Outrage: rules for thee but not for Democrats

JFK Jr. can't get off the ballot in swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, but Kamala Harris was able to be swapped in for Let's Go Brandon no problem... yeah, elections are totally fair.

Here's your threat to democracy:

The real danger for the Trump 2024 campaign

Donald Trump is an infinitely better candidate for president than Kamala Harris. He'd be a much better debater if she musters the courage to debate Trump (she probably won't and that alone is very telling). Trump would of course make an infinitely better president than Kamala Harris. We know this. But there's reason to worry. The Democrats are not playing to win, they're playing to be able to be in a position to say they won.

If you look at the RealClearPolitics poll averages in the swing states (something I urge you to do with caution as it averages polls that are not alike), as of today, Trump still leads Harris in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia. He's only trailing in Michigan, but thanks mainly to a highly unlikely outlier poll. If the entire current RCP state of affairs holds true, Trump will get 297 electoral college votes and win the presidency.

But here's the catch, the polls, particularly including the outliers, have significantly dampened the lead Trump holds.  In fact they've depressed the margins strongly enough (again as of now), that it would be fairly easy for Democrats to pad the vote totals and steal the election in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Those two states alone would swing the election to Harris given enough ballot stuffing. And the Trump leads are a bit tight. You could also add Georgia to the list of possible Harris steals. Maybe even Arizona. 

The real danger therefore, is not Trump being unable to win the right combination of states to win the electoral college, the danger is not winning the right combination of states by enough votes to overcome cheating on an epic scale by Democrats in those states.  If Kamala Harris does indeed choose inexplicably popular Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate, being able to cheat Pennsylvania into her column becomes infinitely easier.  If she holds the suspect polls for Michigan, that means any one Wisconsin, Georgia or Arizona would capture the Whitehouse for the Democrat.

The map with Harris as the Democrat nominee should be at least as easy for Trump as it was with Let's Go Brandon, but the truth is, it got harder. Not through legitimacy, but the bar to provably win each swing state got higher.

Well at least Michigan got it right.

President Trump not removed from the ballot.

Governor Series: MI - Tudor Dixon

Tudor Dixon would make a great governor for Michigan, unlike the train wreck in the role right now.  Dixon is a bit of a longshot but some polls have her tied.  This is a state where every vote will matter.

Democrats go beyond the pale in 2022 midterm actions

The DOJ has been weaponized.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving, worse governor

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is way, way underwater in the polls.  Sorry, not sorry. In fact, I'm happy to hear it.

In case you didn't know, Michigan's governor is still power-mad

 A lot of people not directly affected by this, may not be aware of Michigan governor Whitmer's dictatorial bent continuing beyond the COVID situation (no, not "crisis").  She's ordered a Canadian gas company to stop using a pipeline, even though the federal government has said it's safe.

Michigan county had 780% turnout???

 Tim Pool discusses the turnout problem in the election.

Wayne County election results are dubious at best

Michigan election management is crap. That's a harsh word, but this is a real, big problem.  How does this not just toss out the entire county's votes?  How does this possibly get certified instead?  This makes zero sense.

Joe Biden got fewer votes than Hillary or Obama in every state except MI, PA, GA, WI

The very states that the election is turning on see a Biden surge?  One of which he explicitly stated he wanted to take away their energy industry. That's some amazing coincidence, isn't it?  

This video sort of buries that lead, but it's still a good watch.  What is striking is how little credence has been given to the concerns about transparency by the Left.  It's purposeful, it's hypocritical and it's anti-democratic.

Hey Georgia, when you run out of ballots, start counting napkins

...and empty cereal boxes.  Oh, and change your state motto to "Cheat To Win".  I thought Georgia was a state where people gave a crap. Turns out it only takes enough of them to crap on democracy to wipe out a country.  Good for you.

Pennsylvania you're not exempt either.  Bill Burr was 100% as right about Philadelphia.

Michigan, well we didn't really expect anything out of you anyway. You never fail to disappoint until you do it so much it becomes the expectation.

Wisconsin, now that's a real disappointment.  I'm not gonna lie, I had hopes for you.

Arizona makes no sense anymore and Nevada, I hope Las Vegas gets swallowed up by the desert.  Been there once, recently in fact, had a great time.  Guess what - never going back again. Enjoy the Raiders until they move back to Oakland and you are left with a giant empty stadium.

Okay, that felt good.  Back to normal.

Errors and oddities

 Arizona errors, Michigan oddities...

More misleading evidence of Biden's electoral prowess

There's a poll out today in Michigan from MIRS/Mitchell Research that shows an uptick in Joe Biden's lead:

Biden +10?  Is it time to panic maybe?

Nope.  Back in 2016 the same pollster in the same window polled the following:

How did the state voting turn out? President Trump got 47.5% of the vote and Hillary Clinton got 47.3%. In other words they overstated Clinton's vote by 5.5% and understated president Trump's vote by 6.5%.  They were off by 12% total. And they had Clinton +12. If the same is the case in 2020, then we would expect to see the poll corrected to  Biden at 45.5% and Trump at 47.5%. That's a Trump win and improvement for Trump overall vs. his 2016 showing. 

When I look at valid polls in Michigan, and account for this bias (assuming it has not been corrected since 2016) I see Trump as high as +4.4% over three different valid polls.  While I do not believe it will be that high of a lead, I see him winning Michigan.

Polling shift is bad news for president Trump

Since I first published my thoughts on the 2020 race for the presidency, there has been a slight shift and it is not good news for president Trump. Then again, it's not really what I would consider a significant shift. The one state that has changed has moved to Joe Biden's column and it's a state that president Trump won in 2016 - Michigan.

Here's the situation, every swing state for which I have assessed the polls, and there are 14 of them, none of them have run polls that have met a reasonable criteria for inclusion in predicting the state as an electoral college win for either candidate Trump or Biden. The polls are polling registered voters instead of Likely Voters, or they are too small of a sample or they may have a large margin of error or be a polling outfit that FiveThirtyEight deems untrustworthy or having a failing grade due to the standards applied or the polls are simply too old to be relevant. And my criteria right now are looser than they would be come October.

The main point to take away is that most every poll so far is useless. But there has been one change as I mentioned, Michigan has swung to Joe Biden's column. Now that said there were only two polls that were worth keeping: Trafalgar Group and EPIC-MRA. The former, and most recent (and a Republican affiliated pollster) had Biden ahead by one point. The latter is 3 weeks old which is not too old, but it had Biden ahead by 16 points. I have not seen the internals on the polls - how it was weighted between Republicans, Democrats and Independents - but I am very suspicious of the polls, despite it otherwise meeting my inclusion criteria.

Because there is more than one poll for the state the weighted average of the two polls was applied and I have Biden at 53% of the votes, and thus winning the state and putting him over 200 electoral college votes. But common sense says to discount that result. Two polls with a 15 point swing clearly indicate a problem somewhere. Conversely both polls have Biden ahead, and despite being more recent, the Republican poll of likely voters still had Joe Biden ahead. It's a concern, but it's not a crisis at this point.

For what it's worth, here's what it looks like to me right now: