Over the last number of weeks I’ve been everywhere from Galaxy’s Edge in Disneyland to a domestic oil rig in the plains of Colorado andback and forth to NYC in between. I’ve been asked the same question over and over.
When sharing an Uber with one of America’s most well known billionaire investors I was asked. Then at a recent dinner just before being seated I was asked by perhaps maybe the most well known living television producer. The following day on a flight home, a second generation school teacher asked me.
“Are you worried about the outcome of the election?”
Given the complete absurdity of the outcome of 2020 I understand their pangs of anxiety. With CoVid providing the cover, crooked Governors & Secretaries of State conspired to unconstitutional means of altering ballot processes and then engaged (thanks to Zuckerberg and others) in the most aggressive harvesting operation in history. Additionally states like Michigan printed more ballots than there were residents. And states like Nevada lowered signature matching requirements to zero so that literally a scribble would be legally acceptable to a ballot being cast.
Well CoVid protocols have been struck down, signature matching is back in place, Zuckboxes are illegal and many states are taking definitive measures to clean up slop from their voter rolls.
Literally millions of dead people that were dead in 2020 have now been removed from rolls in dozens of states—many of them swing states. In several states voters lacking proof of citizenship or residency in the state they were registered in have been bounced. And In several more states more voters have been expunged from their rolls than the margin of victory in 2020.
In North Carolina the 2020 margin was less than 200,000 and this week they removed 747,000 “voters.”That’s nearly four times the difference.
But voting integrity action isn’t the only indicator in my mind.
Every person who has asked me about this is almost stunned when I tell them to “believe the polling.”
Not for its accuracy. Polls are still being disproportionately weighted to over sample left leaning voters. They are still under counting independent and Republican participants. So precision isn’t what you are learning from them. But you can take away some perspective with historical comparison.
At this point in the cycles of 2016 and 2020 Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden maintained +6 and a +9 advantage.
In 2016 Clinton lost.
In 2020 Trump became the only sitting President in the modern era to secure more votes than he had received in his first election. Nixon didn’t do it, Reagan didn’t do it, Bush, Clinton and Obama didn’t do it. And Trump didn’t just get a “few” more votes in 2020, he got 14,000,000 more.
So if Trump was behind by 6 and 9 points in those two cycles, and polls are still being weighted, and he’s sometimes leading and sometimes tied or maybe at most 1 or 2 points behind, read that as a definitively stronger position than he was in 2016 or 2020.
The reasons Trump is leading are numerous. They’ve tried everything from lawfare to assassins (both shooters were financial supporters of the Democrat party and cause) and none of it has worked.
He’s also stated clear policies that he will implement. Look, when Saturday Night Live opens its season premiere with Maya Rudolph mocking Kamala Harris’vague meaningless word salads you know the citizenry sees them too. Clarity is key, and the voter is getting the most contrasting options to pick from that we’ve seen in American elections.
Trump has expanded his base. He’s doing significantly better with suburban moms, African Americans, Latinos, and voters under 35. She leads in some of those categories but nowhere near the levels that Clinton and Biden did.
Trump is winning. But don’t tell anyone. Just be quietly determined to take ten people with you to the polls this year.
The night of November 5th will be here soon enough!