Tag: 2020 presidential polls
Fox News Plays Key Role In Trump’s Plan To Steal Election

Fox News Plays Key Role In Trump’s Plan To Steal Election

Reprinted with permission from MediaMatters

With Election Day looming, the expert consensus is that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is in a strong position, with President Donald Trump needing to catch a number of breaks to win. But Fox News' propagandists are making it sound like the president is the odds-on favorite, priming their audience to attribute any defeat to Democratic fraud.

Fox's effort is a necessary -- if not sufficient -- step toward enacting Trump's openly touted plan to try to steal the election (if it is close enough to do so) by preventing the counting of ballots legally cast for Biden. And even if the network fails to keep Trump in the White House, its reckless disinformation could raise tensions to feverish heights, potentially leading to political violence.

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Donald Trump

Polls Show Trump Struggling In Eight Swing States

Polls released this week showed Donald Trump trailing behind former Vice President Joe Biden in all eight swing states — some of which he won by a large margin in the presidential election four years ago.

In Iowa, a Monmouth University poll released Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump among likely voters 50 percent to 47 percent, compared with last month's poll in which Trump led by 3 percent. Among registered voters, Trump has a slight advantage with 48 percent to Biden's 47 percent.

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New Post-Debate Polls Show Biden Blowing Out Trump By Double Digits

New Post-Debate Polls Show Biden Blowing Out Trump By Double Digits

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

A new CNN-SSRS national poll released Tuesday puts Joe Biden up over Donald Trump by a whopping 16 points among likely voters, 57 percent - 41 percent. And the poll isn't exactly an outlier. Another national poll released over the weekend by NBC News/Wall Street Journal gave Biden a 14-point advantage among registered voters.

Both polls were taken entirely after Trump's off-the-rails performance last Tuesday, but CNN's poll—taken Thursday-Sunday—also captured most of the window in which the public learned Trump had tested positive for COVID-19. In fact, support for Biden's response to the pandemic spiked in the latest poll, giving him a 21-point advantage over Trump on the matter.

Overall, on the issues, voters gave an advantage to Trump on basically nothing. Even on the economy, Biden held a slight edge, with voters preferring Biden over Trump 50%-48%. And then there was everything else—where Biden dominated.

  • Coronavirus: Biden 59 percent, Trump 38 percent
  • Health care: Biden 59 percent, Trump 39 percent
  • Racial inequality: Biden 62 percent, Trump 36 percent
  • Supreme Court nominations: Biden 57 percent, Trump 41 percent
  • Crime and safety: Biden 55 percent, Trump 43 percent

To review, Biden now has a slight edge over Trump on the economy and wide double-digit leads on basically every other issue.

But Biden's yawning 21-point advantage among likely voters on his response to the coronavirus is particularly notable. In CNN's last poll (Aug. 28-Sept. 1), Biden only enjoyed a 12-point advantage on the coronavirus among registered voters (RVs in this month's poll preferred Biden by a similar margin to likely voters, 59 percent - 37 percent). That jump in support for Biden on the pandemic suggests Trump's positive COVID-19 test and how he's handled it since have hurt him with voters.

Also, voters are on to Trump's blatant efforts to suppress votes and cast doubt on the election outcome. Only 38 percent approve of his handling of the security of U.S. elections, while 55 percent disapprove. Another 58 percent said they didn't believe Trump would accept the outcome of the election and concede if he lost, while 71 percent said Biden would accept the outcome if he lost.

Finally, most Americans now have a positive view of Biden at 52 percent, while Trump's favorability rating is stuck at a dismal (but still too high) 39 percent.

America Can And Will Defeat Trump's Scheme To Tamper With Our Votes

America Can And Will Defeat Trump's Scheme To Tamper With Our Votes

Many Democrats are getting nervous about the upcoming presidential election. Ominous, extensively reported articles by two of the best in the business—the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin and The Atlantic's Barton Gellman—outline Boss Trump's plot to keep control of the White House in 2021 no matter how the American people vote.
Trump is hardly making a secret of it. He's pointedly refused to commit to "a peaceful transfer of power."

