Trump’s Narrative Busting & Ryan Routh’s Illegal Voting in North Carolina – Top 3 Takeaways – September 19th, 2024
- Narrative busting. As always there are two sides to stories and one side to facts. And while I have strong opinions they’re rooted in fact. So, for example, last Wednesday in the aftermath of the presidential debate, it was a fact that in the same CNN/SSRS poll that had Donald Trump beating Joe Biden in their debate by a 67% – 33% margin, in what effectively ended Biden’s political career, it had the numbers nearly reversed with viewers saying Harris got the best of Trump in their debate by a 63% - 37% margin. But as we also discussed last week, it was also a fact that the average of all political polls showed only 4% of the voting population was undecided about who they wanted to vote for prior to the debate...and also, that the rare undecided voters among us were looking for something different than what decided voters wanted from the debate (we learned that based on the feedback from focus groups of undecided voters). Specifically, most wanted to see if Kamala Harris, who’d avoided both media and providing any specifics on important policy positions, would deliver the goods. Most in the focus groups said she didn’t. What that meant is that Donald Trump, who was positioned to win prior to the debate, may have been even better positioned to win after the debate. And with the initial swing state polls we saw seen come in over the past week that’s proved true. In this week’s Anatomy of a Swing State update, Trump showed an Electoral College lead of 281-257 using the RealClear Politics average of polls. A margin that adjusts to a 290-248 vote advantage if adjusted for the margin of the error in the polls over the prior two presidential elections. Donald Trump being positioned to win a week after last week’s presidential debate is a narrative buster. And here’s one for you. The oldest accredited pollster in American history is Gallup, they’ve been polling American politics since the 1930’s. Now Gallup doesn’t get involved with polling and predicting presidential winners, but they do poll on many topics and in many categories that have the potential to be predictive. One of those is presidential favorability. When Gallup released their latest polling data yesterday, I noticed a pattern I’d never seen before. Whichever presidential candidate had the highest favorability rating in their September poll, preceding a presidential election, won the popular vote in the presidential election. It’s possible, if not likely, that this is...
- The most historically accurate prediction of the winner of the presidential popular vote in American history – it's hard to have a better than perfect record after all. And guess which candidate Gallup showed as having the highest favorability rating in this cycle’s September poll? Donald Trump. By a 46%-44% margin Gallup shows Trump as having the higher favorability rating. There’s another narrative buster. And get this, that 2% edge for Trump in favorability, grows to a 9% edge among Independents. What’s more? Trump’s favorability at this point in the cycle, according to Gallup, has never been higher. In fact, it’s never been close. On this date in 2016 Trump’s favorability was at 33% in the Gallup poll. In 2020, it stood at 41%. Now here’s the thing, as we saw in 2016 (when he lost the popular vote by 2.1%), Donald Trump doesn’t need to win the national popular vote to win the presidential election. In both prior presidential elections Trump performed better in swing states than he did in the popular vote across all states. If Trump were to win the popular vote, he’d almost certainly cruise to a comfortable victory. So, will this historical Gallup favorability trend hold? We don’t know. But more importantly for Donald Trump and his supporters, it doesn’t have to for Trump to be able to win. If it’s even particularly close to being predictive (a narrow loss in the popular vote should do) it would most likely be great news for Trump and Republicans down ballot across the country on Election Day. I said it last week and I’ll say it again today. There are now only 47 days until Election Day, and Donald Trump is the best positioned to win that he’s been, and post the presidential debate that’s a big-time narrative buster.
- Ryan Routh illegally voted in North Carolina. Wannabee Trump assassin Ryan Routh, as we quickly came to learn, had a proclivity for breaking the law long before he setup shop intending to assassinate the former and God-willing next president of the United States. One of the first records I pulled on Sunday, while looking into the background of Ryan Routh, was his voter registration record. Something that immediately jumped out to me was that while he’d been identified as a resident of Hawaii, and he was and is registered to vote there... He was also registered to vote in North Carolina, and in fact had voted there this year. In North Carolina’s March primary election, he voted with a “Democratic” ballot. Additional research showed that his full-time residence, and his business, were in fact Hawaii, where he’d established full-time residency in 2018. It was pretty clear, pretty quickly, that Routh had illegally voted in the important swing state of North Carolina this year. Now there’s confirmation that’s the case. The Locke Foundation sought an explanation from the local North Carolina Board of Election in Guilford County and was told this: [Routh] registered and voted in 2012, and then updated that address to his current address in 2016. So, his no-contact clock to inactivity started after that – and we sent the confirmation in 2021, which he didn’t respond to, making him inactive at that time. When he voted in 2024, his status was inactive, but he showed up in person to vote, and re-confirmed the same address. Except, that it wasn’t his address, and hadn’t been his address in years. So, he’d not been active and there was no interaction with him after 2016. North Carolina finally moved him to inactive (rather than having him removed) after five years. And then he shows up to vote citing an address that hasn’t been his full-time address in seven years, and they say, ok? What does this say about North Carolina’s voter maintenance and reconciliation process? How many other illegal voters are positioned to cast ballots in that state? And what are the odds it’s only happened in North Carolina? In fact, according to the Heritage Foundation, North Carolina does better than most. They’re ranked 18th in election integrity measures – while receiving 18 out of 28 possible points on the accuracy of voter registration lists. For those who’re concerned with election integrity – you need look no further than the man who most recently tried to eliminate the political competition to find an example of it having happened in a critically important state this cycle.