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

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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.

Judge Judy Labels Trump Hush Money Case ‘Nonsense’

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Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

A waste of time and taxpayer dollars…

“Judge Judy” Sheindlin called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) hush money case against former President Trump “nonsense” in a recent interview.

“You gotta twist yourself into a pretzel to figure out what the crime was. [Bragg] doesn’t like him — New York City didn’t like him for a while,” Sheindlin said of Trump in a “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace?” interview streaming Friday on Max.

“I would be happier, as someone who owns property in Manhattan, if the district attorney of New York County would take care of criminals who were making it impossible for citizens to walk in the streets and use the subway, to use his efforts to keep those people off the street, than to spend $5 million or $10 million of taxpayers’ money trying Donald Trump on this nonsense,” the longtime TV judge told Wallace.

Watch:

“I, as a taxpayer in this country, resent using the system for your own personal self-aggrandizement,” the “Judy Justice” personality said of Bragg.

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Asked by the CNN anchor what she thought of Trump, the 81-year-old former Manhattan Family Court judge replied, “I think he was a good businessman, a real estate guy. And he was certainly terrific on ‘The Apprentice.’”

The celebrity judge’s comments come as the Manhattan DA seeks an extension of the restraining order against former President Donald Trump. (RELATED: Manhattan DA Seeks Extended Gag Order Against Trump Amid Death Threats To Bragg)

They argue that Trump’s public statements have increased tensions and led to threats against Bragg and his team before Trump’s July 11 sentencing.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records as part of a hush-money scheme to prevent porn star Stormy Daniels from speaking out about her alleged extramarital affair before the 2016 presidential election.

Before Trump, no sitting or former president ever faced criminal charges. This is the lowest level felony in New York, any potential sentence will more than likely be served after the 2024 election.

As The New York Times reports:

The order, issued before Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial began in mid-April, bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and relatives of the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have sought to have the order lifted since Mr. Trump’s conviction in late May. But in a 19-page filing on Friday, prosecutors argued that while Justice Merchan no longer needed to enforce the portion of the gag order relating to trial witnesses, he should keep in place the provisions protecting jurors, prosecutors, court staff and their families.

Article Published With The Permission of American Liberty News

Amanda Head: Leftist Censorship is Now Targeting Talk Radio!

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Image from Pixabay free images

Nothing is off limits to the radical left…

Electric vehicle producers are contemplating removing AM radio from future models citing safety concerns…but there’s more to it.

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

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

Poll Shows Americans Evenly Split On Sending Trump To Prison. Do You Agree?

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Image via Pixabay

A new Associated Press poll finds Americans are almost evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of falsifying business records in New York.

“The public is divided over whether Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison for his felony conviction for falsifying business records in the hush money case,” the AP reports. “Opinions on the conviction itself have remained stable in the weeks since the decision was announced on May 30 with nearly half approving of the jury’s decision and about a quarter disapproving. The public is also divided on whether Trump has received fair treatment from the legal system.”

Trump, convicted in June, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18, just weeks ahead of the November election.  Experts predict Trump will likely receive probation and a fine, but a prison sentence is a distinct possibility.

The AP/NORC poll, conducted June 20-24, finds 48 percent believe Trump should receive a prison sentence, while 50 percent disagree.  That gap is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning Americans are essentially evenly split.

Among independent voters, who will decide the election, 50 percent believe Trump should be imprisoned while 46 percent disagree.

While Americans are split on whether Trump should go to prison, the number who support Trump’s conviction outnumber those who oppose it by nearly a two-to-one margin.

The poll finds 46 percent of Americans support the jury’s decision to convict Trump, while 27 percent disapprove and 25 percent are unsure.

Among independents, 32 percent agree with the conviction, 21 percent disagree and 47 percent are unsure.

The nationwide poll was conducted June 20-24, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. 

The poll, using online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones, was conducted with 1,088 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.0 percentage points.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.

Woke Disney Executives Back Out of Meeting with Victims of Communist Chinese Genocide

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Jrobertiko, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Executives from the liberal Disney corporation are now under fire from Congress for backing out of a meeting with victims of Communist China’s brutal dictatorship, with whom Disney has partnered and is increasingly changing corporate policies to please.

Disney had initially agreed to meet with and listen to members of the ethnic and religious Uyghur community, who are targets of a brutal campaign of genocide by Beijing leaders.  The meeting came after Disney was loudly criticized for ignoring and glossing over Chinese human rights abuses while promoting the film “Mulan,”

U.S. House Select Committee on China Member Jim Banks (R-IN) is now hammering Disney CEO Bob Iger after Disney representatives for cut-off communications with Uyghur advocates and genocide victims and backed out of a promised on-the-record meeting.

