular votes cast in the 50 States and District of Columbia. Clinton’s margin of “victory” was 2.9 million popular votes. She won California by 4.3 million popular votes. In other words, she “lost” the rest of the U.S. by 1.4 million popular votes. Crucially, she lost three States with a total of 46 electoral votes — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — by margins of 0.2 to 0.8 percent. Those three losses cost her the election.

To take another example, Biden’s 4.5 percent popular-vote “victory” in 2020 was much larger than Clinton’s. His huge win in California (5.1 million votes more than Trump) left him with a “victory” of about 2 million votes in the rest of the country. But Biden wouldn’t have won the election without narrow victories in Arizona (11 EV, margin of 0.3 percent), Georgia (16 EV, 0.2 percent), Pennsylvania (20 EV, 1.18 percent), and Wisconsin (10 EV, 0.63 percent).

Finally, there’s the case of the 2000 election (not represented in the graphs below), which Bush “lost” by more than 500,000 votes. He didn’t really lose the election, of course, because he won the crucial State of Florida by 537 votes when the U.S. Supreme Court put a stop to the illegal manufacture of votes for Gore in several Democrat-controlled jurisdictions.

Is there a fail-safe lead in the polls? Let’s return to 2020, when Biden eked out an electoral-vote win by “beating” Trump nationwide by 4.5 percentage points — a lead that was at the bottom edge of the 95-percent confidence interval for the final 10 polls. The center of that confidence interval — the 10-poll average — was 7.6 percentage points. You might suppose that a lead (in the polls) of that size would guarantee an election victory, but it didn’t. A lot of dirty pool was required.

Finally, the accuracy of the polls is compromised by two other facts: The mid-point of the polling period for the final 10 polls occurs three or four days before election day. Early voting has become more prevalent in this century, and it played a huge role in the election of 2020.

The lesson learned: Don’t bet on the outcome of a presidential election unless a candidate is leading in the final 10 polls by, say, 9 percentage points or more. (See above commentary about Biden’s final poll numbers in 2020.) Don’t bet against that candidate, and don’t expect to win more than a pittance if you bet on him to win. Anything else — like betting on a 3-point favorite — is pure guesswork or hope.

That’s reality. And don’t let a pollster tell you otherwise.

Here are the graphs:

Sources and notes — Values derived from the polls of polls at RealClearPolitics.com for the presidential elections of 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020. The polls completed entirely in June of each election year were organized chronologically according to the middle date of each polling period. A moving, 10-poll average/lead deficit was then computed, as well as moving 10-poll average margin of error.

Trump vs. Biden: 5a

REVISED METHODOLOGY AND UPDATED RESULTS

RealClearPolitics maintains a running tally of presidential election polls. I construct a moving average of the results, where the average represents Trump’s adjusted margin for the 10 most recent polls (taking the mid-point of each polling period as the date of each poll).

I then convert that 10-poll average to an estimate of Trump’s share of the two-party popular vote. For example, an average margin of +4 indicates a 52-48 split of the popular vote, that is, Trump gets 52 percent of the popular vote.

Finally, I apply my algorithm for the relationship between the GOP candidate’s share of the electoral vote and his share of two-party popular vote. Here is the trend since July 30, 2023:

These basic estimates of popular-vote and electoral-vote shares don’t account for the margin of error in pollsters’ findings or the margin of error in my estimate of electoral votes. When I apply those margins of error, Trump’s share of the electoral vote ranges from 40 percent to 77 percent for the 10 most-recent polls.

CAVEAT: These are not estimates of the outcome of next year’s election. They simply reflect the stated preferences of voters for Trump or Biden when the polls were conducted.

Trump vs. Biden: 4

UPDATED 11/21/23

RealClearPolitics maintains a running tally of presidential election polls (among many others). RCP has also assessed the pro-Democrat or pro-Republican bias of the final presidential-election polls issued by major pollsters in 2016 and 2020. On average, the polls were biased toward the Democrat nominee by 2.3 percentage points.

As the pollsters release their results, I adjust Trump’s lead/deficit for bias. I then construct a moving average of the adjusted results, where the average represents Trump’s adjusted margin for the 10 most recent polls (taking the mid-point of each polling period as the date of each poll).

I then convert that 10-poll average to an estimate of Trump’s share of the two-party popular vote. For example, an average margin of +4 indicates a 52-48 split of the popular vote, that is, Trump gets 52 percent of the popular vote.

Finally, I apply my algorithm for the relationship between the GOP candidate’s share of the electoral vote and his share of two-party popular vote.

The estimates of popular-vote and electoral-vote shares don’t account for the margin of error in pollsters’ findings or the margin of error in my estimate of electoral votes. But the movement of the estimates may be taken as indication of the movement in voters’ preferences between Trump and Biden (or whoever might become their parties’ nominees). It is that movement which I will report from time to time.

Here is the first report, which begins with a clutch of polls that were completed in mid-August, when polling season seems to have begun in earnest: