September 10, 2020

"One poll finding that indicates some potential for skepticism of the election result is the fact that more registered voters think Trump (48%) will win the election rather than Biden (43%)..."

"... despite Biden’s consistent lead in the polls. Among firm Trump supporters, 92% expect their candidate to win and just 2% feel he will lose. Among firm Biden supporters, 80% expect the Democrat to win and 12% think he will lose. Among all other voters, including soft supporters and undecided voters, 43% believe Trump will win and 39% believe Biden will win.... A majority of voters (55%) think there are so-called secret voters in their community who support Trump but won’t tell anyone about it. This includes 67% of firm Trump voters, 49% of firm Biden voters, and 44% of other voters. Far fewer (30%) believe that there are secret Biden voters in their community, including 37% of firm Biden voters, 24% of firm Trump voters, and 28% of other voters.... 'If this expected vote does not materialize on Election Day, some Democrats will be pleasantly surprised and some Republicans will be shocked.'"

Monmouth reports.

53 comments:

DarkHelmet said...

There is no question in my mind that the 'shy Trump voter' phenomenon is real and significant. We saw it play out four years ago, and the social pressure to hide one's support for Trump has only gotten more intense since then. But:

1) How large is the effect in relation to likely voter percentages? 2% of the electorate? 4%? 6%? Higher?
2) How motivated are the 'shy' Trump supporters? Yes, they prefer Trump to Biden, no, they won't say so out loud -- at least not to strangers -- but will they actually vote?
3) If 'shy Trump voters' amount to 5% or more of the likely voter pool and 80% or more go out to vote I'd say Trump wins. We already know he can lose the popular vote by 2-3% and still win the electoral college.
4) So, most importantly, how many shy Trump voters are in WI, MI, PA, MN?

Yancey Ward said...

The media at all levels relentlessly denigrates Trump supporters and their candidate- such supporters will, of course, lie to the media at a higher rate than will Biden supporters- they will do it out of a combination of fear and malice- it is simple human nature, and it played out in 2016 exactly that way and will again in November. I suspect the problem is even worse this year than in 2016 given the media's performance the last 4 years.

Leland said...

"so-called secret voters ":

People with other things in their lives more important than participating in political polls.

JPS said...

I take the polls with a grain of salt. The main reason I don't see Biden winning is this: There's not much of a case being made that he should be the chief executive officer of the US government: Hey, here's why you want the buck to stop with Joe Biden. This is why you want Joe Biden in charge.

Trump, for all his flaws, is a character, a very forceful one. And they hope to replace him with a figurehead. No one's trying very hard to deny that Biden would be that.

This campaign amounts to, "Put us back in power," from the people voters were so disgusted with, many were willing to take a flier on Donald Freakin' Trump. This in the face of massive uncertainty as to what he would do, how he would govern. Well, now we know. And the Democratic Party, the media, the never-Trump right are basically saying, Now, don't you regret that? Wouldn't you rather we were the ones calling the shots?

And I don't think most of us would.

Static Ping said...

To put this in some perspective, Monmouth University had Clinton beating Trump by 6% the day before the 2016 election:
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_110716/

How'd that work out for her?

rcocean said...

I'm sensing a weird complacency with Trump supporters. Its a sort of "Who could vote for Biden? He's obviously unfit" and "Who could vote for the D's - they've gone insane!" And a belief that Biden will bomb in the debates.

But everyone is underestimating the stupidity of the American people and the ability of the Democrats to commit voter fraud. Remember: No matter how stupid/weird/unfit Biden is, 90% of blacks, 2/3 of Jews and other minorities, and most Seniors will vote for him. NO MATTER WHAT.

Almost 50% of the american people wanted Hillary in 2016 & look at how corrupt, unfit, and insanely Left-wing and globalist she was. Trump barely won. People need to get energized and realize Trump is the underdog and people will have to fight like hell to get him elected.

PM said...

