I'll be discussion this subject matter in a lot more detail in the coming days on Inside The Numbers, but it's noteworthy and needed to be introduced in an article on Locals. After all, Locals First!

Donald Trump has secured more than 60 endorsements from "elected" Republicans holding national and gubernatorial office. I've heard it's possible he'll get to 70 by the end of this week. Why does that matter, given he didn't win with endorsements in 2015-2016?

For starters, he did better with endorsements than most people realize. Many early backers were unconventional endorsements, i.e. celebrities, sports figures, etc. But that's not the central point. No candidate in over four decades has ever gone on to lose their party nomination with this many endorsements at this point.

Yes, even this early in the nomination process.

As I have stated over and over—despite what you hear from DeSantis supporters on Fox News and Twitter—it is not true early frontrunners do not end up securing their party nominations, especially not when you can arguably consider Trump an incumbent rather than a non-incumbent.

The former president is certainly a known quantity on the national stage and there is no uncertainty over whether he will weather the scrunity that comes from being a top-tier candidate, both being key benefits of incumbency. But let's pretend for this discussion that we cannot and do not consider him an incumbent.

Regarding the polling, it's a little more complicated, though we're dealing with the same flawed assumptions among DeSantis surrogates and the timeframe is technically the same. While it's true declared and potential candidates polling at around 20% at this point typically have a roughly 20% chance of winning the nomination, there are mitigating factors at play this time.

Trump's polling lead is not historically normal even for a frontrunner. His dominance in our latest poll is a strong indication people are digging in their heels, as are the interviews I monitor, mode-depending. Some of them I've shared with all of you during the live show. No non-incumbent candidate polling at or above 50% at this point has lost the nomination in the modern era.

Yes, even this early in the nomination process.

The oft-cited analogy to Rudy Giuliani is grossly flawed. He never polled at these levels and in truth struggled to hold even a third of the primary vote before he lost the lead and eventually the nomination. The same is true of the equally cited example of Hillary Clinton in 2008.

DeSantis' roughly 20% historical likelihood for prior candidates polling at roughly 20% is essentially rendered irrelevant by the fact Trump is at 50% or higher. The window to seize on an opportunity to consolidate anti-frontrunner support has all but closed, if it hasn't been shut altogether. It's no longer a question of persuading Trump-fatigued voters.

Now, Trump's primary opponent must change decided voters' minds, a far more difficult task.

The Republican primary electorate is not a general election electorate. Working class voters will play deciding roles in several key early states. In our latest poll, Trump now enjoys his largest lead yet among this group, an astonishing 54 points, or 64.8% to 10.9%. Among white working class, it's an eye-popping 58 points, 69.2% to 11.4%. To put it plainly, not enough of these voters are going to change their minds. His lead hasn't fallen below 30 points with this demographic to date.

That leaves the only viable path to defeating Trump one that requires dominating among college educated primary voters, which still requires a tightening among non-college voters. But even among college educated primary voters, Trump's support has steadily improved since January 2023. He now leads with college voters by a margin that mirrors his floor with non-college voters.

And it's not just the polling.

The endorsement milestone is significant because there are not one BUT two key indicators for predicting presidential nominations heavily favoring the former president. Endorsements tend to snowball, hence the major endorsement from NRSC Chair Senator Steve Daines of Montana.

That all being said, it's unclear what they will throw at this guy next. It's possible one of these ahistorical legal attacks finally land a blow. But the Limbaugh Rule has held for nearly 7 years, and we should all be very skeptical of any outside influence's ability to break the deep connection Trump has with Republican voters. If he remains loyal to them, there's little reason—as in, we have zero reason—to believe they won't remain loyal to him.

P.S. I've added more to the crosstabs for the Polling Project May 2023. It's linked below for supporters.

On Thursday morning, The New York Times published a remarkably ridiculous "fact-check" targeting "conservative pundits" who cited "wokeness" as a reason Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failed last week. It's remarkable only in the sense the Gray Lady would attempt to provide their preferred political party political cover in the wake of the worst bank failure in the U.S. since the Great Depression using such an intellectually weak argument.

Malinformation, misinformation and disinformation are staples within and between the pages of the Times. Hell, widespread suffering from illusory truth effect is now a critical condition to their business model.

But the collapse of SVB—the 16th largest bank in the U.S.—is the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. As of December 31, 2022, the Federal Reserve estimated SVB to have $209 billion in assets. When Washington Mututal failed on September 25, 2008, the bank had $307 billion in assets. That failure dwarfed the prior largest at Indymac Bank, F.S.B. ($31 billion) on July 11, 2008.

Historically, bank failures are very uncommon. Yet, the second and third largest on record both just occurred in the span of a few days. On March 14, just two days after the collapse of SVB, Signature Bank surpassed Indymac and the August 2009 collapse of Colonial Bank ($26 billion) to claim the third largest bank failure in U.S. history at $110 billion.

That just doesn't happen. It didn't even happen during the Great Recession. In other words, this is cause for serious concern and Americans deserve more serious discourse. Unforunately, here is how the Times prefaced their "fact-check".

How short our collective political memories are. Here we are in September, and many of the same arguments we've heard for the last three cycles are resurfacing just in time to influence the narrative before the pivot to the post-Labor Day period.

Unsurpringly, it's coming from the usual suspects.

Let's address some of those specifically, most notably a few arguments outlined by Nate Silver.

"Upset Democratic special election wins in Alaska and New York over the past two weeks are the latest sign that the political environment might be unusual for a midterm election."

Nonsense. Total nonsense.

In the Alaska at-large special election, the advantage in Republican primary vote share was twice the margin Trump won the state with in 2020, and dwarfed the 36.8% total Democratic primary share of the vote.

As all these "forecasters" know, this was the first time the state implemented rank choice voting. The referendum was pushed by a coalition of Democrats and Establishment Republicans desperately manuevering to insulate incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski from certain primary defeat at the hands of Trump-endorsed Kelly Tshibaka.

It worked, plain and simple, and more than 60% of Alaskan voters will now be representated by someone they otherwise never would've voted for, even if it is only for a few months.

It might be convienant for a liberal analyst cheering on Democrats to cite Mary Peltola's win as an example of "Republicans losing steam" or Trump being "risky for the GOP", but it's also extremely dishonest.

As far as NY-19, we'll come back to that in a bit.

"The past four special elections — two in New York, one in Alaska and one in Minnesota — all occurred after the seizure on Aug. 8, and they all showed excellent results for Democrats. And Democrats have actually gained about a point on the generic ballot since then, although it’s a small enough difference that it could be statistical noise."

Let's first deal with the polling.

Perhaps Democrats are gaining. But says who, the pollsters who routinely overstate Democratic support on the generic ballot, most recently in 2020 and 2018?

The RealClearPolitics final average for the House vote was Democrats +6.8% in 2020. That polling fueled a "consensus" narrative among forecasters expecting Democrats to expand their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives by as many as 15 seats.

How many seats did they win in 2020?

They lost 13 seats, including those rated Leans and Likely Democrat by Cook Political Report and 538. The Democratic advantage in the House vote was less than half the polling average.

In fact, in only three cycles—1986, 1990 and 2018—did Democrats NOT underperform their support indicated by the generic ballot. Further, in only one of those cycles Democrats outperformed, which was in 1990, albeit by a lousy two points. In 1986, the polling was right on the money. In 2018, the 1-point lead for Republicans published by Rasmussen Reports averaged down the Democratic edge in the RealClearPolitics final average. Without it, overstated 13-point leads for Democrats published by CNN and the Los Angeles Times would've almost assuredly resulted in another underperformance.

There are only a few of us who have not blown these races cycle after cycle, Big Data Poll among them. The most recent national survey we conducted at Big Data Poll did in fact find a narrowing lead for Republicans, 42.5% to 41.2%. But that wasn't fueled by increased support for Democrats on the generic ballot, but rather decreased support for Republicans as more GOP-leaning voters moved to "undecided" or out of the likely voter screen, altogether.

