Election Denialism and Polling
or the proof of being behind is too realist for the Right
Ten years ago on Election Night, GOP commentator Karl Rove, infamously, forced the networks to rescind their call of Ohio going to President Barack Obama — essentially halting for what seemed an eternity, but was only an hour or so, Obama’s reelection.
It was assailed as a BS move at the time for two reasons: 1) polling had shown Obama ahead but well within the margin of error and 2) the oustanding counties as yet uncounted were in strongly Democratic northern Ohio primarily. It was a case of being behind and having no hope of catching up with uncounted ballots.
Actually, the first reason is not completely accurate. Democratic and non-partisan pollsters had shown Obama ahead. Republican pollsters, who have a pernicious habit of undervaluing minority voters and overvaluing older white voters, staked their reputations in 2012 on Mitt Romney being well ahead in the Buckeye State.
Okay, also not completely accurate — Republican pollsters have been trotting out misleading polls designed to depress Democratic voting (by showing Democrats behind when it’s a close race) for decades — it’s just become pernicious in the last 10 years.
The January 6th Committe Report has numerous conclusions but its most important revelation is that Donald Trump was not going to accept anything short of reelection and that neither polls nor election results were going to sway him from volitionally conceding the resulst or leaving office.
In the aftermath of the Novemeber 2020 election, dozens of Trumpist lawyers went into courts in half a dozen states claiming fraud without a scintilla of evidence…well we all know the story.
But suppose a lawyer walked into court into say Pennsylvania and said that Trump campaign had consistently been polling 2 points ahead of Biden and that alone should give pause to courts from dismisings election lawsuits without some time to investigate allegations of election fraud.
While it would not have worked as courts in America are not investigatory bodies per se (we are not France!), it would have given a bit of credibility to Trump’s argument.
There is nothing more powerful in election year politicking than pointing to independent polls showing one ahead of one’s opponent. Confirmation of one’s internal polling makes for less nail biting moments as election night results trickle in.
That is something Donald Trump never had in 2020 — no polls showed him safely ahead or more importantly consistently ahead within the margin of error. The same problem vexed Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for Arizona.
Election denialism is pure fantasy so baseless that it canot even rely upon prediction modeling, prognostigatory evidence, or raw data on election night (i.e more than mere anomalistic data).