James May-June 2023 web - Flipbook - Page 41
To begin, let me get this out of the way. According to
RealClearPolitics, InsiderAdvantage Polling was ranked
6th in the nation among the pollsters who poll multiple
states (right behind The New York Times and tied with
Fox News Network) in its cumulative ranking of hundreds of pollsters for all polls reported between 2014 and
2022. That put us ahead of all other national news networks and papers. And to spread the news, the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia polls ranked
number one among pollsters that surveyed a single
state, with our friends at Landmark Communications
right behind them.
But for the cycle of 2022 alone, InsiderAdvantage
barely made the list of top multistate pollsters, coming
in at number 17 nationally. Of course, for the 2020 presidential cycle, InsiderAdvantage was ranked number one
among all pollsters for accuracy by RealClearPolitics.
So, you can take the rest of this column as either
coming from the pollster who beat everyone on the last
presidential cycle and has a great overall track record,
or as someone who was off more than usual in the last
election cycle.
Here’s the bottom line. As of May 2023, I would rate
the Democrats as more likely to again take/keep the White
House. This comes from a pollster who saw a “red wave”
developing in the last three weeks of the 2022 U.S. Senate
races. To be fair, other than for InsiderAdvantage and my
colleague Robert Cahaly at Trafalgar (whose cumulative
score by RCP was outstanding), most national pollsters
shied away from surveying the battleground races in those
last three weeks. They instead chose to poll nationally
and ask what we call “the generic ballot question”: “which
party do you favor controlling Congress?” The funny thing
is that almost all their polls suggested that a “red wave” of
Republican victories was building as well.
But that “red wave” didn’t happen and most likely
will not happen again absent a herculean effort by forces
far away and unknown to me at present. Here’s a list of
why such a GOP meltdown is highly likely again and how
such disaster might be averted.
IF A TREE FALLS . . .
You know how this goes, if a tree falls in the woods
and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound? In
the political forest the answer is no— particularly if
the tree is Republican or conservative. While Fox News
remains the dominant cable news network, it cannot possibly serve to counterbalance the three broadcast news
networks along with CNN and MSNBC.
Even with Newsmax thrown into the mix, the “conservative” broadcast media, based on total viewership,
is overwhelmed at about a 22-1 ratio, day in and day out.
Other than Rupert Murdoch, conservative-leaning financiers have either lacked the will or have been stymied at
forming consortiums to purchase or challenge the “legacy” media. And Republican operatives seem hellbent on
spending all their money in short burst primary and general election cycles. They just assume that everyone knows
their view of the news: that President Joe Biden is “cognitively challenged”; that the border is being flooded daily by
undocumented immigrants; that crime is destroying the
nation’s once great and revered cities; that the U.S. appears
weak and unprepared for future aggressions by major foes.
You get the point. But the average voter doesn’t.
It seems that Republican leaders assume that everyone else lives in the bubble they live in, but they don’t.
Most voters whose vote they might otherwise win don’t
know about Critical Race Theory, the consequences of
mounting federal debt or much of anything conservatives
talk about amongst themselves or to their audiences.
Were it not for Twitter CEO Elon Musk, what little information conservatives manage to get out beyond their
insular bubble would be shut down by a social media
establishment.
Also consider that conservatives are routinely labeled
by the mainstream press as “right wing” while even the
most “out there” liberals are labeled “progressives.” Republicans haven’t even been able to address the simple matter
of the lexicon used in political battle. continued
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