RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/05/why-do-we-even-have-elections-why-dont-we-just-let-the-media-choose/

We’ve become accustomed to Democratic Party operatives thinly disguised as journalists smearing, slurring, slamming, and lying about Republican candidates. They don’t want voters to know the truth. They’re not objective purveyors of the facts but rather political players who want to have the power to pick the winners of every election.

Some years ago, while at the University of California, Los Angeles, economics professor Timothy Groseclose wrote a book that showed Democratic candidates start their campaigns with significant leads over their GOP candidates due to media preference.

In “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” Groseclose, now at George Mason University, demonstrated how that bias could be measured. “​​He is so numerate,” economist David Henderson wrote in a review, “that he makes clear with the data just how extreme the left-wing bias is.”

It’s possible that the hole Republicans have to start in is even deeper than it was when “Left Turn” was published in 2011.

The media are so invested in Democrats, through their votes and their campaign donations, and through their hard-left ideology, that they don’t want voters to determine the outcomes of elections. They want to be the power brokers who coronate the kings and queens of our executive and legislative bodies.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/11/02/is-this-the-biggest-suppression-poll-in-history-n4933899

I warned you about suppression polls, and the mother of all suppression polls appears to have just dropped. And it’s not even from a swing state.

The latest Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll just dropped, and it claims that Kamala Harris has a three-point lead in Iowa.

“Kamala Harris now leads Donald Trump in Iowa — a startling reversal for Democrats and Republicans who have all but written off the state’s presidential contest as a certain Trump victory,” the Des Moines Register reports. “A new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows Vice President Harris leading former President Trump 47% to 44% among likely voters just days before a high-stakes election that appears deadlocked in key battleground states.”

The results follow a September Iowa Poll that showed Trump with a 4-point lead over Harris and a June Iowa Poll showing him with an 18-point lead over Democratic President Joe Biden, who was the presumed Democratic nominee at the time.  

“It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. “She has clearly leaped into a leading position.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has abandoned his independent presidential campaign to support Trump but remains on the Iowa ballot, gets 3% of the vote. That’s down from 6% in September and 9% in June.  

Fewer than 1% say they would vote for Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver, 1% would vote for someone else, 3% aren’t sure and 2% don’t want to say for whom they already cast a ballot.  

It’s worth noting that an Emerson College poll out of Iowa was released on Saturday as well, and it had Trump ahead nine points. Trump has led in every poll out of Iowa against either Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. Yet, this poll is making a huge splash. Why?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/04/on-election-eve-majority-of-voters-deeply-dissatisfied-with-biden-harris-years-tipp-tracking-poll/

As most know, reading the tea leaves about who will win an election by looking only at political preference polls can be difficult. Polls jump around, and people often don’t want others to know who they will vote for. But there is a way around that: Ask people how they feel about their own lives. The TIPP Tracking Poll did just that, asking voters how they’re doing under the Biden-Harris administration. Not well, it turns out.

In a national online survey taken from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, the TIPP Tracking Poll asked a series of four questions to 1,603 registered voters, with a margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points. The responses suggest a majority of Americans harbor deep disappointments over the path the nation has traveled since the outbreak of COVID.

But it’s a split majority: Registered Democrats continue to express positive feelings about both the Biden-Harris administration and the general direction of the country. Republicans and independent/third-party voters remain mostly dissatisfied.

The first question asked simply: “Are you better off now compared to your situation pre-COVID?”

A majority of 54% said “no,” while 36% answered “yes.” Another 10% responded “not sure.”

But a closer look reveals two very different views, based on party affiliation. Among Democrats, 56% said they were better off now than before COVID, while only 34% felt they were worse off, with 10% not sure.

They inhabit a different mental universe than those in the other two major political groupings. For Republicans, 69% said they were worse off, versus 23% saying they were better off and 8% not sure. Independents weren’t far behind at 62% “worse,” 27% “better” and 11% unsure.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21083/us-elections-family-album

The kinder authors use the label “conservative” against those left behind as if that were an insult. But one conserves only what one regards as precious and worth preserving. Advocates of wokeism never bother to ask why so many Americans don’t wish to board that bus and try to cling to their American way of life, as portrayed in Rip Smith’s old family album in “Magic Town”.

In theory, the US has a multiparty system. In practice, however, for the past few decades at least, it has appeared as 43 effectively one-party states with the remaining seven swinging between two parties.

The strength of the American system lies in the fact that the structures of the republic set limits to democratic waywardness caused by momentary changes of public mood and cultural-ideological fashions such as wokeism.

For decades, at least until the early days of the current century, a saying attributed to a 19th century vaudeville troupe was often used to assess the prevailing political mood in an imaginary “average America”: Will it play in Peoria?

I first heard the phrase in 1974 from Thomas Philip (Tip) O’Neil, the 47th Speaker of the US House of Representatives. In answer to questions about likely policies the federal government might pursue on various issues, he said: “We have to see how it plays in Peoria!”

The subtext was that Peoria, a small town in Illinois, represents the mood in America.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-economy-election

You could consume hundreds of hours of television news and spend weeks reading newspaper election coverage and still not know that the economy is by far the most important issue on voters’ minds. The media focus on culture-war issues and tend to portray the election as a fight for “the soul of the nation.” In reality, voters are far more concerned about things like grocery and housing prices.

Polling data make this clear. Fifty-two percent of voters in a recent Gallup poll described the economy as “extremely important” to their vote; no other issue earned that tag from a majority. Another 38 percent of voters rated the economy as “very important.” Notably, Gallup found that the share of voters rating the economy as “extremely important” was higher in this year’s poll than that recorded in each of the closest-to-the-election polls for presidential elections dating back to 1996, with the exception of that conducted amid the Great Recession in 2008.

Gallup’s results were not an outlier. A September Pew Research Center poll found that 81 percent of registered voters described the economy as very important to their vote, the largest share for any issue; the runner-up was health care, with 65 percent. An Associated Press and NORC poll similarly found the economy was “[o]ne of the most important issues” for 79 percent of voters, again the largest share recorded for any issue; health care again came next at 56 percent.

Voters’ specific concern is inflation. When asked to clarify the most important economic issue, 69 percent said the cost of living, according to an Ipsos poll; no other economic issue cracked double digits. Rising prices are also a particular concern among the young. A September NBC poll found that inflation or cost-of-living was the most important issue overall for almost a third of under 30 voters; no other issue garnered more than 11 percent.

This all should be positive news for Donald Trump. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, likely voters named the former president more trustworthy on the economy than they did Harris by a seven percentage-point margin.