By SKIP TUCKER, Alabama Daily News Featured Columnist
After national pollsters, national talking heads and Hillary Clinton were handed their collective hindends by Donald Trump on election night, they made promises to be honest in future.
They did this with straight faces.
The slick Huffington Post had given Clinton a probability win factor of – whoa, get this – 98 percent. Compared to that, the New York Times merely gave her a probability factor of 85.
A feckless columnist in Washington Post said he’d eat his newsprint if Trump won (it’s rumored he tried to eat his liver, as well). He ate the newsprint, but he couldn’t swallow it straight.
He had a superchef prepare ground newsprint in such hearty American fare as ceviche, newspaper crusted calamari, newspaper chilaquiles in salsa verde, lamb birria tacos and filet o’fish with newspaper tartar and grilled newspaper falafel.
Way to go, sir. About 36 percent of DC’s population is functionally illiterate. It’s not every day you see the common touch on display like that.
Those aforementioned three high-standard news outlets, which do their own polling, blamed their abysmal failures on “bad data from other polls.” Er, what? Intrinsically, it was not their fault except for just maybe a little bit. They assured everyone of that. Unbiased, is what they were. They assured everyone of that, too.
National pollsters again are up to their old tricks, and the main trick is to skew results in favor of those paying for it. I’ve done more political campaigns than a few. I won’t do one without a reliable poll nor will I believe the results of any poll with seeing the questions and answers.
It isn’t unheard of for there to be two polls at once, one for public news release and one of true data for private consumption.
Let’s look at public opinion in regard to The Donald and The Wall. Some polls say without question or pause that 60 percent of the population despises President Trump and The Wall. Some say more, some say less. Way more, way less.
Aside from trick questions (a John Prine song said, “A question ain’t really a question if you know the answer, too”). Let’s see how the main skew works:
The simple difference is that one sample is taken from anyone with a phone. The second sample is taken from American citizens. The third is taken from registered voters. The fourth, and the one nearest the facts, is taken from those who are likely to vote.
Some are “weighted” in some manner than says one vote mysteriously is more valuable than another.
Rasmussen, which came closest to an accurate prediction in 2016 by saying Clinton would win by only two percentage points (not a single major poll predicted a Trump win, much less that he would blow Clinton’s bloomers away), says that among those likely to vote, the president’s approval rate went to 52 percent after his State of the Union. It’s lower now, but history says that kind of approval rate following the State of the Union indicates re-election.
Approval rating of The Wall has been almost 50-50 among those most likely to vote.
The normally reliable Pew Research says 59 percent of likely voters think border security is “vitally” important and that 93 percent favor increased border security.
Still aghast at the American public’s betrayal, liberal national media with unctuous urgent earnestness has returned to its fine-haired harebrained smooth and confident assurance that The Donald is done for. How dast we disregard their predictions in the first place. All that is asked is that we trust them.
“I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do,” said the rogue computer HAL, in Space Odyssey, after he’d tried to murder the entire crew aboard the spaceship.
The Donald continues to play trump cards, the most powerful in the game. Then there are the the Trumpettes, the majority of women who voted for him.
Last are the Weird Sisters, as MacBeth called the ilk – Pelosi, Warren and the moonbeam from California. Some women voters might choose one of the ladies sheerly on the strength of woman solidarity, thereby wasting a vote. I’m all right with that.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but much of the material for The Wall is available already. Election night, millions of Democrats passed a brick.
(Next week: The Chic of Cherokee.)