Trump wins - riots.
Biden wins - recounts.
November to remember.

J Melcher said...

Less a secret than a lie. We tell pollsters What they push us to say, even if we don't agree. Technically this is a lie. But it's also like a joke. We set up an expectation for the joy of seeing a surprise twist at the end.

rcocean said...

Biden - by staying in his basement with a mask on - and being a gaffe machine has lowered expectations to such an extent, that he could win the 1st debate just by showing up and being coherent. Its a brilliant strategy and might work. Biden has expanded on the Hillary strategy. No hostile questions, very few campaign stops, let the press attack Trump 24/7, and never, I mean never, talk about your radical agenda. It worked for her, and may work for Biden.

I will say this, if Biden wins, it means the American people are such yellow dog Democrat, so moronic, that no Republican will able to win again for a very long time. The D's will have to run the USA into the ground, for the R's to ever have a chance again.

Mike Sylwester said...

I am optimistic that President Trump will win re-election decisively. I expect he will win all the Electoral College votes that he won in 2016, plus Minnesota and New Hampshire (two states he almost won in 2016). Plus, he might win some more states -- as many as 40 states total.

The Democrats' vote harvesting and voting fraud will not be enough to make the election result even close.

doctrev said...

I'm not even slightly worried that Biden could win. The vote fraud will be unprecedented, but the problem is that the Dems believe they'll have weeks after November 3rd to pull it off. Not a prayer. The Trumpslide will be so large that the President will declare it an immediate mandate. At which point he'll order someone arrested for something. It almost doesn't matter what. Cuomo will resist, New York will be declared in insurrection, and the NYPD will cheer on the crackdown. That'll break the back of the Democratic Party in a more LITERAL sense than a Trump "loss" would ever manage for the Republicans.

Eleanor said...

I live in a neighborhood that it is all in for Trump. We could put up yard signs, paint our lawns, hoist flags, and all we would get is applause. Since we live "off the beaten track", it's a waste of resources. We appear to be unethusiastic about Trump, though. The one person who drives around with a Biden bumper sticker has nothing to fear from the rest of us. We already knew she's one fry short of a Happy Meal.

Scott said...

The problem with an elections is that you can't vote against candidates, you can only vote for their opponents. And if your preferred candidate sucks the same as or worse than the incumbent, the logical thing to do is to not vote. It's the devil you know vs the devil you don't know. The one you know always wins.

This makes the "enthusiasm gap" really important. And it's why this election is Trump's to lose.

As for Republicans being shocked on Election Day--if the walk-in vote wins it for Trump but the mail-in vote snatches that victory away, "shocked" isn't nearly adequate to describe the Republican reaction. We'll get to see if all those AR15 rifles people have been buying will be put to productive use in defending the Republic. (.223 is too big for squirrels and too small for deer. It's a round specifically designed for killing people. Do Americans really, truly understand the implications of the Second Amendment?)

pete 23 said...

"4) So, most importantly, how many shy Trump voters are in WI, MI, PA, MN? "

*Looks around furtively*
*Raises hand to chest level*
*Quickly puts hand back down*

grackle said...

How I would steal the election:

Wherever possible, mandate universal mail-in ballots for the upcoming election, as all the blue states have done.

Separate the legit mail-in ballots into 2 piles: Trump votes and Biden votes. Incinerate most of the Trump votes; keep the Biden votes in reserve, salted with a few Trump ballots. Insert the fraudulent Biden mail-in ballots (which have been prepared beforehand) into the count early on - just after the polls close.

The Trump landslide from the in-person votes will result in these fraudulent mail-in ballots coming in under the radar because the GOP watchdogs will surely be eager to certify the early counts - which will almost certainly favor Trump.

The completion of the initial count will reveal exactly where the legit Biden mail-in ballots are needed to give the election to Biden. For days or even weeks after the election boxes of legit Biden mail-in ballots can be “found” and added to the count. Eventually Biden will be declared the winner by a narrow margin.

