Polling

With the 250th anniversary of America's founding approaching next year, the majority of Americans are happy to applaud their country – with 63 percent saying that yes, the birthday of the United States is a moment to celebrate, a new poll from Cygnal released exclusively to The Spectator reveals. But unfortunately for those who would like such an event to be bipartisan and unifying, that majority is overwhelmingly driven by Republicans, 89 percent of whom say America's anniversary is a moment of triumph. On the other side of the aisle, only 37 percent of Democrats say there's something to celebrate at 250 years, with 58 percent of Democrats saying "no, there's not much to celebrate" or "no, there's nothing" to celebrate.

New polling data shows what you may already suspect: your experience of losing friends since the 2024 election of Donald Trump is absolutely real – if very divided depending on your political tribe. When national pollster Cygnal offered me the opportunity to suggest a question or two for their latest national survey, it was a chance to put to the test the experience of many Americans I know: in the past six months, they’ve lost at least one friend over the result of the 2024 election. The direction of lost friends seemed very politically consistent in my experience, but anecdotes aren’t data, and knowing more people on the right than the left, it’s possible this personal experience was skewed. It turns out that it isn’t.

“Trump has lowest 100-day approval rating in 80 years,” screamed ABC News at the start of this week. The ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted by Ipsos to mark Trump’s 100th day in office, was one of a handful that have shown Trump’s approval rating dipping below 40 percent for the first time. There is just one problem: the pollsters who are showing the worst numbers for Trump are the ones who got the election most wrong. Take the ABC/WaPo/Ipsos poll, that showed Trump on 39 percent approval. In their final poll of the 2024 cycle, they found a three-point lead for Kamala Harris. Ipsos’s other poll for Reuters had a two-point advantage for Harris nationally. Trump ended up winning the popular vote by one and a half points.

The barrage of media coverage and political activity surrounding the deportation of an illegal migrant to El Salvador might suggest the story plays to the advantage of Democrats targeting President Trump’s immigration crackdown. But that’s actually not the case according to new poll data provided to The Spectator. Polling this week conducted by OnMessage, one of the top Republican-aligned firms, found that despite the drumbeat in support of the Democratic storyline on Kilmar Abrego Garcia over the past several weeks, American voters are evenly split on the issue overall – reflecting how quickly this case has become a simple partisan divide. Overall, support for the Garcia deportation is dead even at 49-49.

Data scientist David Shor has a message for Democrats: “Your problem with young men is worse than you think.” Shor is a respected and highly reputable Democratic data guru. He has released his autopsy on the 2024 election and why Kamala Harris lost. Unlike previous analysis, which primarily used exit polling, Shor’s company Blue Rose Research looked at polls, precinct-level returns and voter-file data to figure out who turned on the Democrats – and why. Democrats comforted themselves in the wake of their election loss by insisting that if more people had voted, Harris would have been sworn in as the 47th president. For decades it’s been true that Democrats win high-turnout elections while Republicans win votes with a smaller turnout.

Welcome to Thunderdome. Tonight I invite you all to tune into a live conversation at 8 p.m. Eastern with Kmele Foster of the Fifth Column on the shifting race, gender and class divides in 2024, part of the Substack Election Dialogues series — more details are here!We’ve already surpassed 8 million early votes in this election, so that means we’re at the beginning of the final rounds with fewer than twenty days to go. For Kamala Harris, she’s still sprinting around with a media tour (well, really only 60 Minutes and last night’s Fox News interview count as media) that she really should have done months ago.

Welcome to Thunderdome. In the space of four weeks, the incumbent president was dethroned from his nomination and replaced by his running mate in a behind-the-scenes coup led by the most powerful person in the party (who still insists on the absurd claim it was an “open primary”). Within that time, the nation witnessed the first of not one but two assassination attempts targeting his opponent, the former president who has faced a thermonuclear level of lawfare in an attempt to seize everything he owns and put him behind bars.

We’re almost exactly one year out from what increasingly looks like another Trump v. Biden showdown. Former president Donald Trump leads his second-place opponent by more than forty percentage points nationally, and has a thirty-point advantage in Iowa. President Joe Biden avoided a primary challenge from RFK Jr., who is now running as an Independent, and no one thinks Representative Dean Phillips’s campaign is serious, especially considering his refusal to acknowledge the objective reality that he’s even running against Biden. Although Phillips doesn’t seem to be the guy for the job, more Democrats are waking up to the idea that Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win a second term. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where back-to-school airborne illnesses, pumpkin spice lattes and fantasy football drafts herald the return of fall and the point where most normal Americans start actually paying attention to who’s running for president. It turns out there are more people running than Joe Biden and Donald Trump! Who would have guessed? This is because normal people do not have the gaping maw inside themselves, that hole that can never be filled by anything — and they have higher priorities than the unceasing undulating political scrum. There are errands to run and tailgates to plan and pumpkin gewgaws to be purchased from Home Goods. But, in the height of modern convenience, one thing you can do while doing all those things is listen to Thunderdome!

Welcome to Thunderdome, your weekly update on all the crazy that 2024 has to offer! Thanks for listening to our weekly podcast, the latest edition of which is available here — and yes, we start off by talking about golf and soccer, but don’t worry: we don’t focus on important things for too long. There’s presidential stakes to be talking about, and questions to answer! Like: who is Doug Burgum, and why is Doug Burgum? Let’s get to it. Christie the kamikaze, or Pence the pure of heart? Everyone assumes that Chris Christie is going to be the thorn in the side of Donald Trump on the debate stage in August. But what if he isn’t?

Those in the White House masochistic enough to have read the results of the ABC/Washington Post poll published yesterday will surely have had an uneasy start to the week.  The poll reveals plenty of problems for Biden and those whose job it is to persuade the American people to give him another four years: the fact that it shows him losing by six points to Donald Trump, widely panned as a busted flush with no appeal beyond the MAGA hardcore; the solid majority of voters who do not think the Biden has the mental sharpness (63 percent) or the physical health (62 percent) to serve as president; and the new record low approval rating in the survey (36 percent).

‘How many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not?’ Biden asked last week. ‘How many more lives, American lives, is it worth, how many endless rows of headstones at Arlington National Cemetery? I’m clear on my answer: I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past.’ They were the words of a man who knew from what he spoke and knew to whom he was speaking. It was not to the national news media, an elite that has abandoned its working-class roots and audience, and have nothing but censure and contempt for Biden’s brave decision.

The winner of this year’s presidential election may be different than the last, but the struggles of the polling industry continue.Although, one lesser-known but historically successful poll appeared to have predicted the exact result: IBD/TIPP, headed by Raghavan Mayur, president and founder of TechnoMetrica. But Mayur, an immigrant from India with a strong Hindu faith, could care less. He’s too focused on his work to worry about the excuses of his competitors.‘At the end of the day, there’s an Indian saying: the dancer who doesn’t know how to dance will say the stage is crooked,’ Mayur told The Spectator.

As I write this, the outcome of the US presidential election remains undecided. To judge by media reports, it may take days to determine who the winner is. A few quick observations: The pollsters got it wrong again. Forty-eight hours ago, the chatter was all about a Democratic landslide. Observers were confidently speculating about who would land the top jobs in a Biden administration. I don’t pretend to understand the science of polling. But I know a bankrupt enterprise when I see one. Many observers worried about a close election with no clear outcome leading to a constitutional crisis of some sort. The wilder and more irresponsible speculation imagined US troops being summoned to intervene and sort matters out. It grieves me to say that such scenarios remain possible.