Opinion

Home Opinion

Pollsters Missed the Target – Overreacted to Favoring Dems by Favoring GOP in Midterms

0
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – ‘Red ripple.’ For at least the last several elections, pollsters have consistently oversampled Democrats and undercounted Republicans, wrongly skewing the polls in the Dems’ favor.

This is something I have written about before, and the pollster errors include the ‘shy Trump supporter’ effect where conservatives simply shun pollsters or avoid giving their true views out of fear of retribution or being ‘canceled.’

Frank Luntz, a political strategist said to The Hill: “We knew from 2016, 2018 and even 2020 that Trump voters tended not to respond to pollsters because they thought that the results would be used against them.” 

This time around the pollsters seem to have screwed up in the opposite direction, overcompensating by overweighting Republican supporters and predicting a ‘Red Wave’ in the midterm elections that never materialized.

I must admit, I too assumed that the pollsters would continue to err in favor of Dems and hence believed the polling was still undercounting Republicans.

But as they say – you should never assume because then you make an ‘ass out of u and me.’

And as Luntz added, “past errors caused pollsters to over-index Republicans.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation just did a solid analysis on this latest pollster screw-up.

As the Daily Caller reports:

Weighting Republican respondents more heavily than Democratic respondents in polls led to an overestimation of GOP support, which created the mirage of a “red wave” this midterm season, polling experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In the House of Representatives, FiveThirtyEight, based on an aggregation of major polls, predicted a 228-seat GOP majority as the most likely outcome, while RealClearPolitics had projected at least 227 seats, with additions from 34 tossup races. In the Senate, FiveThirtyEight forecast 51 seats for the GOP, with 52 and 53 seats being as likely, while RealClearPolitics forecast 53 seats for Senate Republicans.

The results were significantly different from these projections. Though some races are yet to be called, Democrats retained control of the Senate, having won 50 seats as of writing, while Republicans, though projected to win the House, will have a narrow majority close to the 218 seats necessary for one.

The Daily Caller continues:

In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, former President Donald Trump significantly overperformed polling in several states that pegged him to lose, with his unexpected 2016 wins in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina giving him an Electoral College majority to win. Though Trump lost the 2020 election, he still won states like Florida and Ohio and came close to winning races in Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania, which polling firms had estimated would be easily won by Joe Biden.

In all, in 2020, polls underestimated the presidential popular vote, swing-state vote, Democratic House majority and the Democratic Senate majority. The American Academy of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) called it the “worst performance for polls since 1980.”

And this appears to have caused the severe pollster overcompensation we saw leading up to the midterms.

In artillery, you often fire beyond (long) and before (short of) a target to close in on it and ‘fire for effect.’ This is called ‘bracketing.’

The idea is that on the third salvo you should hit the target close to spot on.

Let’s see if these varied pollster results that undercounted GOP voters and then overcounted them were the ‘bracketing’ needed prior to their getting the 2024 polls right.

I’m not optimistic. GAND

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

New Poll Exposes Democrats’ True Thoughts About Biden

1
Joe Biden via Gage Skidmore Flickr

There’s a wealth of new polling data on the Democratic presidential nomination contest, with polls from The Wall Street Journal and Associated Press both finding that even Democratic voters are concerned that President Joe Biden is too old to run.

The AP/NORC poll of adults (not registered voters) found that 77 percent of respondents believed Biden was too old to serve another term.

And for the hardened Team Blue partisans who shout “ageism!” at such findings…69 percent of self-identified Democrats said Biden’s age is a big issue (among Republicans, it was a whopping 89 percent – which shouldn’t come as a surprise).

But this must be a fluke, an outlier, and a one-off. Surely, the age issue can’t be that big a deal for Mr. Biden. Except The Wall Street Journal poll confirmed it is.

The Journal asked a split question – one if voters think Biden’s mental fitness is sufficient for the job, the other specifically on whether he is “too old.”

On the mental ability, 60 percent questioned Biden’s mental ability. On age, a total of 73 percent said he is “too old.”

What are the comparable numbers for former President Donald Trump?

A 49-46 split says Trump isn’t mentally up for the job. On age, another spilt, with 47 percent saying he’s too old and 45 saying he isn’t.

As always with polls, the numbers are snapshots in time and subject to change.

What these data points do, though, is reinforce narratives that have long been whispered in Democratic circles: Biden’s time has passed, and he would be wise to bow out and allow someone else to take the fight to what looks like Donald Trump in 2024.

But such whispers against an incumbent are very hard to translate into hard reality. What could bring them a tad bit closer to the fore are the other items in the Journal poll, particularly the sense that most people think the economy has hit a rough patch, and they are feeling the effects:

…58% of voters say the economy has gotten worse over the past two years, whereas only 28% say it has gotten better, and nearly three in four say inflation is headed in the wrong direction. Those views were echoed in the survey by large majorities of independents, a group that helped deliver Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Voters were almost evenly split on the direction of the job market.