Bay Area Guy said...

The polling is atrocious. It has not self-corrected since its massive fail in 2016.

Although I'm not a professional pollster, lemme offer an analogy.

1. Anyone with a brain can see that the NYT is biased. They tilt left, even though they insist they don't.

2. The NYT sets the journalist standard, which means setting the "journalistic narrative." Almost all big city newspapers take their cues from the NYT narrative. Don't stray too far from Times, boys!

3. So, the San Francisco Chronicle (my local paper) will almost never contradict the NYT. If they NYT ignores a favorable story to Trump (say, Nobel Prize nomination), you know the SF Chron will ignore it or bury it on page 36 of the Leisure Section.

4. Ditto for the LA Times, Ditto for the Philadelphia Inquirer, ditto across the country.

5. Analogy: Nate Silver (N8 Ag) is the NYT of polling, He's not a pollster himself, he just aggregates all the bad polls, cherry picks the polls that don't fit his narrative, and herds the media/university polling sheep into his leftwing pen.

6. His mission is to prop up Biden +4 or so, to keep the Dem donations flowing, The Betting Markets are better and closer to where the race is.

7. The tactics the pollsters use are to oversample Dems, undersample rural voters, ignore the "shy Trump voters" who don't trust pollsters, and to re-weight responses.

The bottom line is that the race is 50-50. The electoral map will look much like it did in 2016. DJT starts with nearly 260 EV and needs only 10 more to win. Trump is doing better in Penn and Minnesota. He may be doing slightly worse in Arizona, but I would defer to someone who lives there.

We shall see!

MountainMan said...

Your Definitive Guide to Understanding Polling (and Why Most Polls are Garbage)

mikee said...

Scott, there are many steps between the ballot box and the ammo box. And with ammo so damn expensive right now, when you can find it for sale at all, I think most people will be willing to take all those many steps with calm deliberation.

Remember when AlGore tried to steal the 2000 election? And the Florida Supremes tried to let him? Not one of that cast of pirates ended up hung from lamp posts.

So it should be this election. A calm mind makes for a smoother trigger pull than a panicky jerk.

grackle said...

The polls were crap in 2016 and they are crap in 2020. Hillary lost the election because the Left didn’t cheat enough. They didn’t think they would have to cheat (because of the polls) so the cheating was light. They’ve shown with the universal mail-in voting that they are not going to make THAT mistake again.

wendybar said...

I live in New Jersey. If the amount of boats I saw yesterday at a Marina I was having lunch at were any indication (New Jersey is DEEP BLUE!!!!) Trump is going to win in a landslide. There wasn't 1 Biden flag.

Joe Smith said...

I think this is a result of:

1. The huge 'enthusiasm gap,' and

2. The fact that every pollster and media outlet got it wrong in 2016 and Trump supporters expect more of the same.

Equipment Maintenance said...

People aren't shy or reluctant to show their support for Trump because they are afraid that some Lib will attack them. They hide their support because they know if a Lib does attack them, and they fight back, the "Justice system" will support the Lib.

Retail Lawyer said...

Someone calls and says they are working for a pollster. Maybe. But I wonder if its someone working for BLM or antifa, compiling a database of "fascists" for future arson or tire slashing or elimination. If I say "Trump" or "none of your business" I am literally risking my family.
Its not like you have a civic duty to talk to strangers on the phone.

Birkel said...

rcocean,
Trump is going to win an additional 10% of blacks and 10% of latinos, compared to 2016.
In Miami-Dade County Trump is nearly polling within the margin of error with latinos.

The wipeout in November is going to be glorious.
Keep donating.
Keep working.
Keep talking to friends and neighbors.

Do the work.
Buy popcorn.

Original Mike said...

"Among firm Trump supporters, 92% expect their candidate to win and just 2% feel he will lose."

There's only 2% of us?

eric said...