None of this even begins to address the issue of summer response bias favoring Democrats before Labor Day. It's real, everyone knows that it is, and yet we are subjected to these overblown conclusions each and every election cycle. 

By the way, Donald Trump led Joe Biden by nearly 5 points—44.4% to 39.5%—in that very same national survey. Trump's outperformance of Generic Republicans and nominees has been consistent not only in our polling, but in other, reliably accurate firms.

In Pennsylvania, the CD Media Big Data Poll found Trump leading Biden 46.6% to 40.0%, while GOP gubernatorial and senatorial candidates ranged from 40.0% to 43.2%. In Georgia, Trump is outperforming GOP candidates by an even larger margin. Emerson College found the same disparity in both states, as well.

And there in lays the major problem with this narrative.

While we certainly see red flags for Republicans, we see other variables being the cause of it.

Put bluntly, elections in which Trump has not played a signfiicant role, Republican enthusiasm and turnout, thus overall electoral performance, has suffered.

"When that seizure occurred, a certain strain of conventional wisdom suggested that this could help Republicans in the midterms, such as by increasing the enthusiasm of GOP voters.2

If that’s true, it’s not showing up in the data."

First, notice how this analysis convienantly omits the historically high turnout in post-raid Republican primaries in Wyoming and Wisconsin.

In the former, normal turnout in the neighborhood of 100,000 votes swelled to more than 170,000. In the latter, what was believed to be a close proxy race pitting Trump against Mike Pence, ended up not at all that close. Trump-endorsed Tim Michels fairly easily defeated the Pence-endorsed former popular lieutenant governor, and Republican turnout increased by nearly 20% to 53% of the total two-party turnout, a reversal from 2018 when Democratic primary votes made up 53% of total turnout.

Furthermore, I reject the example of the MN-01, outright.

In 2018, Democrats outvoted Republicans in the primary districtwide, but not in 2022. In the special election, Republican Brad Finstad won the special and increased the GOP vote share to 51.1% juxtaposed to 48.6% in 2020, 50.1% in 2018, 49.6% in 2016, and 45.7% in 2014.

It's true Trump won the district by a larger margin in 2020, but that's exactly the point. He was not involved in that race, as was the case in NY-19.

Marc Molinaro ran a typical Republican campaign. Turnout suffered because of it and other factors, not because of Trump, who only lost it by 1.5% (49.8% to 48.3%). Yet, Molinaro still only lost by a point in a district the prior Democratic incumbent won by nearly 12 points with more than 350,000 votes, 52.5% to 42.9%. Only about 130,000 voters participated in the special, with the "missing" voters being from more working class precincts.

The Democratic-leaning "analysts" reading into NY-19 are beginning to remind me a little of Republican wishful-thinkers surrounding GA-06 in 2017. While Karen Handel managed to fend off John Ossoff in the special election, Republicans were unwilling to acknowledge the predictive value of the swing in the margin, itself.

Also worth noting, Republicans were at a structural disadvantage given Democrats were holding two primaries in the absense of a single GOP primary, which partly explains the closer-than-expected result in NY-23. Dutchess County, which voted for Biden in 2020, was the one area in which there was a Republican primary, and Molinaro swung it Republican.

For the last three cycles, we've had to suffer through similar narratives disguised as election analysis. Without Trump, the GOP would've lost their majority in the U.S. Senate in the last midterm election cycle. Judging by primary and special election pariticpation rates when he's not holding their hand, it's become crystal clear they are unable to motivate key voting blocs without him.

Perhaps that's what Nate Silver and others hope to help Democrats accomplish.

Nevertheless, in comparing congressional vote shares to presidential vote shares in Minnesota, ignoring entire key races and engaging in other statistical contortions, the left-leaning forecast crowd is hoping we don't notice they're falling back on apples to oranges because it's convienant, not because it's predictive.