National Climate, Polling Points To A Trump Victory

Authored by Jim Lee via RealClearPennsylvania,

Currently, both the national climate and the polling seems to point to a Trump victory in November. For instance, according to polling averages , only 28% of Americans say the country is going in the right direction, compared to 61% who say it’s on the wrong track. Why is this important? Because wrong track voters are more apt to vote for the party out of power – i.e., the Trump campaign – than the party “in power.”

Second, President Joe Biden’s average approval rating is still at a dismal 41% nationally, with a higher 56% of Americans saying they disapprove of his job performance. Why is this important?  Because if Americans are unhappy with the president’s job performance, they theoretically should be less likely to vote for another four years of his administration with a vote for the Harris campaign. And remember, when Kamala Harris was asked on a national network television program just recently if she would have done anything different than Biden, she couldn’t answer. In other words, she seems to have unwittingly conceded that she represents another four years of a Biden presidency. 

Another reason the political climate seems to favor Republicans at the current time has to do with how Americans are self-identifying in polls. According to national polling, in October 2016, the country self-identified as Democrat by a 3-point margin over Republicans. In October 2020, the country self-identified as Democrat by a higher 6-point margin. But in September of this year, just last month, new polling showed Republicans with a 1-point lead over Democrats on party self-identification. This could prove important because it seems to suggest that more Americans are aligned with the GOP brand than the Democrats – another good sign for the Trump campaign.

Moreover, the current polling has shifted in Trump’s favor both nationally and in critical battleground states. For instance, the RCP average of national polls now shows Trump with a 48.4 to 48.3% lead – just one tenth of a percent difference, but still leaning Trump. This is a big deal because the national popular vote has favored Harris for months, but now has shifted in Trump’s favor.  This could be a sign of which way the political winds are blowing. Plus, polling averages currently show that Trump leads in all seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania (.6 percent lead), Michigan (.2 points), Wisconsin (.2 points), Arizona (1.5 points), North Carolina (.8 points), Georgia (2.2 points) and Nevada (.7 points). These are RCP averages as of October 26.

In Pennsylvania, Trump’s lead is significant when you consider that on that day in 2020, Biden led in the RCP averages in Pennsylvania by 4.8%; Biden of course went on to eek out a narrow margin over Trump by only 1.2%.  Back in 2016 at this time, Hillary Clinton led in the RCP averages by 4.3 points, only to lose to Trump by a razor-thin, 48.58 to 47.85 margin on Election Day (or 44,292 votes).

So, are we on the cusp of a landslide (Electoral College) victory for Trump? No one knows for sure, but it could happen. In Pennsylvania, our latest poll shows a 46% to 45.8% statistical tie between Trump and Harris (Harris leading by .2 percentage points). This poll was conducted October 18-22 with a sample size of 500 likely voters. But there is plenty of good news for Trump in this poll. 

For instance, Trump looks poised to overperform his 2020 numbers with Republicans.  In the current survey, Trump is winning Republicans by an 89.4% to 3.7% margin over Harris. Why is this important?  In 2020, Trump lost 8% of the GOP vote to Biden – a huge setback in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans. More importantly, Trump is doing better with Independents in the current survey, currently leading them 43.9% to 36.4%. In 2020, Biden carried Independents by a 52:44 margin according to CNN exit polls. If Trump wins Independents in Pennsylvania, which constitute about 16% of the electorate and are technically the fastest growing cohort of the voter registration rolls, he will likely win the Keystone State.

And the political issues currently favor a Trump victory in terms of what is influencing people’s vote choices. For instance, in our Pennsylvania survey, 45% say inflation and the economy is the top issue that will influence peoples’ votes for a candidate, while immigration is second (at 32%). No other issue polls higher. Inflation/economy voters are breaking for Trump by a 57.4% to 35.4% margin. Immigration voters favor Trump by a whopping 72.7% to 17.4% margin. So, if voters go to the polls thinking about inflation, the economy and illegal immigration, Trump is likely to win. Lower ranking issues like protecting democracy, reproductive rights, and healthcare access all favor the Harris narrative.