Blogger rcocean said...
Biden - by staying in his basement with a mask on - and being a gaffe machine has lowered expectations to such an extent, that he could win the 1st debate just by showing up and being coherent. Its a brilliant strategy and might work. Biden has expanded on the Hillary strategy. No hostile questions, very few campaign stops, let the press attack Trump 24/7, and never, I mean never, talk about your radical agenda. It worked for her, and may work for Biden.

I will say this, if Biden wins, it means the American people are such yellow dog Democrat, so moronic, that no Republican will able to win again for a very long time. The D's will have to run the USA into the ground, for the R's to ever have a chance again.

9/10/20, 10:49 AM


I actually think you're already seeing this. The Ds have run the country into the ground and that's why you're seeing such overwhelming support for Trump.

Which means if Joe wins you'll never see another Republican president for as long as we have this America.

Because it means the Democrats have so perfected their fraud machine that the Republicans can't win anymore.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

And here you have the civil war in the making. Trump will clearly have enough electoral college votes to claim victory, but Democrats, having trashed the process, will continue to maintain that the election isn't over. Trump will correctly observe that, according to the rules of the game, he is the certified president-elect. Democrats and the media-- but I repeat myself-- will now claim, and trumpet, that Trump has validated their prediction that he would refuse to leave office. Game on. At this point I'm loading up my 1965 Aristocrat travel trailer with semiautomatic weapons and heading east. Democrats are bad-faith Americans. They would rather destroy the greatest nation rather than give up power. It behooves us to make them fight for it.

Bruce Hayden said...

“ We'll get to see if all those AR15 rifles people have been buying will be put to productive use in defending the Republic. (.223 is too big for squirrels and too small for deer. It's a round specifically designed for killing people. Do Americans really, truly understand the implications of the Second Amendment?)”

Not a hunter, but not sure why .223/5.56 would be effective against humans, but not against much smaller deer. At least the deer in our yard here in MT are small enough that .223/5.56 might even be too much. Around here, I would expect that caliber not to work effectively with elk, moose, or bears (black or brown), but do just fine for defense against mountain lions, coyotes, and esp wolves (thanks to those 30 round std capacity magazines). For chance encounters with the bigger stuff, I have an AR-15 in .300 AAC Blackout (and the basics for another one). Unfortunately. .300 BO is stripped from the shelves, at least around here, faster than anything else. I think that it was Blacksheep in CDA, where I told them that a friend had seen a bunch of it there. They laughed. They had gotten several thousand rounds in, a couple weeks earlier, rationed it to 100 rounds per customer, and were sold out within 20 minutes of opening. I did pick up 5 MagPul 30 round magazines there in that caliber (standard .223/5.56 magazines are supposed to work - but why take the chance that they will jam at a critical time). I have an AR-10 lower, but haven’t started that build, and really don’t have a need for such in PHX where we expect to head for the winter maybe next month.

Original Mike said...

Blogger rcocean said..."But everyone is underestimating the stupidity of the American people and the ability of the Democrats to commit voter fraud."

Yep.

Bay Area Guy said...

History Professor Larry Schweikart is one of my "go to" guys on Twitter. He's smart and funny. Here's his recent piece, explaining things.

n.n said...

They're desperate to frame a social justification to execute another 16 trimesters of witch hunts, warlock trials, and protests.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Bruce Hayden-- you must start reloading your own ammo. I'm surprised that you don't, since you seem to be a knowledgeable and committed shooter. Shooting the slightly oddball .300 BO is even more reason since the fringe calibers are the first to dry up. I'll admit that during ammo droughts of the last few years some components were hard to find, especially powder, but planning ahead can cover that eventuality. Casting projectiles is another strategy to stay supplied. Bottom line is, I always have ammo through thick and thin.

Kathryn51 said...

I've posted these numbers before, but I think they are relevant.

in 2012, 2.3 million voters voted for someone other than Romney or Obama. They comprised 1.7% of total votes cast.

