Why? Because Mitchell Research has actually released a poll showing Kerry in the lead in Michigan (albeit by only a point). To understand the significance of this, you need to know that Mitchell Research has been the only firm to show Bush with a lead in Michigan in the entire post-labor day period. Specifically, there have been 17 polls in Michigan in September and October (prior to Mitchell Research’s new release), 15 of which showed Kerry in the lead (by an average of 5 points in both months) and only two of which–both from Mitchell Research–showed Bush with a lead (also by an average of 5 points).
You had to wonder if they were polling the same state. So if Mitchell Research finally has Kerry ahead, even by a point, that probably means he’s running away with the state.
TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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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.
Yeah, I caught that revised Mitchell poll — which doesn’t speak well for any of his work that he has such day-to-day volatility in a state he’s supposed to know well (as opposed to national pollsters doing tracking polls in individual states a la Zogby, Rasmussen, etc.).
Of course, the Kerry +5 MI Mitchell poll didn’t get a mention in the WaPo.
i live in michigan, today mitchel released a poll and kerry is up 5, most don’t know this but we have a local political show on sunday mornings and the guy who runs the poll always sits and speaks as a voice from the right. Kerry will win by 5 -7 points.
Latest Mitchell poll has Kerry up 5 in Michigan now.
But note that in today’s (10/28) WaPo story on the race in Michigan, which poll do they show a pie chart (to graphically emphasize the supposed closeness of the race) for? Why, Mitchell’s, of course.
Meanwhile, Richard Morin — who as the Post’s poll guru had to give approval as to which poll to use for the MI story — is all over their Style section piece on polls talking about a) how unclear everyone is about what’s going on with the polls, but b) at the end of the day, the polls are probably right.
Of course, nothing about 2000 track records.
Hell, Michigan has been Kerry’s ever since GM and Ford announced production cuts. That’s perhaps a greater comment on the swing in this poll.
from wed salon.com:
But Tony Fabrizio, a Republican who served as chief pollster for Bob Dole’s ’96 presidential campaign, doesn’t have much incentive to game the numbers to hearten anxious Democrats. And if his latest analysis is correct, the only way Bush can win will be if fewer minorities turn out this year than they did in 2000, when the stakes were far lower.
Fabrizio’s latest poll of 12 battleground states shows the race dead even, with Bush getting 47.3 percent and Kerry getting 47.1. But a press release for the survey says: “[W]hen the data is weighted to reflect minority turnout based on the 2000 exit polls, Sen. Kerry leads by 3.5 percent and if minority turnout is weighted to census levels Sen. Kerry’s lead expands to 5.2 percent.”
I live in a very Republican area of Michigan and I can tell you that I have never seen so many signs for a Democratic Presidential candidate. In fact, aside from the Clinton signs that my sister and uncle had in 1996 I have never seen ANY. I have certainly never seen any bumper stickers for any Democratic Presidential candidates too. I have seen dozens and dozens of both. Another thing is that at least 120 Kerry signs have been reported to the police as stolen and that number is from a couple of months ago. I say Kerry wins here with at least 54% if not 55% of the vote because since he has such support here which is supposedly “Bush Country” Do any of you live in a “Bush Country” area which has lots of Kerry signs or stickers? Or is this just a Michigan phenomenon?