Trump’s Trends Six Weeks Away from Election Day & Ryan Routh’s Wish – Top 3 Takeaways – September 24th, 2024
- Six weeks away from Election Day. Christmas as a kid. The school year as an adolescent. Vacation as an adult. Those are occasions that we tend to count down to as we’re nearing in on them as we progress through life. There’s another that can be added to the mix that perhaps carries for many of us the greatest anticipation of any event we’ve ever lived... The 2024 presidential election with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in office. We are now just six weeks, or 42 days, away from what is without a doubt the most important election of our lives. And as the countdown is on to see what direction our country will seek (sanity or socialism) there’s a notable dynamic in play. National pollsters once again aren’t likely sampling the right way. Yesterday I’d mentioned that Gallup was out with their latest partisan lean study, and it revealed this: 1% more voters currently call themselves Democrats than Republicans, however when independents are asked how they lean – Republicans come out on top by 5-points. That six-point swing towards the right is huge for a lot of reasons. It’s an indication of how independent and undecided voters appear to be breaking. What it also means is that polling samples are commonly way oversampling Democrats and way under sampling Republicans. So, about that... I pulled the three most recent national polls with transparent samples. The three polls were the NBC News poll showing Harris up five, the Fox News poll showing Harris up two and the ABC News poll showing Harris up four. They all had something in common other than having Harris with a national lead. A significant under sampling of Republicans and Republican leaners. While the average of the three polls showed Harris with 3.7% lead, two of the polls (NBC and Fox) under sampled Republicans by four points and ABC News under sampled Republicans by five points if you apply Gallup’s findings. Now, it’s not hard to see what the implication may be here. Harris is shown with a less than 4-point lead nationally with sampling that’s nearly 5-points to the left of what Gallup’s data suggests it should be. People who’ve paid attention to the polls know that Donald Trump has consistently outperformed them. One of the questions entering the homestretch of this cycle is whether pollsters have learned lessons from their errors of the prior two election cycles and have properly applied them. As we’re six weeks away from Election Day, the answer would appear to be no, most haven’t.
- If you don’t get the sample right, the poll isn’t likely to be right. Gallup currently has this country eight points further towards the right than in either of the prior two presidential elections. The pollsters don’t. And given that the current polls show an extremely close race that could break either way this would appear to be especially encouraging news for the Trump supporters counting down the days until Election Day. Speaking of good news for Trump involving polls...the New York Times newest swing state polls in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina provided some of it. Trump was shown with leads in each of those three, but most notably, he averaged performing 5-points better in those states than he did a month ago prior to the DNC and the debate. This is consistent with the theme that I’ve discussed since the debate...that undecided swing state voters weren’t convinced to vote for Kamala in the debate, and as a result have started to bend back towards Trump. It’s still early but from the earliest focus groups to the most recent swing state polling that’s available there’s what appears to be a trend that’s Trump’s friend. Someone who most certainly isn’t Trump’s friend is Ryan Routh who on Monday...
- Was denied bond and will remain behind bars for now as the two federal gun charges brought by the feds were deemed to be enough to keep the second would-be Trump assassin behind bars while the investigations, both state and federal, will likely lead to additional charges being brought. But something else that was also learned on Monday about Routh was the level of plotting that went into his planned attack...including his preplanned prediction of failing. On the one hand, Ryan Routh self-published a book a year and half ago, calling for the assassination of Donald Trump. That book was still available on Amazon to purchase as recently as last week...so it’s not exactly surprising news to learn that he’d apparently penned a note months ago talking about assassinating Donald Trump. On the other hand, it is at least a little bit odd that in the letter he said this: This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you. I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job. It’s even odder when you consider that Routh allegedly handed this letter over in a box to whom is only described by the Department of Justice as a “witness”. And that the witness is said to have only looked at what was in the box they took possession of from Routh after they learned he was involved in the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. Now it’s all together possible that this is the case. A friend agreeing to hang onto a box of stuff for another friend for an indeterminate time without checking out what’s in the box. But at the same time doesn’t it seem like Routh wanted someone to read that letter to the masses, but only after he’d failed, if he had failed? And isn’t that exactly what’s happened here? So, is it possible that the witness did exactly as Routh had intended for them to do? Whether they were instructed by Routh to do so or not? The note, encouraging someone else to do what he was unable to do has now been disseminated for the masses – that was something the book he self-published calling for this too, wasn’t able to do. Thankfully Routh’s bond was denied but seemingly his desire to have his message heard was fulfilled. There’s a lot that’s odd about this guy and his story and it’s one more reason I’m glad Florida’s investigating it.