John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll conducted 10/22-26 .The Poll also found that, among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent.
TDS Strategy Memos
Latest Research from:
Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
-
April 17: A Closer Look at the “Uniparty” Fable
RFK Jr. and MTG are using the same dismissive term for major-party differences. I took at look at this phenomenon at New York:
Partisan polarization has been steadily growing in the U.S. since roughly the 1960s. Ironically, during this time, the complaint that the two parties are actually too alike has become increasingly prevalent. For years, right-wing Republicans have called people in the GOP who don’t share their exact degree of ideological extremism RINOs, or “Republicans in name only,” suggesting they’re basically Democrats. Left-wing Democrats occasionally echo these epithets by calling (relative) moderates “DINOs,” “ConservaDems,” or — back when maximum resistance to George W. Bush was de rigueur — “Vichy Democrats.”
Today the term “Uniparty” has come to denote the idea that Democrats and Republicans are actually working for the same evil Establishment enterprise, their loudly proclaimed differences being a mere sham. This contention was the culmination of a five-page letter Marjorie Taylor Greene recently sent her Republican colleagues calling for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s removal, unless he changes his ways instantly. She wrote:
“With so much at stake for our future and the future of our children, I will not tolerate this type of ‘leadership.’ This has been a complete and total surrender to, if not complete and total lockstep with, the Democrats’ agenda that has angered our Republican base so much and given them very little reason to vote for a Republican House majority …
“If these actions by the leaders of our conference continue, then we are not a Republican party – we are a Uniparty that is hell-bent on remaining on the path of self-inflicted destruction.”
Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also leaned heavily into the Uniparty idea in his recent speech introducing running-mate Nicole Shanahan:
“Our independent run for the presidency is finally going to bring down the Democrat and Republican duopoly that gave us ruinous debt, chronic disease, endless wars, lockdowns, mandates, agency capture, and censorship. This is the same Trump/Biden Uniparty that has captured and appropriated our democracy and turned it over to Blackrock, State Street, Vanguard, and their other corporate donors. Nicole Shanahan will help me rally support for our revolution against Uniparty rule from both ends of the traditional Right vs. Left political spectrum.”
The Uniparty claim is ridiculous, of course, as FiveThirtyEight’s Geoffrey Skelley demonstrates:
“[O]ur current political moment is arguably farther away from having anything resembling a uniparty than at any other time in modern U.S. history. Based on their voting records, Democratic and Republican members of Congress have become increasingly polarized, and both the more moderate and more conservative wings of the congressional GOP have moved to the right at similar rates. Meanwhile, polling suggests that Americans now are more likely to view the parties as distinct from one another than in the past, an indication that the public broadly doesn’t see a uniparty in Washington. Although there are areas where the parties are less divided, the broader uniparty claim is at odds with our highly polarized and divided political era.”
Kennedy’s subscription to the Uniparty notion is understandable on two points. The first is that his candidacy is vastly more likely to tilt the 2024 presidential campaign in the direction of one of the two major-party candidates (likely Donald Trump, according to most of the polling) than to actually succeed in winning the presidency. Maintaining that it really doesn’t matter whether it’s Biden or Trump running the country is essential to maintaining RFK’s appeal as November approaches and the futility of his bid becomes clearer. Second, Kennedy’s pervasive conspiracy-theory approach to contemporary life lends itself to the argument that the apparent gulf between the two major parties is a ruse disguising a sinister common purpose.
MTG’s Uniparty contention also reflects dual motives. In part she is simply echoing Trump’s weird but useful contention that he’s an “outsider” battling a Deep-State Establishment that secretly controls both parties, which is pretty rich since he dominates the GOP like Genghis Khan dominated the Golden Horde. But there is a marginally more legitimate sense in which key elements of the two parties really are in line with each other on isolated issues that happen to obsess Greene, such as aid to Ukraine. If you are a hammer, as the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.
The same is true of other implicit Uniparty claims, particularly those made by progressive pro-Palestinian protesters who adamantly argue that the need to smite “Genocide Joe” Biden for his pro-Israel policies outweighs all the reasons it might be a bad idea to help Trump return to the White House (including the fact that Trump is palpably indifferent to Palestinian suffering). If the two parties do not appear to differ on your overriding issue, then the fundamental reality of polarization can fade into irrelevance.
So we’re likely to hear more Uniparty talk even as Democrats and Republicans head toward another highly fractious election with very high stakes attributable to their differences.
“Quinnipiac Poll: Kerry, Bush tied Among FL RV’s
John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll conducted 10/22-26 .The Poll also found that, among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent. ”
So does that mean that 5% of the people who voted are still undecided or is nader picking up those votes?
What can we discern if anything from the 16%? Are they coming from Democratic areas? Jebbie was making excuses recently on MTP about hurricane damage in Republican areas, with those affected having higher priorities than voting for Bush.
At this point, when a poll is posted, can you give a comparison to the most RECENT poll, from the same jurisdiction and pollster, so that TRENDS can be assessed. Then it would always be good to summarize what other polls are saying (eg the other two most recent Fla polls are also close, and trending from their previous polls in the same direction, w numbers.) It would take up just a little extra space but would make it much more easier to make sense amidst a blizzard of individual data bits.
The Broward County thing shows how completely easy it still is to steal elections. Note that the POSTAL SERVICE might be involved, which is national. “Oh but that’s forbidden!” Well, remember what the word “Law” means to Tory types like Bush. To them, obedience to (their) power is the holy writ of what THEY call ‘natural law’. Honest elections are mere dust in the balance by comparison. Only by an approach to modern methods of discovery that jettisons the catch-22s that applied in Florida 2000 can there be any chance of an honest election –(or fighting terrorism, but I’ll get into that after the election).
The means of stealing elections are so myriad, that only by aggressively pursuing what is underground, and not relying on the means of laundering these issues that exist within the system that exists for the PURPOSE of stealing/railroading elections and then laundering it, can people hope to have honest presidential and Congressional elections
Great news. Just a point of clarification regarding the sentence, “among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent.”
Does this mean,
a) 16% of all eligible voters in FL have already voted through early voting, and among those that have already voted, Kerry leads 56-39
OR
b) Among all voters who have voted through early voting, 16% of early voters have been polled and within that 16% sample of early voters, Kerry leads 56-39
Do you see the confusion? I can’t tell whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 100% of the early vote, and the early vote constitutes 16% of those eligible to vote on Nov. 2; or whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 16% of all early voters, and we don’t know what the ratio of people voting early represents among all people eligible to vte on Nov. 2.
I wrote a state-by-state synopsis called “The Gore States Today” at Daily Kos and thought I’d share it here, too:
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/132557/30
(Just copy and paste the URL into your browser if clicking on it doesn’t take you to the page.)
I wonder if that includes the missing 58,000 absentee ballots? 🙂
I agree, i am no expert but here is how i feel about it, in 2000 Bush had 49.2 % of the vote, he has less support now he is at about 47%-48%. People who are going to vote for him already know, everyone else who hasn’t made up their mind hasn’t made up their mind for a reason, becasue they don’t like something about Bush. Also, people regester to vote for a reason, even if only half of the new regestered voters vote, that will put kerry over the top, people don’t fight to keep the status-quo, the fight for change, and i think on election day, kerry will win by a comfortable margin, 30 votes in the true battle ground states.
No wonder there are reports this morning of Repub goons waiting outside early polling places in Florida, telling old ladies there are no elevators or air conditioning and that the wait is 6 hours long.
Can’t we DO something about those guys?