Often astute by quirky ex-law prof/blogger Ann Althouse presented readers with a poll this morning asking who she should vote for and whom they thought she would vote for. Althouse is a denizen of Madison, Wisconsin, and believed to be a moderate liberal who typically votes for Democrats. A long-time blogger whose readers are swelled by the ranks of former students, she has somehow accumulated a group of mostly conservative commenters. They also tend to be knowledgeable, analytical and articulate
The results of the poll are overwhelming enough to suggest some accuracy, at least in regard to the group polled. 79% said that Althouse “should vote for Trump.” Only 4% voted that Ann should vote for Harris. The rest opined that she will vote for no one.
What’s going on here?
Ethics Alarms 
It’s a cross reference that shows her readership favors Trump based on the aggregate “should”, but her readership also, in general cannot prove bias in her commentary as they are generally equally split three ways on who they think she “would” vote for.
I think it tells us Ann’s readership and commentariat are “mostly conservative …. They also tend to be knowledgeable, analytical and articulate.” Oftentimes more so than Ann.
It’s an interesting comparison with Prof. Turley’s “Res Ipsa Loquitor” commentariat, which seems to be relatively feral and more often than not attacks him. I wonder whether Ann gets a pass from the paid Dem junk commenters while Prof. Turley, a conservative, is targeted by them.
Ann also carefully moderates her comments. Turley clearly does not, although better in the last couple years.
Correct. I forgot about all the comments “removed by the author.”
I think also that Turley is a bigger target. He writes columns for The Hill, appears on Fox News, testifies before Congress, etc.
Does Althouse do anything like that?
Jack asked, “What’s going on here?”
Just adding up the Should Vote For Trump vs Should Vote For Harris vs Should Vote For No One it’s, 79% should vote for Trump vs 4% should vote for Harris and 18% should vote for no one. That tells me that a majority of Althouse’s participants overwhelming favor Trump, it’s a major statement about what the participants think of Harris, and a reasonably strong statement that there is still a lot of people that dislike both candidates which could be undecided Independents or conflicted anti-Trump Republicans.
The skew of this poll towards Trump is interesting but lets ignore that for a moment and focus on that 18% that think Althouse should vote for no one. From other polls I’ve seen, that 18% might actually be a decent representation of the public that is undecided. That’s nearly 20% of the population that could be undecided and we’re only 42 days away from the election. Right now, I personally think that if the election were held today and that roughly 20% of undecided voters didn’t vote at all, I think the election would be a dead heat and likely so close that they wouldn’t be able to accurately call it for at least a month. So what I’m seeing is that roughly 20% of voters are prime targets for a short term 11th hour October smear campaign that will plaster some kind of circumstantial evidence across the media that’s so astounding that people would be shocked if it wasn’t accurate. There will be absolutely no way to effectively counter the smear campaign propaganda in such a short span of time.
So if you take into consideration what we’ve seen from the political left and their lapdog Pravda-USA media and consider how effective they have been at promoting their routine short term guilty until proven innocent propaganda, who do you think will come up with the most effective short term smear campaign to directly target that 20% of undecided voters and rig the election with a anti-Trump media propaganda blitz?
All that said; we have absolutely no idea how many of those undecided voters will swallow an 11th hour smear campaign and who will see through the ends justify the means tactic and completely reject it because of the timing. Even life long Democrats like Alan Dershowitz have openly stated that Trump comes out well ahead on many hot topic policy issues, and Trump is a thoughtful leader in private and out of the public eye, but he falls well behind Harris in character traits presented to the public. The Harris rebranding media blitz has been successful in lying to the public and presenting her as moderate and presidential. So it comes down to character vs policy; therefore, I’m thinking that the 11th hour smear campaign will try to drive home all the negative Trump character traits and blindly ignore policy.
Yup, I know those are some bold predictions but at least they are based on observed tactical patterns of the political left and not just pissing in the wind.
I still say…
In so many ways, I hope I’m wrong.
On the other hand, undecideds usually break for the incumbent, picking the devil they know over the devil they don’t. But who is that, in this race? I’d say the former President, but it’s hard to know for sure.
I’d say the devil they know has to be Trump, because it’s so self-evident that Harris is a chameleon that even her supporters try to explain it away.
“So it comes down to character vs policy.”
Sorry, “character” disappeared from presidential politics with the arrival of William Jefferson Clinton and his lovely wife. Two scurrilous grifters, one a rapist and serial philanderer, the other a seller of her alleged future administration to any bidder.