Yet despite all these factors pointing in Trump’s direction, our polling still shows a statistical tie, so Harris can’t be counted out. In the poll, there are some red flags for Trump. For instance, voters who say they already cast early ballots favor Harris by a 53.9% to 37.1% margin. This means Harris has the edge in early returns with absentee and mail in ballots. Plus, Trump doesn’t seem to be getting much traction with Hispanic/Latino voters, which make up about 8% of the state’s electorate and are a fast-growing cohort in suburban areas like Lancaster, Reading, Allentown and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton media markets. In the current survey, Harris leads Trump with Latino voters 76.7% to 20.0%. This suggests an underperformance for Trump when you consider that Trump got 27% of the Latino vote in 2020 according to exit polls. In addition, in a separate poll we recently conducted in the hotly contested 10th congressional district election (between GOP incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Perry and Democratic challenger Janelle Stelson), Harris actually leads Trump by a 46:41 margin – a reversal from a 4-point Trump victory in this same district in 2020. So, Trump seems be underperforming in some Mid-state counties, which are a must win area for him when you consider that our polling shows Trump will lose the vote-rich Philadelphia suburban collar counties, plus the state’s two major urban centers of Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. Let’s not forget that in 2020, Biden carried the Keystone State but only by winning 13 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties – a highly surgical approach to victory.

So, the current survey seems to suggest a very close race on Election Day in a very pivotal battleground state. Turnout could be the deciding factor in determining the outcome. This is because Pennsylvania is almost a 50:50 state in voter registration since the GOP has narrowed the voter registration edge to fewer than a 300,000 vote-difference, or a current 44% Democrat to 40% GOP margin; independents and other third-party voters make up the remaining 16%.  Exit polls in 2020 showed a +1 percent margin for GOP versus Democrats in party self-Identification. In the current poll, Trump is winning Republicans 89.4% to 3.7% over Harris, while Harris is winning Democrats 90.8% to 3.2% over Trump. So, both candidates seem to be doing equally well in their respective bases of support. This means it’s hard to tell if the “never Trump” campaign narrative is getting real traction or is simply a red herring.  This means whichever candidate gets more of their voters to the polls will likely be the victor. Other states will see similar trend lines since states like Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin are also states where Republicans and Democrats are relatively equal in voter registration. Turnout will play a critical role in this election, and the party that gets their vote out could have the edge on Election Day.

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Originally Posted at; https://www.zerohedge.com//


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by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog: Donald Trump just completed the greatest political comeback in U.S. history by winning the presidential election of 2024 in a landslide, and this truly is a nightmare scenario for the political establishment on the left.  For the past eight years, they have been trying to do whatever they […]

The Recession Of 2025 Will Be Backdated

The Recession Of 2025 Will Be Backdated

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

It’s a reasonable supposition that a recession will become obvious to all by next summer. It will then be declared by year’s end. The following year it could become backdated with data revisions that take us to 2022. At that point, it will become obvious to people that we have a major problem. Money velocity will freeze up and banks will start failing.

That’s a lot to consider so let’s unpack this a bit.

Consider history. In October 1929, the stock market crashed. Many people on Wall Street suffered but Main Street was largely unaffected. The Hoover Administration got busy with some efforts to loosen credit but without success as credit markets slowly dried up. Throughout 1931, public sentiment toggled between pessimism and denial. Many people thought it was a temporary blip that would go away.

No one called it the Great Depression. That came much later.

By the election of 1932, enough people were concerned about the economic situation but the campaigns did not really focus entirely on that. The big issue was Prohibition. Hoover did not have a strong opinion but Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke out loudly for repeal. His fiscal policy pushed frugality and balanced budgets, and he decried Hoover as a big spender.

FDR won of course. But before the inauguration, the economic environment became dramatically worse. A banking crisis developed, and FDR used emergency powers to impose a bank holiday and repeal the gold standard. As part of this, he imposed a ban on private gold ownership. It was enforced with fines and jail terms.

