James May June 2024 web - Flipbook - Page 51
THERE IS A TRAP quietly being set
for former President Donald Trump.
The question is whether he will once
again survive and become stronger.
One seemingly insignificant article gives it away. A headline in the
April 11th’s online version of Newsweek heralded “Biden Now Beating
Trump in Majority of Polls.”
What? “That’s nonsense, Republicans” reply. “The polls have been
showing Trump winning. No time
to panic. After all we know all about
politics and polls,” they would say.
Consider, though, that there are
about 20 or so public organizations
in America that regularly conduct
the vast majority of public political
opinion research in America, and all
tend to be within tight margins of
error. But within that usual thin margin of error is where the pollsters are
separated. Therein comes a warning
for supporters of Trump, Republicans
and their many “expert” supporters.
A LESSON REGARDING
POLLING NUMBERS
We pollsters all come from a past
point of reference and, like it or not, it
has an impact on how we word our
surveys, gather our data and weight
our polls. InsiderAdvantage and
Trafalgar Group were among the top
three multistate pollsters for the 2016
and 2020 elections. We come from
“red” states and learned early on to
poll only registered likely voters. But
many of the pollsters who poll the
national averages for the presidential
race use registered voters, regardless
of how unlikely they might be to vote
as the polling samples. Others rely on
large preset panels as the source of
their data. Both methodologies tend
to lead to stronger results for Democrats and are less favorable for Trump.
Post-Joe Biden’s State of the
Union “Lazarus-like” rebirth, the RealClearPolitics average showed Trump
leading by over two points over the
president in a head-to-head contest.
But— magically— the national polls
managed to erase most of that lead
just prior to the start of Trump’s New
York criminal trial.
Certainly, an effort in the media
to soften Biden’s biggest weakness—
illegal immigration, typified by a
USA Today piece claiming he had
clamped down of the border— were
helping those numbers. But to give
credit to just plain political acumen,
Biden and the Democrats began a
robust ad campaign in April while
Republicans— resting on the laurels
of a Wall Street Journal survey showing Trump narrowly leading in most
swing states— had virtually no ad
campaign.
Obviously, because of the lead
time needed before we go to print,
much will have occurred before
this column is out. But looking at
the circumstances on the eve of the
New York trial, consider a not-too-farfetched scenario.
FUTURE LEGAL SCENARIOS
TO BE CONSIDERED
Despite the case being weak and
clearly contrived, and witnesses such
as Michael Cohen potentially being
shredded by the defense counsel, the
New York jury convicts Trump on
some of the charges. The anti-Trump
media and their now completely
impartial “presidential historians”
proclaim it to be one of “the darkest
days in American history.” They
immediately start to speculate on the
remaining trials and the “desperate
circumstances” the upcoming GOP
national convention faces.
Then their polls come out. They
show Trump losing supporters. The
media focus shifts to an emerging call
for the GOP to find a unity ticket. Nikki Haley? Ron DeSantis? Who knows?
M AY/ J UNE 2024
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