A series of polls of LV’s conducted September 19-22 by SurveyUSA show:
Kerry ahead by 10% in Michigan and 5% Washington State
Bush ahead by: 1% Maine; 4% Iowa; 13% Tennessee and 1% Oregon.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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January 24: MAGA World Goes to War with Liberal Christianity
As someone ever-attentive to the intersection of political and religion, it wasn’t so much Trump’s explosion at the Bishop of Washington but the follow-on by his clerical allies that struck me, as I explained at New York:
Everything about the Washington National Cathedral, from its vast Gothic architecture to its clergy’s vestments, suggests to the politicians who sometimes grace its pews that they are small players in the grand drama of human events shaped by an omnipotent God. But the most important pol in attendance at this week’s National Prayer Service, right there in the front row, was a newly re-inaugurated president for whom humility and self-restraint are alien concepts, and who has boldly asserted that God prevented his assassination in order to return him to power. So understandably, the clerical leader of the Cathedral, Bishop Mariann Budde, felt constrained in her sermon to beg Donald Trump for some Christian forbearance in how he carried out his vengeful mandate. She begged rather than commanded, using the time-honored language of Jesus Christ by way of enjoining compassion for the poor, the stranger, and those living in fear of state power:
“’Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.’
“‘There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They … may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.'”
It was also understandable that Trump was annoyed by Budde’s plea, along with the underlying suggestion that he does not personify God’s will for America in 2024. He was undoubtedly aware that the bishop had criticized him during his first term for using one of the churches of her diocese, the White House–adjacent St. John’s, for a photo op in which he held up a Bible in righteous justification for his hard line on Black Lives Matters protesters. And here she was almost literally raining on his inaugural parade.
But when he lashed out at her on Truth Social as a “so-called bishop,” a “radical left hard line Trump hater,” whose sermon was “nasty in tone and not compelling or smart,” he unleashed a lot of MAGA rage aimed not just at Budde but at those liberal Christians who similarly reject a reactionary, Trump-o-centric version of the faith. The New York Times’ Elizabeth Dias hit the nail on the head in depicting the outburst against Budde as representing a submerged iceberg rising to the surface:
“For nearly a decade, American Christianity has been torn apart in every possible way. Christians have fought over whether women should be allowed to preach. Over the place of gay people. The definition of marriage. The separation of church and state. Black Lives Matter. And at the heart of much of it has been Mr. Trump’s rise as the de facto head of the modern American church, and the rise of right-wing Christian power declaring itself the one true voice of God.”
The National Prayer Service incident gave license to a lot of Trump’s clerical allies to deny the legitimacy of any form of Christianity that does not comport with their culturally conservative views. Several uttered their condemnations in interviews with the conservative Washington Examiner:
“’For the past four years, the Left has vilified biblically sound pastors for teaching what Scripture says about marriage, gender, and sexuality — accusing them of preaching politics from the pulpit. Yet, on the very first day of Trump’s return to the White House, a woke clergy member hijacks a church service to promote partisan rhetoric, personally attacks the President of the United States, and distorts the truth about illegal immigration,’ said pastor Lucas Miles, senior director of TPUSA Faith.
“Pastor John Amanchukwu, who has been vocal in his support for Trump in the past, took a harsher tone.
“’Many fear a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but there is nothing worse than a wolf in Bishop garments. She’s heretical, diabolical, and should have NEVER had the opportunity to minister in the presence of President Donald J. Trump,” Amanchukwu said.”
Franklin Graham, who delivered one of the two official invocations at Trump’s inauguration, was equally harsh:
“‘She is a socialist, activist, LGBTQ+ agenda, and that’s, you know, so she’s just wrong,’ he continued. ‘So these are activists, and no question, they hate Trump. I don’t know why they hate Trump. Trump stands for truth.”
So denying that “Trump stands for truth” is apparently grounds for excommunication from the broader community of Jesus Christ. That’s certainly what the extremely influential Pentecostal preacher and musician Sean Feucht suggested from right there in the Cathedral: “This is not a church and she is not a pastor. Time to ditch this tradition of attending this place during the inauguration.”
Maybe these holy warriors will calm down. But for the moment, it’s clear that their relationship with Donald Trump, the most powerful person on the planet, is fully transactional. He’s using them to herd their flocks into the voting booth to back him despite occasional suspicions that he’s more interested in self-promotion and worldly wealth than in doing God’s will. And they are using his authority to monopolize their own power within Christianity, by insisting that the only real Christians are MAGA Christians. These politicized right-wing believers bared their teeth in the reaction to Budde’s decidedly Jesus-oriented plea to Trump for mercy. But their ultimate objective could well be to reduce the influence of liberal Christianity until it’s small enough to be drowned in a baptismal font, leaving loud-and-proud Christian nationalists as the monopoly proprietors of America’s largest religious tradition.
