A very good friend of mine wrote that she was a nervous wreck going into the election and inquired if I felt the same. Everyone gets antsy at post time and frantic when the starting gate opens, some looking for a validation of their judgments and others hoping for a miracle. With less than 24 hour before the starting gun fires I can write that I'm extremely confident that Donald J. Trump will become the next President of the United States. I feel this for no other reason than the American electorate is occasionally imbued with a state of cussed orneriness. It savors the biblical prophecies that promise that the last shall be first and the first shall be last; the humble shall be exalted and the exalted shall be humbled. Humbling the exalted has always been a dear sentiment in the hearts of Americans. Michael Moore called it the FU vote in speech he has since regretted making. Notice he has his audience dancing on his hand but for some reason is now wishing he had kept his mouth shut.
Moving from the inspirational to the practical,the polls, no matter how skewed their samples definitely show Trump closing fast, breathtakingly fast! Two weeks ago Hillary was competitive in Texas; today she is fighting for blue Michigan. Ohio is all but ignored by the media as Trumps victory there is all but certain. The latest IBD/TIPP poll, the most accurate poll last cycle, has Trump leading by 2 points; 43% to 41%. The LA Times USC poll gives him a 5 point edge; 48 to 43%. Certainly there are more polls showing Hillary with lead but polling simply is not what it used to be. There are problems collecting random data as voters have moved from land lines to cell service. There is a proliferation of polling concerns that do not have the expertise to to conduct a poll and lastly there is biased polling the purpose being to drive the vote rather than to sample opinion. The ABC/Washington Post poll probably combines ineptitude with its bias. At one time it had Trump down by 13 only to have him up by 1 a week later. Public opinion just does not fluctuate like that. Currently it has Hillary up 4. Usually Democrats are over sampled often by 8 or 10 percentage points. Another cute trick is to over sample women or millennials, two groups that favor Hillary.
A demographic that gets little attention these days is the black vote. There were a few biased polls early on that showed Trump getting a mere 1%. There is some grousing on air about the black turnout being low in Florida and North Carolina but that is quickly brushed aside. There was one Rasmussen sample that showed Trump with 23% of the black vote. If that single datum is accurate it's lights out, game over, checkmate, Trump. Anything more than 13% and it's, tell you ma, tell your pa, I'm going to send you back to Arkansas. Gone is North Caroline, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Michigan.
We have been admonished to accept rigged and incompetent polling and to eschew so called anecdotal evidence and there may be some merit to that caution but when tens of thousands of Trump loyalist stand in half mile long lines for hours to see and hear the nominee while Hillary struggles to draw hundreds something is going on. The Trump rally in Leesburg, Virginia last night is one for the books. The event was originally scheduled for 9:30 pm, however due to overruns and delays Trump arrived around midnight. Yet they stayed.
When have we seen anything like the Trump phenomena?
We saw it 2010. Despite negative polling numbers when the day was over there were 63 new Republicans elected to congress. It waned in 2012 but 2014 saw another wave. We saw the failure of pollster and pundits in the Brexit vote just this year. I'm confident that Trump will prevail but something inside me senses a rout. Pollster Pat Caddell, who was on the wrong side of Reagan's 40 state victory, also sees a similarity to the 1980.
The greatest sporting event of my lifetime was the 1973 Belmont Stakes won by the legendary Secretariat. It was reported that the smart asses in the stands, read Matt Lewis, Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin could not see the victory even as Secretariat and Sham entered the third turn. Ron Turcotte, the jockey, according to the elite sporting experts, had failed to rate his mount, and Secretariat would die in the stretch. Penny Tweedy's super horse won by 31 lengths while setting a record that stands today. I post that epic race for your inspiration and my amusement. WE WILL WIN!
Thanks for the inspiration.
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