In 2016, that number was 7.7 million voters - 6.7% of the total votes.

About 5.5 million more voters chose "other" because they couldn't stand either candidate.

I was in that 6.7%. Almost all of my Republican lawyer friends were part of that 6.7%. In fact, a lot of my Republican friends were part of that number. Our vote doesn't really matter in Washington state and we can't abide Trump the person, so voting for the Libertarian, Ed Mc-whatever or write-in (me) was an easy option.

In 2020? Most of us are voting for Trump, even though once again, our vote won't matter in this state. But it will matter in the overall vote total and help dampen the move to abolish the Electoral college. Those 5.5 million voters won't be voting for Biden - of that I am convinced.

RobinGoodfellow said...

I think Trump will win.

Pauline Kael hardest hit.

hstad said...

LOL - sample includes 49% Democrat? Wow - Biden is in real trouble. Polling firms are a joke when they put out such fake numbers. But, it's paid by someone from the Democratic side so what can you expect but a poll which shows your Client's desired result.

Bunkypotatohead said...

Its gonna come down to how motivated the dead are this year.
They always vote for the lefty, and they are the one group having no fear of catching the coronavirus at the polling stations.

buwaya said...

Re .223 (or 5.56)-

It is expected that animals need to be killed humanely; that is, reliably and immediately with a single shot, so the poor beast does not linger in pain. Military arms and ammunition have no such requirement.

Roy Lofquist said...

There is no mystery concerning the inaccuracy of the polls. The pollster themselves tell us why.

"It has become increasingly difficult to contact potential respondents and to persuade them to participate. The percentage of households in a sample that are successfully interviewed – the response rate – has fallen dramatically. At Pew Research, the response rate of a typical telephone survey was 36% in 1997 and is just 9% today."

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2012/05/15/assessing-the-representativeness-of-public-opinion-surveys/

The theory and mathematics of polling require that you have a random sample of the total population under consideration. The pollsters sample less than 10%. Why don't the other 90% answer the phone? Maybe they like chocolate better than vanilla. Maybe only left handed people answer the phone. Maybe any number of reasons. Nobody knows because they ain't talking.

"Shy" voters don't give false answers. They don't answer at all. Some of them vote.

Birkel said...

Original Mike,
You will still be invited to celebrate Trump's resounding victory with us.

minnesota farm guy said...

The states most likely to be "vote harvested" would seem to be those states that are already pretty securely blue. The red states, a number of which I expect Trump will win with overwhelming margins ,can be considered safe in hand. So it is the marginally red states that will be in play and I wonder how many of these are going to be blanket mailed ballots. Each state has rules about mail-in ballots some being more lenient than others. I would presume that states most likely to be carried by Trump are those that have the most stringent absentee and mail-in rules. MN is certainly a state that has a bad history of turning up forgotten ballots and I am sure there will be some serious oversight of all of those ballots this year. Though the rules have been loosened on mail- in in MN one still must request a mail in ballot, and it must be post marked on or before election day. This is really not much different from the past except that ballots received up to a week after election day must be counted. I think most serious mail in voters will be sure to act early and will be counted on election day, non serious ones will fail to act on time as always. Though I don't like mail-in voting all that much. I think that the tempest surrounding it is a bit overdone, but knowing that the Dems are generally slime balls where voting is concerned the more noise beforehand the better.

DanTheMan said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DanTheMan said...

>>Trump will correctly observe that, according to the rules of the game, he is the certified president-elect.

After a week of so of "recounts", Joe Biden will declare himself the President-Elect, too.
He will start giving speeches behind a podium with the "President Elect" seal, name a cabinet, call and meet with select foreign leaders, and meet with D congressional leaders who will go out of their way to use the phrase "President Elect Biden" two or three times per sentence.
The media will do likewise, as if they get to decide who the "real" President Elect is.