I understand that polling organizations cannot poll people who just use Cell Phones (young people that tend to vote towards Kerry). I have read that their are 40 Million people using just cell phones now. Is this correct?
Go Kerry!
Referees skew the outcome of games. Judges skew the outcome of trials. They don’t usually do it at the buzzer. No, they do it all along, especially early enough to beat down the side they want to lose, then let them come back up. It’s the way there are fixed outcomes in trials, in games, and in other places in life. I don’t approve of it, but it exists.
I believe what we are seeing is a concerted effort by some polls to impact the election with badly constructed polls which are designed to give Bush big leads. The data simply don’t support these polls as sound.
They are piling it on heavy now because the know at the end they will have to close the gap, just so they don’t look ridiculous. After all, no one can really prove they were wrong unless they badly miss the final number.
Look for the pro Bush polls to continue to show big Bush leads until the last week, then they will close it. But not until the day before election day, when they will still give Bush more points than he will have.
Some referees are dirty, some judges are dirty, and some pollsters are dirty. They’re names for hire.
Mike in Md — I agree that despite the discourses about cell phone use, I doubt it will have any decisive effect on the polling methodology on its own. I also think that the SUSA polls are not terribly bad news for Kerry. The election will not be held today and he is within striking distance in several states. Although I wish he were ahead in several states won by Gore, with the exception of Wisconsin, he is not terribly behind either.
As regards the state of Wisconsin, I really have trouble with a state that leans toward Bush because Kerry said Lambert Field instead of Lambeau. I certainly hope this is not the reason for the Bush lead! If the people of Wisconsin are willing to make voting choices on the basis of something so trite while Bush has so terribly mismanaged domestic and foreign affairs, then I think they deserve four more years of hell.
I’m skeptical of SUSA polls; as I have posted on here before, their result in my home state is totally out of line with anything else (including reality.) And the NJ result showing Kerry behing by 4 is also an outlier; that said, Kerry’s got some work to do there.
But the polling news cited before by Mr. Mankuch is not terrible for Kerry. Not great, but not terrible. Most of the polls cited are within the margins of error (in some cases one point) and I have not seen any other survey that shows Bush ahead in Oregon (most show Kerry ahead, but not by a whole lot.)
The Wisconsin one is most problematic from a Democratic perspective, though the one with Bush ahead by 14 points (the Badger poll) seems out of line; I noticed that Republicans had an 8-point margin among respondents, which seems unrepresentative. (Previous Badger Polls have constantly been more pro-Bush than others, as well.) But Kerry is probably still behind there, though maybe not by much. Again, he’s got to work harder there (and remember, it’s LamBEAU Field!) Democrats also should work hard at last-minute voter registration there; the state’s election-day registration may produce results that the polls don’t show. I’ve read that Minnesota’s registration is similar.
The increasing reliance on cell phones (especially by the young, one of Kerry’s best groups) may render the polls off by a point or two, but I doubt that that factor by itself explains Bush’s leads in several key states. Though several of them are extremely narrow, so anything could be blamed, including polling error.
I would just like to chime in that I feel in my bones that any poll that shows Bush winning Oregon is going to be proven wrong on Nov. 2. The intensity of the anti-Bush feeling in Portland and Eugene is absolutely unprecedented. You can go on a number of admittedly unscientific factors (anecdotal conversations, the Portland turnout for Kerry of 50,000 to 60,000 at the rally in August, a simply unbelievable amount of Kerry stickers and yard signs, the number of people I know who are actively involved in defeating Bush compared to 2000, Republicans I know who have switched to Kerry, etc.etc.). Portland and Eugene can and will outvote the Republican areas in the state. I don’t think it will even be close here.
“So how is any pollster supposed to correct for the skewing that happens due to these effects? I don’t think there is any acceptable methodology to do this now.”
I believe that on Election Night, when the electoral map begins to turn blue in state after state after state the pollsters were calling red, they will have to face up to this problem or they will lose all credibility.
One point about the cell phone issue: I completely agree that this invalidates a lot of polling, but I wonder if that is the case equally in every state. Not to sound like David Brooks, but I wonder if “Red America” has the same degree of the cell phone/no land line phenomenon? Where I live, in Seattle, it seems hardly anybody youngish has a landline, or if they do, they screen their calls. And they aren’t home much anyway. I imagine that in Alabama it might not be quite this way yet?