It’s not a wipeout for Biden, but the data are hardly comforting to an incumbent who has staked his presidency on a massive reworking of the economy, with government intervention and support leading the way. Team Blue partisans will say it’s early, these things take time, etc., etc. And they aren’t entirely wrong.

But there’s also the iron law of politics to contend with: if you’re explaining, you’re losing. And until the data show voters are feeling better about their own particular economic situation, then Mr. Biden will need more than a slogan – “Bidenomics” – and promises of widespread prosperity to save his own political future.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk. It first appeared in American Liberty News. Republished with permission.

Trump Dominates GOP Presidential Rivals as Biden Approval Tanking

4
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

ANALYSIS – Even as the indictments pile up, or maybe because of them, a new national NBC News poll finds former President Donald Trump expanding his national lead in the Republican presidential nominating contest to 43 points over his nearest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Trump leads the first-choice field with 59% of national Republican primary voters. In comparison, Ron DeSantis gets support from 16% — followed by former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley at 7% and former Vice President Mike Pence at 4%.

The poll also includes an all-time high disapproval of Joe Biden’s job performance. Fewer than 4 in 10 voters (37%) approve of his handling of the economy. This is huge.

As NBC News reported

Deeper inside those numbers, Biden is underwater among voters between the ages of 18 and 34 (46% of them approve of his job performance), all women (46%), Latinos (43%) and independents (36%).

What’s more, the NBC News poll finds 37% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, and 41% approve of his handling of foreign policy.

Biden is also taking a big hit for his open borders policy and unprecedented waves of illegal immigration on his watch, as also shown by a recent The Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

Axios noted

“A variety of factors may be at play,” [ABC News’ Gary] Langer writes in his analysis. “Biden’s poor performance ratings, the extent of economic discontent, the immigration crisis and doubts about his age clearly are relevant.”

Axios added: “In the Post-ABC poll, 44% said they’re worse off — the most for any president in the poll since… 1986, ABC News’ Gary Langer said in his poll analysis.”

“In NBC, Biden’s disapproval rating is the highest of his term for that poll.”

NBC News also noted that: “Another 60% have major concerns (45%) or moderate concerns (15%) about Biden’s possible awareness or involvement in the business dealings of his son, Hunter, including alleged financial wrongdoing and corruption.”

“This [NBC] survey is a startling flashing red light for an incumbent party,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies. McInturff conducted the September 15-19 poll with Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt and his team at Hart Research Associates.

“Yes, the numbers for Biden aren’t where he needs them to be,” said Horwitt. However, Trump and Republicans have challenges, such as the GOP front-runner’s unpopularity with the general electorate.

Most polls show that both Trump and Biden have high unfavorability going into a general election.

NBC News reported: “Three-quarters of voters say they’re concerned about President Joe Biden’s age and mental fitness, while nearly two-thirds have concerns about the multiple trials former President Donald Trump faces, a new national NBC News poll finds, casting a gloomy shadow over the upcoming 2024 presidential election.”

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Gabrielle Union & Dwyane Wade Give Ridiculous Interview About Kid

0

Woke Hollywood has gone too far…

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Hunter Biden Hired Russian Prostitutes from Overseas ‘Sex Trafficking Ring’

1
President Joe Biden hugs his family during the 59th Presidential Inauguration ceremony in Washington, Jan. 20, 2021. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol. (DOD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Carlos M. Vazquez II)

ANALYSIS – Hunter knew how to party. The problem is a lot of his fun may have been highly illegal. And we aren’t just talking about run of the mill illegal drugs or prostitutes but hiring Russian hookers from an ‘Eastern European Sex Trafficking Ring.’ 

And at times he used tens of thousands of dollars in cash funneled through a China-based company to pay for them.

When ‘Hunter goes wild’ it’s on an epic, global scale. And it appears his dad, Joe Biden knew about it, and at times may have helped pay for it.

Hunter also shamelessly deducted some hooker payments on his taxes, according to IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, who ran a five-year investigation into Hunter’s alleged tax crimes.

As part of the ongoing banking investigation into Hunter’s financial transactions, which appear to have been monitored by Wells Fargo bank as late as 2019, numerous Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) were generated and sent to the Treasury Department.

While not proof of wrongdoing, SARs are red flags that provoke added scrutiny. 

According to previously reported documents, including SARs, texts and video, Hunter spent a mind-blowing $30,000 on escorts in just five months, many secured via traffickers from overseas, and most transported across state lines in this country.

This would violate the Mann Act’s prohibition on interstate prostitution.

In addition to payments laundered through offshore business accounts, Hunter spent thousands of dollars from his joint personal account he had with his ex-wife Kathleen, who divorced him in 2017.