The D playbook is simple: Get lefty judges to set aside statutory deadlines, find just enough votes in just enough swing states, and keep recounting over and over again. As soon as a count show Joe with a lead, declare the recounting over and the race decided.

It almost worked in Florida in 2000. It will very likely work this time.

wbfjrr2 said...

Hstad, where do you get that 49% number for Dems? The demographics listed at the bottom of the article say 32% dem, 29% GOP, the rest independent. That seems relatively realistic I think?

Original Mike said...

Blogger Birkel said..."Original Mike, You will still be invited to celebrate Trump's resounding victory with us."

Considering my current sense of foreboding, I will be the happiest celebrant there.

wildswan said...

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has just ruled today that the state cannot send out mail-in ballots which leave the Green Party and Kanye West off the ballot until the reasons why the Wisconsin Election commission threw them off the ballot are adjudicated. It's thought that the Greens and Kanye would take votes from Biden and that this is why the two were thrown off the ballot. The Commission has other explanations. It threw the Green Party off the ballot, it says, because one of the Green Party candidates moved so that some forms submitted gave one address and some another. The Commission said the candidate lived in two places and threw the whole party off the ballot. Kanye West's application to be on the ballot was submitted late, the Commission says. This application was 17 seconds late at 5:00:17 pm and this happened because the Election Commission locked its doors at 4:30 pm and it took 30 minutes and 17 seconds to get the door open. Where's Black Lives Matter when you need it? They'd have had the door open in 10 seconds.

iowan2 said...

The mail in vote thing is troubling. Mostly because the fraud happens in dem controlled states. So there is no way to institute procedures to protect against fraud. We have protocols in place to make sure the secred FISA court doesn't allow spying on Americans. But the procedures only work of all the people are honest. We have learned they are worthless if the enforcers are also crooked. So how to protect against fraud?
The simplest thing is transparency. The day after the election, requrire all states certify the number of votes cast. Not counted. Total votes cast. That way we the people get something concrete to measure.

This is way to logical to be adopted.

ken in tx said...

Ideally, in a democratic republic, to be in charge is to administer the laws fairly and impartially. As such it's a burden and a chore. Why would anyone want it, unless one intends to use that authority unfairly, and reward one's friends and punish one's enemies? That's what Obama stated his administration intended to do--and it did. Our elections have devolved into a contest of which candidate can attract the most followers who think he will be unfair in their favor.Sad.

I'm Not Sure said...

"This is really not much different from the past except that ballots received up to a week after election day must be counted."

In a reasonable world, all ballots (in person and mail-in) need to be received by election day. If you show up at the polls after election day, you don't get to vote. Why does voting by mail allow you to bypass this deadline?

Lucien said...

Minnesota Farm Guy:
The problem is not vote harvesting in blue states, but in red states with populous blue cities. In 2016 Trump won more than 3000 of about 3600 counties nationwide.

Bruce Hayden said...

“ Bruce Hayden-- you must start reloading your own ammo.”

It is planned, but need somewhere to do it. That is supposed to be my new garage in MT. Except that we are a month or so from the yearly migration S to AZ for the winter, and we don’t even have the slab yet. Talking this weekend with the contractor. Of course, that isn’t going to help this time around. I do have a hundred or so empty .300 BO schells, as well as a couple thousand 9 mm empty shells, maybe 500 .40 S&W, etc.

heyboom said...

It's almost impressive how extensively the MSM works to shape narratives. It used to work back when they were the only game in town for political news, but now most people get their information from other places.

heyboom said...

It's a round specifically designed for killing people. Do Americans really, truly understand the implications of the Second Amendment?

Yes, they know that the Second Amendment is for defense not offense.

Michael S. Kochin said...

We political scientists know that the asking people "who's going to win?" is a much better predictor than asking them "who are you voting for?"
And in the whole history of opinion polling, it is difficult or impossible to find a case where a candidate whom most people polled said was going to win, despite being disfavored by the media, failed to win.
For theory and data, see Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's book The Spiral of Silence.