Yes DanF – I think the cell phone effect is going to prove to be a major thorn in the side of pollsters in this election and going forward. I think there has already been a plethora of evidence that the samples in most of these polls seem to be heavily skewed towards Republicans. Anyhow, I’ve heard the # of cell phones is something like 160 million – and I think we can all give annecdotal evidence that supports the notion that a huge proportion of young urban dwellers are heavily reliant on their cells. Also, the other day I posted my experience of Gallup Poll hanging up on me, and someone suggested that it was probably because their dialing progran detected my caller ID – I don’ t know if that is in fact the case, but likewise, I think caller ID elimination is a further skewing problem.
So how is any pollster supposed to correct for the skewing that happens due to these effects? I don’t think there is any acceptable methodology to do this now.
Don’t like these poll results much either, but hopefully they will change in our favor after the fine week Kerry’s had. Check out Ras – better news and perhaps more reflective of the change in Kerry’s campaigning style.
Ruy – thank you for the screening system!
What is WH?
Speaking of trends, Rasmussen’s tracking poll today shows Kerry just 0.9% behind Bush — quite an improvement from the 4-point spread of the last three days.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Presidential_Tracking_Poll.htm
Some key battleground states with among the worst-maintained voter lists (lots of erroneously purged voters), according to a recent study by Scripps Howard News Service, are Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Missouri.
This from an eye-popping article in the current, October issue of The American Prospect, “2000, The Sequel”, by Joshua Kurlantzick, on how the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed in ’02 by Congress may have made things even worse.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleID=8544
A few other points may have particular pre-Election Day relevance:
*NY PIRG says it is illegal for local election boards to tell poll workers not to accept a student ID as proof of ID. U Wisc and Penn State Students for Kerry in particular, do you copy? A recent study in NY found that election officials in only 18 of 45 counties even understood voter-ID requirements.
*Some states simply do not count “provisional ballots” at all (which may be cast by individuals not permitted to vote by election officials on Election Day). HAVA established no national guidelines on when to count them. Which suggests just a few questions for state and local election officials and newspaper editorial boards.
*Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) and others became so concerned about huge problems with the touchscreen machinery in many states that they drafted an amendment to HAVA that would require touchscreen machines to have a paper record. Bob Ney, Chair of the House Administration Committee, has not allowed Holt’s legislation, offered in May 2003, out of committee. House and Senate Republicans have introduced “smokescreen” versions of Holt’s bill that contain similar provisions for verifiable voting–by 2006.
*Major White House footdragging on setting up the Election Assistance Commission, created under HAVA to disburse money to states to upgrade voting systems, issue guidelines, and hold hearings to help make voting as fair as possible. Shockingly enough it is now too late for this Commission to do much of what it was supposed to do for this year’s election.
1) Love the new posting policy.
2) I have oodles of anecdotal evidence, but would like to know if there is a way to confirm the number of people in urban and rural areas who have abandoned their “land-lines” in favor of cell phones. Most of the people I know my age (39) or younger who live in metropolitian areas either completely rely on cell phones or will only answer their cell phones without first screening (caller ID/answer machine) as they know that the only people who can call them on their cell are people that they have given their number to.
This might account for the Republican skew in the polls. If you can’t reach the Deomcrats who live in the cities, you can’t poll them. My feeling, and anecdotal evidence, is that rural folks keep their land-line as phone coverage isn’t that great outside of the cities.
Is SurveyUSA a bunch of Republicans? as ElectoralVote.com points out, this Oregon result is a bizarre outlier.
It’s good to see focus on the state races, because they’re all that matters. Unfortunately for the challenger, this poll brings terrible news. He has to pick up states (as compared to 2000) to win, but instead, he’s losing six.
States and his deficit:
ME -1
IA -4
OR -1
NJ -4
WI -14, -10 in the two latest polls
MN -2, in the latest poll
Certainly there’s still time for change, but as of this snapshot it’s 331-207. Let’s say Senator Kerry picks up ME, MN, NJ, and OR, and it’s still 295 -243.
I wouldn’t pay much attention to SUSA polls. They always lean way Republican. I remember they did back in 2000.
Ruy,
Thanks for giving the lie to these lazy, superficial poll stories about usually non-existent “gaps”. We can call it Gapgate.
Also If you haven’t done so already check out “King of the Polls” on http://www.zogby.com
It ‘splains why he’s da best!
Keep up the good work.
VJ