Yesterday, in Nashville, 10,000 Christians gathered to worship, despite ongoing lockdown/social distancing measures that are rapidly being ignored nationwide. Meanwhile, in one of their first public appearances together, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appeared in Phoenix. They had . . .
Nobody. Literally, not one person can be seen on the streets.
Everywhere in the United States, the contrast is shocking, yet everywhere is it obscured by polls. Today, a somewhat Trump-friendly IDB/Tipp poll had Joe Biden with an utterly unbelievable 8.5 lead even as Rasmussen (which has not been so Trump friendly) has Trump at 49% approval. One of these things is not like the other.
On Friday, the Rush Limbaugh show hosted President Trump for two hours. A record 50 million listeners tuned in. Trump has 87 million Twitter followers. Even allowing for bots and a horde of angry Democrat trolls, this is almost certainly a loyal base of over 60 million. And these people won’t vote? Or the 56 million Americans who tell Gallup (when Trump’s name isn’t mentioned) that they are better off today than four years ago? (This was the same question that Ronald Reagan received 44% of in 1984 . . . when he won in a landslide.)
I have been regularly posting the utterly shocking voter registration changes—all toward the Republicans—in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. But what is of equal interest is that in once-Democrat strongholds such as Kentucky and West Virginia, Republicans have made equally impressive inroads, now coming within a cycle of turning both those states red. In Arizona—supposedly turning blue, right?—the Republican Governor Doug Ducey foolishly fought to shut down voter registration, even as Republicans continued to pad their lead. In the last week alone, Republicans out-registered Democrats by 2,400 now holding a shocking 100,000-registration lead over Democrats in just Maricopa County alone.
We are told that blue state governors such as Gavin Newsome and Andrew Cuomo are extremely popular—yet “The Guardian” reported that 2,500 people have already left San Francisco and major companies are bailing on their properties there. (Pinterest paid almost $90 million to break a lease on an unbuilt office it can no longer use because of the lockdowns). Comrade de Blasio had flirted with cancellation of a $900 million bonus for union members—until the union backed him down, all during the worst fiscal crisis in New York City history. But, hey, it’s only money right?
In the woke NBA, ever-friendly to riots and China, game 5 of the finals with the supposedly popular LeBron James fell by more than two-thirds from last year (https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/10/game-5-ratings-nba-finals-heat-lakers/). The damage has been so great that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver announced that there would be no “victim’s” names on jerseys next year. But that does nothing about the NBA’s China problem. And if we are to “believe the polls,” China’s unpopularity has hit new highs even as American corporate and sports leaders rush to embrace the ChiComs.
The Washington Post/ABC poll touts Biden with a 10 point lead, yet weekly we are treated to a Biden “car parade” of 15 cars in Miami Dade Sunday while a Latinos for Trump caravan had 30,000 cars (a similar multi-thousand car caravan took place last week on the I-75/I-675 loop in Dayton, Ohio). We see massive boat rallies even in New Jersey, often with 8,000 to 9,000 boats) and even in the Villages in Florida thousands of golf carts greeted Mike Pence. Both on the Rush Limaugh Show and today on Twitter, President Trump has said that his internal polls are very good. He told Rush the campaign was up in Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida. . . “a lot of places.”
Typically, toward the end of the campaign, some of the pollsters try to adjust their polling to come closer to reality so they don’t look quite so foolish. Paul Sperry reports that “RealClearPolitics meta-polling shows Biden suddenly losing ground versus Trump in Ohio, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, among other key battleground states.” (My emphasis)
One interesting omission from Trump’s comments on two occasions about his internal polling is the absence of Minnesota. Perhaps he is not as close as he once was there . . . or perhaps he’s closer than ever and wants to sandbag the Democrats to keep them from putting in last-minute resources.
In short, across the nation, everywhere from lockdown resistance to rallies to personal and business relocation to voter registration, the physical and material evidence is that Trump is going to have a near-landslide. But the polls . . .
Larry Schweikart is the co-author with Michael Allen of the New York Times #1 bestseller, A Patriot’s History of the United States, author of Reagan: The American President, and founder of the Wild World of History, a history curriculum website for grades 9-12 with full US and World History courses including teacher’s guide, student workbooks, tests/answer keys, images/maps/graphs, and video lessons with every unit (www.wildworldofhistory.com).
