Kellyanne Conway: You can't run America on spite, as Biden is doing
Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway discusses reports OPEC refused to delay oil cuts despite pleas from the White House, new calls for immigration reform from Democrats and her latest op-ed on Fox News.
If past is prologue, many public polls are undercounting the number of conservative and centrist voters who are primed to participate in the midterm elections and underestimating the strength of the Republican candidates they intend to support.
Good polls respect and reflect public opinion, rather than try to create or manipulate it. And good pollsters don't dismiss large swaths of the electorate (see, e.g., Trump voters) because they dismiss them in everyday life.
Many of the same media and academic pollsters who blew it in 2016, 2018, and yes, in 2020, are at it again, ignoring obvious trends and predicting gloom and doom for Republican candidates. They confuse wishful thinking with sobering reality, as independents and Republicans, suburban voters and stock market investors are highly motivated by rising costs and rising crime. Education and inflation, security and affordability consistently outpace January 6th, climate change and abortion as top issues. Add to that an unpopular president peddling unpopular and expensive policies, and a Republican rout could happen.
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With a slight change following their embarrassing miss in 2016, these pollsters whiffed again in 2018, puffed around with phony polling predicting the demise of both Brett Kavanaugh and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate. Yet he sits on the U.S. Supreme Court and the GOP gained seats that cycle.
It was even worse in 2020, with media-generated polling marred by outside-the-margin-of error misses in key Senate contests and in most of the presidential swing states. Not a single poll in the Real Clear Politics average showed Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine winning; she triumphed by 8.6%.
In North Carolina, not a single public poll in the closing weeks showed Republican Sen. Thom Tillis winning, yet he did. In Iowa, Montana, and South Carolina, public polls went back and forth showing a "toss-up."
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Yet, the actual results were hardly a squeaker. Sen. Joni Ernst won by 6.6%, Sen. Steve Daines by 10% and Senator Lindsey Graham, facing a Democrat opponent who raised $112 million, walloped him by 10%.
One look at their numbers and it's hard to believe that these media pollsters try to measure voter intent rather than persuade it. At the presidential level, the Real Clear Politics average in 2020 had Biden winning Florida, Trump bested him there by 3.3%.
They had Trump winning Ohio by 1% and Iowa by 2%; he dominated in both states by over 8%. And in Wisconsin, a true swing state that Trump won narrowly in 2016, the averages favored Biden by 6.7%. This tally included an outrageous ABC News/Washington Post poll weeks before Election Day claiming Biden had a 17% advantage. That poll was junk and never should have been released. The actual result? Biden by less than 1%.
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With no apology, no accountability and certainly no accuracy, there is no incentive to get it right, and to start to engage and examine people who think and live differently than you. Wildly inaccurate pre-election polling is not just another opportunity to scream "media bias!"
The damage is real and lasting. Bad polls give donors cold feet, dampen voter enthusiasm, lead to questions of "electability" and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Here are some of the "numbers" that really matter; inflation at a 40-year-high, national test results in elementary school math and reading plummeting to the lowest level in decades, over 4.4 million illegal border crossings during the Biden administration, and violent crime continuing to spike.
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Keep these facts and phony figures in mind when you see "polls" in swing states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada showing comfortable leads for tax-and-spend Democrats that vote nearly unanimously with an unpopular president and who should own and eat their actions that have allowed inflation to spike, criminals to roam free and trap our kids in failing schools. Most credible polls include a plurality of Independents and show the two parties’ nominees under 50% and within a few points of each other. That is the essence of a "swing" state!
In the final month, and with early voting well underway in many states, the quality and resilience of candidates will matter. Democrats who dodge debates disrespect democracy. Republicans that unartfully manage inevitable October surprises and the Left’s professional slime machine or who simply don’t do the work risk loss.
Still, the fundamentals favor the GOP as the party out of power calling for security, safety and solvency. Polls show Republicans enjoying double digit advantages on the top issues of economy, crime, and border security.
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Abortion, as CNN noted, "is fading as an issue" and one that prominent Democrats like James Carville and Sen. Bernie Sanders are warning their party to dial back as central to their political ads, strategy and soundbites.
Republicans need a handful of seats in each chamber to assume majority control. Message discipline, money and moxie in the next month will get them there.