Are The Polls Really Turning, Or Was The Red Wave Always Coming?
There are a number of individual-race polls that don’t really show it, but the trend is pretty clear: the 2022 election is a wave election, and the dynamics of a wave in hydrological terms apply to an electoral wave as well.
For an illustration of what that means, we have this…
Think of the seabottom displacement at the beginning of that video as the incredible suckage of Team Biden and the poor economic and geopolitical effects of their accumulated blunders. You’ll notice that as the tsunami travels in the deep ocean it’s visible, but not exactly terrifying. It’s only when it comes ashore that you can see its full magnitude.
The massive tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, for example, was just a bumpy ride for ships at sea…
If you didn’t know better then – if there weren’t seismographs which sensed the giant earthquake that set off those waves and the whole world knew about it – and you were on that ship, you’d probably say “wow, there are some big waves out here,” and not really consider that this was going to happen…
Yes, yes. We’ve gone overboard with the tsunami videos.
But they’re cool, right? Can’t get enough of watching the power of Mother Nature.
The thing is, political nature is an awesome thing to behold as well, and when one side offends it there can be major effects visible.
In the case of America, we’ve generally had a good run of governance for most of the 250-odd years we’ve been a country. That’s a function of a strong-as-steel culture and a national appreciation for, and cultivation of, leadership. We’re a competitive country which values things like sports teams, law enforcement and the military, institutions which foster strong leaders.
But the elites currently in charge of the country’s institutions have all but declared war on our national character, and that has destabilized our society and created the conditions by which those violent waves might crash ashore.
So it isn’t a surprise the legacy corporate media, which almost to an organ exists to preserve the elite narratives and suppress any other, spent the entire summer trying to dissolve the political instability the manifest failures of Team Biden – Afghanistan, energy prices, inflation, COVID lockdowns, the perversion of education, the weaponization of the FBI and other federal law enforcement, the wide-open border, the broke supply chain, and other items – would surely translate into electoral trouble.
The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision would kill the Red Wave, they said. The Republicans had bad candidates, they said – and Mitch McConnell, who suffers as much from a Red Wave as any Democrat, because if it turns out to be truly sizable he loses his majority within the GOP’s Senate caucus and that’s even worse than being Minority Leader. No wonder McConnell has been sandbagging the Trumpier Republican Senate candidates like Blake Masters and Kelly Tshibaka.
And then there were the non-stop attempts to resuscitate Biden, the most unpresentable president this country has ever had, or at least since Edith Wilson had to cover for her comatose, stroke-patient husband in the final year and change of his presidential term.
All of that was plausible and could even be taken seriously while the wave was out to sea, moving quickly and not generating massive height as it traveled through the deep water.
Once it comes close to shore, though, and the shallow water and contact with the waterbottom creates friction to slow it down the height of the wave becomes unmistakable.
And we’re beginning to see evidence of that.
Yesterday, Ace of Spades had a great analysis of that New York Times/Siena College poll the Democrats are so terrified by this week…
Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinct advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found.
The poll shows that 49% of likely voters said they planned to vote for a Republican on Nov. 8 to represent them in Congress, compared with 45% who planned to vote for a Democrat. The result represents an improvement for Republicans since September, when Democrats held a 1-point edge among likely voters in the last Times/Siena poll. (The October poll’s unrounded margin is closer to 3 points, not the 4 points that the rounded figures imply.)
Aww, you had to soften the blow. But a NYT poll showing Republicans ahead means you’re in huge trouble.
Important to note: Republicans lag in national polls, and do much better in polls in competitive districts. That is, Democrats are overrepresented in non-competitive districts and underrepresented in competitive districts actually in play.
So any kind of national lead is a bigger lead in competitive districts — nevermind the leftwing propaganda media constantly undercounting Republican voters, whether through malice, incompetence, or a characteristically toxic Regime Mix of the malice and incompetence.
With inflation unrelenting and the stock market steadily on the decline, the share of likely voters who said economic concerns were the most important issues facing America has leaped since July, to 44% from 36% — far higher than any other issue. And voters most concerned with the economy favored Republicans overwhelmingly, by more than a 2-1 margin.
Both Democrats and Republicans have largely coalesced behind their own party’s congressional candidates. But the poll showed that Republicans opened up a 10-percentage-point lead among crucial independent voters, compared with a 3-point edge for Democrats in September, as undecided voters moved toward Republicans.
Democrats lead on some issues — namely, the issues the public doesn’t prioritize highly.
While the share of voters focused on guns declined, those who identified abortion as the top issue remained flat, at 5%. There is a sizable gender split on the issue’s significance: 9% of women rated it as the top issue compared with just 1% of men.
Ace brings up the Harvard/Harris poll which shows pretty amazing harmony between the issues the voters care most about and the issues voters most favor the GOP on…
Honestly, we’ve followed politics pretty closely since 1980 and not since then has there been such an alignment – or, in the case of the party in power, a misalignment – between the public and a political party expected to take power.
And the thing is, it’s always been like this. Because there are pretty simple solutions to the three colossal issues lending heft and power to the wave coming in.
Crime? Drop all the imbecilic “reforms” like cashless bail and refusal to prosecute property crime, and you’ll see much of the lawlessness in the streets falling off. Team Biden and the Democrats won’t do that, because the Democrat Party is a collection of Marxist urban political machines which exist to pander to and serve street criminals and the communities they now control.
The border? It’s never been hard. You surge people and resources to it and you shut it down, you reinstitute Remain in Mexico and the other Trump-era policies which had mostly dissolved the problem of the open border and set the stage for a true addressing of the issue of illegal immigration from a position of national strength. But the Democrat Party’s war doctrine for a generation has been what they deride people like Tucker Carlson pointing out – The Great Replacement. They believe demography is destiny, and the “browner” they can make America the more Democrat-leaning it will be, so bringing in a maximum number of the poorest, least-skilled and least-assimilative foreigners will insure their power, they think.
And inflation? Ending the Biden-era smorgasbord of government money sloshing through the economy while at the same time letting go of the stranglehold on the productive sector not just with respect to energy but practically every other category of activity would have calmed things down quite a bit without having to drive the economy into a recession with interest rate hikes as the Fed has had to do. But Team Biden and the Dems couldn’t do that, because they had to pay off their masters among the climate nuts, “renewable” rent-seekers, local government types seeking “infrastructure” and the welfare crowd – and those special interests were a hell of a lot more important than the American people.
So the wave built and built, and now they’re desperate. Throwing plates, as I noted last week.
The wave comes ashore in three weeks. How many statehouses, governorships, House seats and Senate seats it sweeps into the hands of the GOP I won’t predict. But when it comes it’s likely to leave Team Biden stranded on the top floor of a high building with a flood of Republicans surrounding them.
And at that point the work will truly begin, because since the 1994 Red Wave delivered Newt Gingrich as a House Speaker for several good years the Republican Party has not been good enough to maintain the harmony and momentum the public gave them.
I can’t say that it’s good enough now.
But at least it has an opportunity to be. And for now that’s the best we can ask for.
Don’t just count on the Red Wave, though. There is still time. Get out and push. Find a Republican candidate near you who needs help, and go and help. Make sure your like-minded friends do the same.