But the latest SAR being reported flagged even larger amounts potentially spent on illegal drugs and prostitutes. The Daily Mail reported that $1,162,732 was sent to Hunter’s China-based company Owasco from business partner and Biden family friend Rob Walker.

Walker was also a former Clinton administration official.

The Hunter payments appear to be part of larger sums paid from a group of 25 individuals linked to the suspected sex trafficking ring. In total this group was responsible for almost $7million in suspicious transactions.

Investigators also noted that some of the checks from Hunter’s business account may have been falsified to hide his payments to hookers.

Hunter reportedly wrote checks disguised as medical services to escorts supplied by Ekaterina Moreva in New York, whose website UberGFE.com offered a ‘girlfriend experience’ with escorts as young as 20.

The Daily Mail reported:

‘This investigation observed that Biden and related business accounts received unknown sources of funds, which funded cash withdrawals, outgoing transfers, and outgoing checks that appeared to be needlessly split into smaller amounts for no clear economic purpose.

‘The overall activity appeared related to prostitution or drugs. The review also found that several customers suspected of participating in a sex trafficking ring associated with Biden continued to have what appeared to be an unusual movement of funds in their accounts.’

The British outlet added that “Wells Fargo investigators traced payments to suspected members of the prostitution ring back to a Hong Kong company.”

The Mail continued:

One suspected member Hunter sent money to was Ekaterina Pitula, the 39-year-old Russian owner of an Irvine, California, retail store Victoria Rossi, the SAR said.

In 2019, Investigators spotted 25 cash deposits by Pitula totaling $18,728 in her personal and business accounts, which were then wired to a Chinese account of a company called HECNY International Ltd, to another woman’s account in Russia, and to a man in Ukraine.

But the bigger issue is that Joe Biden appears to have helped his son pay for some of these potentially trafficked Russian sex workers. Some of Hunter’s hooker payments came just hours after he received thousands of dollars from his dad.

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1672069005723435010

The Washington Examiner showed texts from January 2019 noting that Joe Biden sent Hunter $5,000 just before he got into a dispute with a prostitute he claimed he paid $10,000.

In a letter to the Department of Justice (DoJ) on September 8 from Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, he writes: “The Committee on Oversight and Accountability continues to investigate whether the Department of Justice (DOJ or Department) is upholding the rights of victims who were sexually exploited by Robert Hunter Biden (Hunter Biden).”

Comer added: “These women may be victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and may also be afforded mandatory restitution pursuant to the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act.”

This entire sordid Hunter affair brings to memory former Democrat New York Governor Eliot Spitzer who resigned from office in 2008 after reports were published about his penchant for high priced call girls, some whom he paid to travel across state lines.

But Hunter takes everything to a whole new level.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: (Almost) No One Wants Biden in 2024

0

Bad news for Biden.

A new poll provides some chilling details for President Biden’s reelection plan. Will he finally start to listen?

Watch Amanda explain the new development below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Transgender Mass Murderer Targets Christian School – Kills Six

0
Image via Pixabay images

ANALYSIS – None dare call it hate. The recent horrific mass killing in Nashville is even more tragic when we understand who the killer was – and how the mass media has either ignored or downplayed her ‘trans’ identity.

Or has made it a point of calling her a man rather than a mentally ill woman.

It’s also tragic, no – outrageous – that none in the establishment media, or Joe Biden or anyone in his administration, has labeled the shooting a ‘hate crime’ even though it was.

Local law enforcement has called it a targeted attack against a Christian school.

The heavily armed 28-year-old mass murderer Audrey Hale who committed the massacre at Covenant School used two AR-style rifles and a pistol to kill three 9-year-old children and three adults.

Reportedly a former student, she was was killed by police. 

Her ‘manifesto,’ discovered at her home, has still not been made public.

The killer was first reported correctly as a woman.

Then the media fell all over itself apologizing for its mistake and quickly began stealth editing its initial reports and started calling her a ‘transgender male’ (which in most cases is actually a female claiming to be male).

It is now mostly downplaying the trans issue and the fact that she was being treated for ’emotional’ issues.

And unlike the rhetoric often employed by Democrats after a shooter targets any minority community – like an LGBTQ club or killings simply in a neighborhood with a high number of Asian Americans – they aren’t calling this a ‘hate crime.’

The left is usually very quick to identify any crime it can committed by white conservatives, MAGA Republicans or Donald Trump supporters.

Sometimes it is valid. Most of the time it is not.

As my Georgetown roommate, and colleague, Quin Hillyer writes in the Washington Examiner:

The message is clear: The media will bend over backward to kowtow to transgender ideology when it benefits the gender bender yet will also do backflips to hide a transgender status if somebody might draw negative inferences. Too bad the media honchos aren’t concerned about contributing to inaccurate characterizations of conservative people as dangerous and unhinged.

