Thursday, April 07, 2016

Trump's One-Way Polling Street

by JASmius



It isn't that Trump's is the only campaign to ever decry unfavorable polling.  This sort of spin happens all the time, in every cycle.  The difference in his case is that (1) his sitting atop the polls is the self-defining core of his "brand" - i.e. success.  Trump always wins, Trump never loses, and did you see how far up in the polls he is today?  He's been saying that perpetually for going on ten months now.  He rarely talks about anything else.  So when the polls favor him, they are gospel.  Because, Trump.  It's the same thing when he wins a primary or caucus.  Out he comes to the victory celebration to bask in the glory, brag, boast, and be Trump.  Because Trump always wins.

But when he loses, it's never because he just lost, or because his opponent was the better man, outworked him, or even that the particular State was a "road" game for him.  No, he must have been "cheated," or "screwed," or the RNC wasn't "fair" to him, or it was sunspots, or Karl Rove's super-secret mind control device, or zombies.  Out come the lawsuit threats and demands to re-hold the election to "get it right" and late-night Twitter rants.  Because Donald Trump never loses.

And unfavorable polls?  They're not just "wrong," they're "fabrications":

Trump spokesperson, Mike Cohen, went on CNN to tell some jokes, and one of those was this knee slapper about how all the polls indicating that women do not like Trump are a complete fabrication.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, I don’t agree with any of those polls, and any of those numbers.” said Cohen. “Um…the media, the liberal media comes after Mr. Trump on everything.”

“That’s not the liberal media. That’s just a poll.” CNN anchor, Erin Burnett, reminded him.

“You know what? The poll is, as far as I’m concerned, manipulated.” said Cohen.



This is more than just the "stiff upper lip" public spin of a campaign in trouble; this is a True Believer regurgitating his Kool-Aid.  Because it goes against the Trump brand and narrative that Trump always wins.  Trump is popular with everybody.  Women love Trump.  Multiple times.  There are women at his rallies.  He's got Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham on retainer.  How could polls show women wanting to de-testicularize "Trump Tower" by margins of two and three to one?

And then you bring up the feud with Megyn Kelly ("The War of the Menses"), calling Carly Fiorina homely, threatening and mocking Heidi Cruz, bragging about his "mighty member," Trump Modeling Agency, hopelessly gaffing and botching the abortion issue, and generally, all-around "Trump being Trump," - in other words, facts, not anecdotal twaddle - and his canyonesque gender gap makes all the immense sense that it would have for his entire adult life if he'd ever run for president prior to this cycle.

And Mr. Cohen would still be engaging in the same ridiculous whining.  Which would be bad enough if he'd simply said that he disagreed with the survey results - again, campaigns do that all the time - but to say that the same media that has given Trump a two-billion dollar in-kind airtime contribution "comes after him all the time" is risible.  They absolutely will if he wins the GOP nomination, but up to now they've been his campaign's biggest asset, and for the last reason he'd ever admit: The press has always known that Trump is the only "Republican" candidate Hillary Clinton can defeat, and have thusly done everything they can to inflict him on the GOP as our nominee, just like they generally do every four years.  The only distinction this time is that the part of the base that usually bitches about it the loudest has totally fallen for the psy-op this time.

And if the CNN poll in question is "manipulated," then there's a remarkable degree of manipulation coordination across pretty much every survey, since they're all showing remarkably similar results that all show Trump getting destroyed.  And that includes Fox News, which aside from the aforementioned Megyn Kelly has been rapturously in love with the New York liberal conman for months.  I guess she hacked into the pollsters' mainframe and bled all over the "real" numbers, right, Mike?

Meanwhile, Trump's poll hemorrhaging continues to escalate:

Seven in ten people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll. It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.

Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70% view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education, one of Trump’s most loyal voting blocs, 55% have a negative opinion.

As I always point out, the significance of polling is in magnitude and direction, and both remain catastrophic for the millionaire slumlord:





If you're a few points underwater, or behind in a head to head matchup, you can plausibly talk about polling bias and "thumbs on the scale" and such.  But if your favorable/unfavorable is -43 among the entire general electorate and more voters say they will never vote for you than has voted against a major party candidate in over a century (William Howard Taft in 1912 in a four-man race), that's not "fabrication" or "manipulation,' it's the voters deafeningly saying that they hate your stinking guts and to get out of the race and let a real Republican be nominated so as to not be forced to vote for Hillary Clinton.

But if Mike Cohen displayed such candor, his dismembered remains would never be found.  Compared to that, the uriney Kool Aid probably doesn't taste so bad, no matter how much of an "acquired" taste it is.

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