“Disney executives pulled out of an off-the-record meeting with Uyghur genocide victims. It couldn’t have been to protect Disney’s public image or bottom line, so maybe the executives were just worried about a good night’s sleep,” said Banks.

“Whatever the reason, Disney publicly praised Chinese Communist Party agencies committing genocide and then privately scorned their victims. It’s time for Disney to own up to its mistakes and make amends,” said Banks.

“In September 2020, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups from around the world condemned Disney for its decision to film a live-action remake of Mulan in the Xinjiang Uyghur

Autonomous Region (XUAR), the center of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ongoing

genocide against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim groups,” a letter from Banks to Iger begins.

“While filming, Disney cooperated with Chinese security and propaganda authorities active in the XUAR, including ones complicit in Beijing’s human rights atrocities,” Banks reveals.

“(I)n Mulan’s credits, your company thanked several Chinese government agencies

participating in the genocide, including the Public Security Bureau of Turpan, which then President Trump placed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List in 2019 for ‘human rights

violations and abuses’ against Uyghurs and other ethnic groups,” Banks continues.

“Disney’s credits also expressed gratitude to the ‘Publicity Department of CPC Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region Committee,’ the CCP propaganda arm charged with covering up the abuses,” Banks writes.

“Disney never apologized for partnering with and praising Chinese Communist Party agencies

actively engaged in genocide,” Banks adds. 

In response to the initial 2020 criticism, Disney agreed to meet with advocates for Uyghur victims.

Communist China opposes such a meeting, and Disney has now backed out.

“We are writing to request a meeting between you, other Disney executives, and a representative from the Uyghur American Association and the Uyghur Human Rights Project,” Banks writes.

“We have no doubt that such a meeting would prove educational for your company and would be

a simple first step in clarifying to millions of Americans that Disney does, in fact, care about the

Chinese Communist Party’s systematic extermination of minority ethnic groups,” Banks concludes.

Representatives Mike Gallagher, John Moolenaar, Neal Dunn, and Ashley Hinson cosigned Rep. Banks’ letter.

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

Amanda Head: Why Are Americans Always the Last to Know?

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President Joe Biden’s disturbing mishandling of classified materials is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the latest scandal to face the administration.

Let Amanda explain the latest controversy below:

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

Biden Trades Russian Arms Dealer for Woke Female Basketball Player – Leaves Male US Marine to Rot

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ANALYSIS – Can’t say this was unexpected. Joe Biden just traded a convicted Russian arms dealer for a guilty woke basketball player, while leaving an innocent former U.S. Marine to rot in Russian jail. 

And to make matters worse, Brittney Griner, who pled guilty to having cannabis vape oil in her luggage, was only in Russian jail for a few months while Paul Whelan, who was set-up and falsely convicted of espionage, has been imprisoned in a Russian labor camp for nearly four years.

Whelan, 52, remains there where he is to continue serving out a 16-year sentence.

Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout had been serving time in a U.S. federal prison since 2011. 

It is clear Biden is playing favorites.

Biden called Griner’s wife earlier this year to assure her of his commitment to securing her release. But no similar call was made to the Whelan family, despite multiple requests from Elizabeth Whelan for a meeting with the president. 

After news reports about the snub emerged, Biden finally called Elizabeth Whelan in early July.  

Of course, from day one, the liberal media has been constantly bombarding us with Griner’s sob story in her Russian jail, keeping her issue front and center for maximum PR leverage, while leaving Whelan on the back burner, if at all.

While we read every minor detail of Griner’s travails, and she was allowed regular access to the outside world, Whelan was held in a cell at the notorious Stalin-era Lefortovo Prison for over a year, where initially he was denied things like toilet paper and soap, and guards threatened, abused and harassed him.

Whelan also wasn’t allowed to make calls to his parents, his mail was censored, and visits from his lawyers and embassy representatives were extremely limited.

Recall that Griner, who is a black lesbian, also refused to stand for the national anthem.

To the left she checks all the super woke boxes.

Meanwhile, Biden blamed Russia for his failure to include Whelan in the trade.

“We’ve not forgotten about Paul Whelan,” Biden said Thursday morning. “This was not a choice about which American to bring home. … Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s. … We will never give up.”

Well, that’s patently false. 

