BloggeRhythms

Several times over the past couple of years, Rush’s thoughts were posted concerning his belief that some kind of national split or separation was increasingly possible, today’s political left and right having such dramatically different credos and objectives. He had no specifics about what form the split would take, only that it seemed logically imminent.

And now, today, Geoff Earle, Deputy U.S. Political Editor for DailyMail.com, writes: “A new poll shows 44 percent of Americans believe the nation is headed toward another civil war – with a majority of Republicans believing it will happen.

“The data comes in a new poll by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which also found support for the 'Great Replacement Theory' referenced by the shooter who opened fire in a Buffalo supermarket last month.

“A total of 44 percent agree with the statement that the nation 'seems headed toward a civil war in the near future,' according to the poll. That includes 53 per cent of Republicans and 39 per cent of Democrats.”

“The poll by the group and Tulchin Research came in late April, before the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, where the assailant's digital postings were filled with conspiratorial and racist ramblings. Nearly seven in ten agreed that left wing politicians were deliberately driving economic changes to gain power by 'replacing more conservative white voters' – terminology that suggests people are being 'replaced' by non-white voters coming into the country. 

'What we found was a great deal of hostility for people on the other side of the political aisle,' according to SPLC. 'A majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe their political opponents pose a threat to the country and want to harm their political opponents. That kind of animosity could fuel partisan violence.”

The poll results adding substance to Rush’s predictions, unfamiliarity led to homework on both Southern Poverty Law Center and Tulchin Research. According to Wikipedia: “The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. It was founded by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery, Alabama. Bond served as president of the board between 1971 and 1979.”

As for Tulchin, “In March 2010, Tulchin Research was named as the top new Democratic political consulting firm of the year by the American Association of Political Consultants.”

While discovery of both organizations makeup indicates a likelihood of strong bias, there is still considerable probability of validity to their findings. That led to further research on the topics of potential national separation and polling itself.

First comes a long and somewhat complex response from a reader, Lewis Lester, providing quite helpful background on the subject: “It’s unfortunate that polling can’t include an algorithm that accounts for increased or decreased support that is irrelevant. About half of Mr. Trumps poll improvement seems to be in places where it will not make any difference. We learned from 2016 that elections are decided by very specific conditions. We learned that you can take a state like Michigan concentrating on a number of key counties. This is to say the static vote generally remains the same in counties that have been red or blue for three contiguous Congressional elections by more than 10%. A congressional election has a maximum number of voters and has an historic turnout tracking number.

“Some districts actually have weak turnout because the “winner assumption“ is somewhat firm.

“In Michigan for example there are counties that would respond to a National poll but feel there is no need to vote, when you use these factors you will find that the more solid the district the less likely to vote. For about 20 years Republicans convinced voters to vote even though the vote could be hopeless or the vote could be surplus. While the polling is likely accurate and interesting it is becoming less predictive because of these intense micro conditions not being accounted for, someday we will be able to use a bank of questions to find areas that are susceptible to change or as the Trump/Russia group found out susceptible to manipulation.

“Micro lying is the only way to describe what happened.

“The base data was stolen from DNC voters lists, and the issues were researched to misrepresent the facts in a specific fashion to change voters preferences. With the internet you can codify 10 issues and then find the voters that would be responsive. The idea is to not effect specific voters but to find the pockets of voters susceptible to one or two of the specific issues from the 10 different manipulations.”

Thus, what reader Lester is saying is that cleverly timed or placed polling data can be employed to affect voter interest or turnout, thereby swinging electoral results effectively. With that empowerment carrying so much weight, it then becomes quite important as to whom exactly the pollster is.

Further research led to Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com a “website that focuses on opinion poll analysis, politics, economics, and sports blogging. The website, which takes its name from the number of electors in the United States electoral college was founded on March 7, 2008, as a polling aggregation website with a blog created by analyst Nate Silver. In August 2010, the blog became a licensed feature of The New York Times online and renamed FiveThirtyEight: Nate Silver's Political Calculus.

Back on March 21, 2021, Silver wrote: “But while polling accuracy was mediocre in 2020, it also wasn’t any sort of historical outlier. The overall average error of 6.3 points in 2019-20 is only slightly worse than the average error across all polls since 1998, which is 6.0 points. There were also presidential years before the period our pollster ratings cover, such as in 1948 and 1980, when the polls exhibited notably larger errors than in 2020.”

Following that, Silver rated pollsters as follows:

What should provide Republicans some confidence and reassurance is that Rasmussen, stalwart pollster for them, is among the most reliably accurate in the nation. While at the same time, leftist leaning Quinnipiac, Monmouth and ABC News/The Washington Post are among the very worst.

That’s it for today folks.

Adios