Monday, November 13, 2023

Dems keep winning elections, yet media and pollsters don't want to adjust to that reality

Less than 24 hours after another largely successful Election Night for Democrats, the Wisconsin news media ignored those outcomes, and reported on something else to determine the state of play in the crucial state of Wisconsin.

Get out of here with that. What ELECTION RESULTS the last 7 years would indicate that Joe Biden and Dems would be in line to lose Wisconsin? Just 7 months ago we had a double-digit landslide win for Dem-aligned Janet Protasiewicz in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which came 5 months after a convincing win by Dem Governor Tony Evers. And that came 2 after Dems won every statewide race in 2018, and Biden won the state back for Dems in the 2020 Presidential election.

That Marquette Poll seemed especially disconnected to reality when you dig into two crosstabs in particular.

An in-depth analysis from Catalist using actual voter files from 2022 showed 60% of voters under 45 choosing Dem Governor Tony Evers and 58% taking Senate candidate Mandela Barnes. When you remove voters 18-29 (who are individually broken down for Wisconsin in the report), it leaves Dems winning around 55% of voters 30-44 last year. A similar voter file analysis by Catalist indicates Wisconsin Hispanics voted 63% for Evers and 60% for Barnes in 2022, and I’d bet the actual votes among Wisconsin Hispanics are more likely to be 60-40 for Biden in 2024 than 60-40 for the GOP.

Also watch what Republicans say and do. If the vote among younger voters was anything near close in Wisconsin, you wouldn’t hear state Republicans moping about how badly they got their asses kicked in UW college towns in 2022 and 2023. And if this state was trending GOP for 2024, you'd see more than ZERO serious GOP candidates in the race to try to unseat current US Dem Senator Tammy Baldwin.

It’s pretty clear that an already difficult effort to poll people over the last 15 years has become near-impossible in a time where few people answer weird phone calls or random emails to take part. I'm sensitive to those structural problems in 2023. But at some point, shouldn't pollsters try to adjust their models to fit what election results and the reality on the ground are telling all of us?

I’m not saying that Biden has things in the bag in either the US or in Wisconsin- far from it. But I am saying that “Biden leads comfortably as Trump is hated by most voters” isn’t something that’ll generate clicks on the news sites and drive up ad sales, so be skeptical of anything that makes it looks like the GOP has a lead in any swing state. Given how Dems have consistently come out on top since Donald Trump’s win in 2016 shocked a lot more people into action, why would we believe that the anti-MAGA trend would change in 2024?

Especially as Trump continues to go farther off the deep end with fascist fantasies and senile ramblings.

It’s insulting to think that Americans will accept this next year when they've been rejecting it for the last 7. Democrats should be forcefully attacking corporate media about how off their polls tend to be, and why they continue to use these incorrect polls as a reason to drive inaccurate, horse-race coverage.

Dems should also ask media why they continue to treat the GOP as any kind of equal, contending party when Republicans haven’t been able to win statewide elections in any of the states they need to since 2016. As another DC shutdown looms and the GOP House is constantly shown to be incompetent fools disconnected from mainstream positions, how would those clowns have a better chance of winning over voters in the next election?

I’m sick of these BS polls, a lazy media’s reliance on those flawed numbers, and how it causes unneeded stress on all of us who recognize the disaster that would result from any Republican winning the White House in 2024, or in regaining full control of Wisconsin government anytime soon. What Trump and WisGOP want is not flying in the Real America, but corporate media has decided that telling that truth and digging into issues isn't good enough for the bottom line. And it takes actual work, you know.
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