Central planning then ensued with massive fiscal stimulus, crazed agricultural policies that required digging up crops to create artificial shortages, and price and wage controls.

All of this unfolded over the course of four years, the first three of which were not at the time thought to be much of a crisis generally speaking. Today it is obvious that 1929 marked the beginning but that was not apparent at the time.

It is not discernible in our time that we are already in recession but that is due to some brittle statistical measures. If you extend the inflation numbers to include housing and interest, plus extra fees and shrinkflation, minus hedonic adjustments, and then adjust the output numbers by the result, you end up in a recession now.

Do you remember the two successive quarters of declining GDP in 2022? At the time, it was said that this was not a recession, even though every definition of recession was two declining quarters of GDP. It was said at the time that the data was not enough to declare it because labor markets were strong.

Trouble was that this too was an illusion. Most of the job gains were in fact in part-time jobs and multiple job holders, and those gains went to foreign-born workers and not natives. Overall, jobs held by native-born workers that are full-time are down relative to four years ago. No one in the mainstream press admitted this.

The jobs report that came out last week was the first glimpse of truth because it was brazenly awful, underperforming every prediction. It also chronicled major job losses in manufacturing and professional services. Those are hard-core recession signs that are likely going to worsen.

All this data will start to be revised next year as the conventional wisdom will change. It will be widely admitted that the economy is weaker than we previously supposed. This will happen regardless of who wins. For one winner, it will serve as an attack and for another winner, it will serve as pretext for extreme intervention like the promised price controls on rents and groceries.

Meanwhile, we will be revisiting the inflation problem. The Fed has already added $1.1 trillion to the money stock over the last 12 months plus lowered interest rates. The effect of this easing has not affected mortgage rates because investors are expecting higher rates in the future. The Fed can control overnight lending but the shape of the yield curve is determined on the bond market.

If major changes are proposed in terms of spending cuts, the bond market will freak out and the United States could repeat the experience of the UK just a few years ago. New prime minister Liz Truss was quickly hounded out of office on grounds that her spending cuts had spooked the bond markets.

U.S. creditworthiness is already on a hair trigger as the debt pileup has reached astronomical levels. The entire purpose of this wild spending has been to balloon the GDP as much as possible to prevent a recession from being declared already. The debt-to-GDP level is now higher than it was in the Second World War, and getting worse by the day.

(Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), St. Louis Fed; Chart: Jeffrey A. Tucker)

The easy solution is dramatic spending cuts but that won’t happen if the bond market starts panicking with quality downgrades. There are only two private institutions that grade U.S. bonds and both are subject to being muscled by political concerns. Such an event could easily overwhelm a new administration. The political people will go into overdrive and demand that the Fed accommodate the bond market, fueling more inflation.

I truly wish that none of this would happen but the truth is that economic forces are always and everywhere more powerful than political ones. There are structural problems alive in U.S. economic life today that are not easily solved by policies of any sort.

But in U.S. political culture, whatever takes place under one president’s watch is blamed on the officeholder regardless. That the circumstances have been created by the previous administration or have nothing to do with existing policy has no relevance in the political culture. That alone makes it nearly impossible for a sitting president to plead with the public for patience.

In 1981, Reagan did make a plea for patience, and lost a great deal of Congressional support in the midterm elections of 1982. He was fortunate that the economic recovery came in time for the 1984 election that granted him a second term. But that was a very close call, and that was also under conditions that were not as structurally dire as conditions today.

As a result, the new administration will encounter pressure to achieve the impossible: immediately improve American living standards without imposing any pain at all. Such a demand is impossible to grant. As a result, whatever happens in this election will likely be reversed in the midterms of 2026, meaning that we cannot count on any kind of policy consistency for many years to come.

Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so. But from what I’m looking at, I don’t see how a frank acknowledgement of current conditions can be put off for another year.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/07/2024 – 06:30

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