‘I think the bigger problem are the people from within, we have some very bad people, sick people, radical left lunatics,’ Republican candidate tells Fox’s Maria Bartiromo
…
“And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military,” he said.
“I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within. Not even the people who have come in, who are destroying our country.”
It isn’t clear under what circumstances Trump would view it justifiable to call in US troops against his own countrymen.
But his comments mark a baseless attack and a particularly hollow one coming from someone whose supporters violently attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to stop him from being thrown out of office three years ago.
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I’ve long felt that regardless of the levels of “we factored that into our results” that pollsters can accomplish, at the end of the day, these polls can only survey that demographic of “people who agreed to be polled”.
That being said, I feel that Trump gets a slight advantage in any advanced polling thanks to his cult of personality: between Trump and any opponent thus far, a greater percentage of Trump’s followers are more likely to be “loud and proud” enough to want to have their voice heard by a pollster.
I feel this effect is even more pronounced now, with a significant portion of the voting public falling into the camp of “conservative, but put off by Jan. 6th”. People who voted for Trump twice but who won’t this year. These people are also less likely to want to participate in polls.
Where I feel this effect may have tricky implications is whether they stick to their beliefs in the polling booth or just cave in the final moment and still vote Trump…or if they simply don’t vote at the top of the ticket (or vote 3rd party)…but still vote for Republicans down-ticket.
While I’m no pollster, I would not be surprised to find that Trump underperforms vs projections, even as the GOP overperforms in House and Senate elections.
I pray you’re right, and fear that you might be wrong. The “red wave” that was supposed to happen and was wrong last time gives me a small amount of hope.
That’s largely been corrected for. The “red wave” phenomenon was largely the result of democrats fretting about internal polling which is consistently biased toward the campaign of which it is “internal.”
In most research on this topic, democrats are more likely to participate in election polling. Nevertheless, modern polling weights their polls accordingly. They also do significantly more statistical weighting to correct for various types of effects that would increase polling errors.
The biggest aspect to pay attention to this season is the use of “weighting on recalled vote.” It is the primary reason you’re seeing two distinct sets of polling results. Regardless of which set you look at, all highly rated polls show the election within the margin of error.