It doesn’t matter what the Russians say or want. It’s Biden’s job to make things happen. It should have been both released for Bout, or no deal. 

Especially when one who is young and healthy, and had been arrested for drugs, had only been in jail for a few months, and the other one who was falsely accused, is over 50 and been in a labor camp for 4 years.

However, being gracious, and perhaps in a bid to not alienate Biden, Whelan’s twin brother David Whelan, said Thursday:

I am so glad that Brittney Griner is on her way home. As the family member of a Russian hostage, I can literally only imagine the joy she will have, being reunited with her loved ones, and in time for the holidays. There is no greater success than for a wrongful detainee to be freed and for them to go home. The Biden administration made the right decision to bring Ms. Griner home, and to make the deal that was possible, rather than waiting for one that wasn’t going to happen.

But as the Detroit Free Press reports, this wasn’t the message the Whelan’s were sending a few months ago when the U.S. negotiated the release of Trevor Reed, another American wrongfully detained in Russia, in exchange for Russian drug trafficker Konstantin Yaroshenko

At the time, Whelan’s brother David asked: “Is President (Joe) Biden’s failure to bring Paul home an admission that some cases are too hard to solve? Is the administration’s piecemeal approach picking low-hanging fruit? And how does a family know that their loved one’s case is too difficult, a hostage too far out of reach?”

That last message is the more correct one. Biden clearly favored Griner to please his leftist base, while abandoning Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, to rot in A Russian jail. GAND

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

Amanda Head: Hollywood Star Blasts Covid Inc!

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Hollywood actor Woody Harrelson is facing intense criticism after his recent Saturday Night Live appearance…

Watch Amanda break down the scandal below…

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

Latest ISIS Terror Leader Reportedly Killed – How Long Will Next One Last?

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Photo via Pixabay images

ANALYSIS – A spokesman for the Islamist terror group Islamic State, or ISIS, has announced that their latest leader has been killed “in action.”

His death has not yet been independently verified, and no one has claimed responsibility for the killing.

Asked in Washington about Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi‘s death, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told The Associated Press

“We certainly welcome the news of the death of another ISIS leader. I don’t have any additional operational details to provide at this time.”

Qurashi refers to the tribe of Islam’s founder, the Prophet Muhammad, from whom ISIS leaders must claim descent.

If the latest leader’s death is true, he would be the second ISIS leader killed this year, about 10 months after the death of the previous leader killed in a U.S. raid in northwest Syria in March.

He would also be the third leader eliminated since the founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in Idlib, Syria in 2019.

Their deaths came after the meteoric rise of ISIS in 2013-2014 following Barack Obama’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011.

Obama famously called ISIS the “JV team.”

Meanwhile, some doubt the veracity of the claim that the latest ISIS leader has been killed.

According to the Mirror, Hassan Hassan, co-author of the book “ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror,” urged caution about the news and says ISIS could have “easily” said “that person was killed and replaced with ‘Abu al-HussAIN al-Qurashi.’ Who could tell?”

The Mirror reported:

Writing on Twitter Mr Hassan continued: “Important to note that this is quite possibly a fake announcement.

“Scenario 1 is that the ISIS leader was killed ‘accidentally’ during a raid or fighting without him being known to whoever killed him (the US, Iraqis, Kurds) so those did not know they killed the leader. That’d be unprecedented, but possible.

“Also, jihadist groups have a long history of claiming leaders/commanders dead, just to get intelligence/security agencies off their back.”

ISIS has been mostly defeated in Iraq and Syria, under relentless attacks during Trump’s administration, but sleeper cells still carry out attacks on both countries

The ISIS threat has also been increasing recently, under Joe Biden, especially in Africa.

Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was reportedly replaced by Abu al-Hussain al-Hussaini al-Qurashi as the despicable terror group’s new caliph.

The Daily Mail reported:

The [ISIS] spokesman did not provide details on the new leader, but said he was a ‘veteran’ jihadist and called on all groups loyal to IS to pledge their allegiance.

Little else is known of the leader who is taking control of the beleaguered terror group whose influence over the Middle East has waned in recent years.

Apparently, being chosen the ISIS leader, or caliph, brings with it a very short life span. 

Let’s see how long this new leader lasts before being sent to enjoy his 72 virgins.

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

Amanda Head: Shocking Poll Results On School Gun Violence

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The latest results from this poll may surprise you…

As Americans seek answers on the best way to keep kids safe in schools it may surprise you what is really concerning parents in 2023.

Watch Amanda explain the controversy below:

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