"Well, we're going to have to see what happens," is how he answered the question. He added that after we "get rid of the ballots"—presumably mail-in ballots he's been whining about for weeks--"there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation."

Of course, Trump himself has always voted by mail, but then brazen hypocrisy is his standard operating mode. If you haven't noticed, he also lies a lot. Without prevaricating, boasting, and bitching, he'd be mute. And even then, he'd still have Twitter. He recently tweeted that the winner "may NEVER BE ACCURATELY DETERMINED" because mail-in ballots make it a "RIGGED ELECTION in waiting."
Gellman gets this part exactly right in The Atlantic: "Let us not hedge about one thing. Donald Trump may win or lose, but he will never concede. Not under any circumstance. Not during the Interregnum and not afterward. If compelled in the end to vacate his office, Trump will insist from exile, as long as he draws breath, that the contest was rigged.
"Trump's invincible commitment to this stance will be the most important fact about the coming Interregnum. It will deform the proceedings from beginning to end. We have not experienced anything like it before."
No, we haven't. However, it's important to remember that Trump makes threats and promises almost daily that never happen. Remember that gigantic border wall Mexico was going to pay for? Trump has built exactly five miles of the fool thing, leaving roughly two thousand to go.
His brilliant cheaper, better health care plan? Non-existent.
On Labor Day, Boss Trump boasted of his unparalleled success in strong-arming Japan into building new auto-manufacturing plants. "They're being built in Ohio, they're being built in South Carolina, North Carolina, they're being built all over and expanded at a level that we've never seen before."
Not a word of that is true. Two new plants, one German, another Swedish have opened in South Carolina, but construction began before Trump took office. Auto industry investment during Barack Obama's second term far exceeded Trump's. His version is sheer make-believe.
But back to the GOP scheme to steal the election.
First, it's clear that even Trump understands that he has virtually no chance of winning the national popular vote. He's been polling in the low 40s, with no sign of change. To have any chance of prevailing in the Electoral College, he's got to do the electoral equivalent of drawing to an inside straight all over again—winning a half-dozen so-called battleground states where he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016 by the narrowest of margins.
At this writing, that looks highly unlikely. The latest polling in must-win Pennsylvania, for example, shows Trump trailing Joe Biden by nine points. That's a landslide. Trump's down ten in Wisconsin, eight in Michigan. And so on.
So spare me the screeching emails in ALL CAPS, OK? Polls were actually quite accurate in 2016. Trump narrowly defeated the odds. It can happen. But he's in far worse shape this time. Furthermore, early voting turnout is very high, with Democrats outnumbering Republicans two to one.
Hence, The Atlantic reports, "Trump's state and national legal teams are already laying the groundwork for post-election maneuvers that would circumvent the results of the vote count in battleground states."
The plan is clear. Because more Democrats than Republicans are choosing mail-in voting during the COVID pandemic, Trump hopes to prevent those ballots from being counted. Assuming he'll have a narrow "swing state" lead on election night, he'll declare victory and start filing lawsuits. "The red mirage," some Democrats call it.
"As a result," Toobin writes, "the aftermath of the 2020 election has the potential to make 2000 look like a mere skirmish." With Trump in the White House urging armed militias to take to the street.
Mail-in votes take a long time to count. Things could definitely get crazy.
True, but filing a lawsuit to halt a Florida recount was one thing. Filing suits against a half dozen states to prevent votes from being counted at all is quite another. Public reaction would be strong. Also, winning such lawsuits requires serious evidence of fraud. Trumpian bluster ain't evidence.
The Atlantic reports that GOP-controlled state legislatures are thinking about sending Trumpist delegations to the Electoral College regardless of the popular vote winner—theoretically constitutional but currently illegal.
Fat chance. If that's the best they've got, they've got nothing.
Anyway, here's the answer: Vote early, and in person*.

[Editor's note: In some states, receiving an absentee ballot means that a voter can no longer vote in person* or may have to surrender the absentee ballot, including the envelope in which it arrived, at their polling place. Please check with your local election authorities.]

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