First, let me be clear, most conservatives despise the ‘hate crime’ moniker because, well, a crime is a crime. Murder isn’t more of a murder because of the races or identities of the victims or perpetrators.

But if you are going to use the term and have it impact how cases are investigated, tried and suspects are sentenced, then call this what it was – a hate crime against Christians by a lunatic transgender person.

Federal law considers violence that causes bodily injury to a person to be a hate crime if it is motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or disability.

Of course, the fact that this killer was ‘trans’ shouldn’t become the sole focus, nor should it be used to unfairly label other trans persons.

But it should be noted by the media and included in the entire process.

And the targeting of Christians by a trans person should be a major focus.

Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who has opposed hate crime legislation in the past as too broad, quickly took action to ensure this anti-Christian hate crime perpetrated by a self-described transgender was treated as such.

He called on federal authorities Tuesday to investigate Monday’s massacre as a hate crime against Christian believers.

The New York Post reported:

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Hawley described Audrey Hale’s rampage through the Tennessee school that left three adults and three 9-year-old children dead as a “targeted” assault “against Christians” and called for “the full resources of the federal government” to be deployed to determine why the 28-year-old former student carried out the heinous crime. 

It is commonplace to call such horrors ‘senseless violence.’ But properly speaking, that is false,” Hawley writes. “Police report that the attack here was ‘targeted’ — targeted, that is, against Christians.”

“I urge you to immediately open an investigation into this shooting as a federal hate crime. The full resources of the federal government must be brought to bear to determine how this crime occurred, and who may have influenced the deranged shooter to carry out these horrific crimes.

Now, let’s see how Team Biden and the establishment media react.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Big Culture War Victory!

1

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

2020 Election – DHS Colluded With Private Groups To Censor Conservatives

7
NEW YORK CITY (September 11, 2022) Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas lays flowers for USSS Master Special Officer Craig Miller and participates in the September 11th Anniversary Commemoration Ceremony at Ground Zero in New York City, NY. (DHS photo by Sydney Phoenix)

ANALYSIS – Yes, this was election interference. Under the guise of combating ‘misinformation’ the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) led the effort that colluded with major universities and Big Tech to censor free speech leading up to the 2020 election.

As House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Monday, according to Newsmax: “This pressure was largely directed in a way that benefited one side of the political aisle: true information posted by Republicans and conservatives was labeled as ‘misinformation’ while false information posted by Democrats and liberals was largely unreported and untouched by the censors.”

How did they do this?

An interim staff report by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government explained that DHS, so-called disinformation “experts” at universities, Big Tech and others colluded through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to monitor and censor Americans’ online speech during the 2020 election.

“The federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes and political opinions.”

Among the DHS targets was Newsmax, according to a summary of the report, titled “The Weaponization of ‘Disinformation’ Pseudo-experts and Bureaucrats: How the Federal Government Partnered with Universities to Censor Americans’ Free Speech.”

Newsmax reported: “The report revealed how the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and the Global Engagement Center (GEC) within the State Department coordinated with Stanford University and other entities to create the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) to censor Americans’ speech in the lead-up to the election.”

In a post on X, Jordan wrote, “according to one EIP member, the EIP was created ‘at the request of CISA.’ The head of the EIP also said that EIP was created after ‘working on some monitoring ideas with CISA.'”

Newsmax added:

It [the report] outlines how the EIP was created in the summer of 2020 to provide a way for the federal government “to launder its censorship activities in hopes of bypassing the First Amendment and public scrutiny.”

“The EIP targeted Americans across the political spectrum, but especially conservatives,” according to the report’s summary.

The House committee found that EIP, using Stanford, encouraged social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, to declare conservative news as “misinformation.”

Newsmax continued: “ EIP used a tactic known as “switchboarding” to refer to removal requests from state and local officials to Facebook, X and other social media sites, the New York Post reported Monday…the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana ruled in September federal officials colluded with Big Tech social media platforms to suppress speech.”

And they didn’t just censor everyday Americans, they also targeted Republican politicians ranging from former President Donald Trump, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

Among the media, the report noted, in addition to Newsmax, this corrupt political effort targeted conservative commentators such as Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk, Michelle Malkin and Mollie Hemingway, and “an untold number of everyday Americans of all political affiliations.”

As an added note, I was permanently banned from LinkedIn, where I had a growing following in the tens of thousands, back in 2022.

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.

Amanda Head: Another Trump Indictment

5
Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

The walls are closing in on Donald Trump.

Will the former President have another indictment in the coming weeks over his alleged mishandling of classified documents after leaving the White House in 2021? It’s not looking good.

Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he has not been told that he’s being indicted as a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents shows signs of wrapping up.

“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that he has “assumed for years that I am a Target of the WEAPONIZED DOJ & FBI.”

Watch Amanda explain the situation below:

Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.