And how does Kamala Harris rank on the character front? If our granddaughter came to me seeking my thoughts on how she should pursue a career in politics, would I tell her to just emulate Kamala Harris?
Old Bill asked, “…how does Kamala Harris rank on the character front?”
Well according to the political left’s portrayal of Harris, it seems to me like the media thinks that she has the character that’s just short of a saint and Trump has the character of an evil manipulating and lying fascist dictator who’s literally trying to destroy democracy.
In reality, Harris is a very extreme progressive that’s lying to the public with constant blow sunshine up our ass pro Harris propaganda, trying to portray her as a moderate liberal that’s worried about our country, hiding her true policy agendas because she knows she cannot win on them, and openly lying through their teeth about Trump. Her entire campaign is a propaganda bait and switch.
It seems to me that the left is trying to turn this election into a vote on saintly character (Harris) vs demonic character (Trump) and absolutely nothing else. Pay close attention to the pro Harris ads.
What do you mean? This is probably a representative group of Americans. Let’s look at the 2020 Election. There were roughly 160 million Americans registered to vote, 80 million voted for Trump, 81 million for Biden. The total registered voters was upped to 163 million about the time of the election, then moved back down to 160 million soon afterwards (possibly to keep the number of votes from exceeding the number of voters). So, there was essentially 100% voter turnout, but all the statistics show about 65-70% voter turnout, or ~110 million voters actually voted. If we assume that the Democrats in charge of the polls didn’t add votes to Trump, then Trump’s actually support was about 70% of the votes cast by voters.
If that is actually reality, then 79% for Trump is fairly realistic.
Interesting. You’re suggesting vote fraud on a massive scale in 2020. Historically, voter turnout has been in the 60s percent-wise.
I am presenting the facts as I have found them. The number of registered voters in the US was 160 million before the 2020 election and was 160 million in June. Now, it is reported that this went up to 163 million by November of 2020. Donald Trump received 80 million votes and Joe Biden 81 million votes. That is pretty close to 100% voter turnout, but no source I have found put that above 70% voter turnout. Some states seem to be as low as 35%. Come to your own conclusion. Maybe there is something that I am missing here, some factor that I am not considering, but that is what I saw in 2020 and nothing I have seen since has contradicted it.
Well, the numbers are pretty straightforward, so there isn’t much to mess up, unless like you said, something is just being missed. If all those numbers are correct, the implication is simple: actual voter fraud on a scale we never imagined.
When we voted on paper all on the same day, they had the results by the morning. Now, with all the electronics, it takes a week or more after the election even though many of the votes were cast and counted months in advance.
Why do they need all that time? Is is because they didn’t have enough time to make enough votes in 2016? Just a thought.
Michael R. wrote, “…votes were cast and counted months in advance.”
As far as I know, it’s illegal to count ANY votes prior to the opening of the polls on the morning of election day.
Why? Isn’t that a terrible security risk, to have cast ballots sitting uncounted in a room somewhere for months. In the last election, Democratic operatives were given keys to the rooms where the ballots were stores as a condition of the ‘ZuckBucks’ initiatives.
Michael R. asked, “Isn’t that a terrible security risk, to have cast ballots sitting uncounted in a room somewhere for months.”
Not likely to be much of a security risk, it’s not like the ballots have been unsealed and removed from the envelopes they arrived in. There are procedures that poll workers must go through if they come across an envelope that appears to have been opened.
I’ll know more details about such procedures after the November election is completed this year. I was just recently sworn in as a poll worker and, as a recent retiree, I volunteered to work the second shift which will include the tasks after the polls close – how ever long those tasks take.
Joel Mundt wrote, “Historically, voter turnout has been in the 60s percent-wise.”
I’m a bit confused.
There are statistical percentages of registered voters and percentages of eligible voters, are these percentages getting conflated with each other?
Steve,
That’s a GREAT question. I remember seeing numbers in the 60+% range, but I do NOT know which number was being presented. There has to be a website somewhere that gives the breakdowns.
I’ll do some searching around. Thanks for asking!!
ok, so I am looking at a site — kff.org — no idea who they are but it’s probably ballpark.
For 2016, they show 157M registered votes being 70% of the voting population, and 137M voted, being 61% of the voting population, but maybe 86% of the registered voters.
For 2020, they show 168M registered, 73% of the voting population, and 155M voted, 63% of the voting population, which would be about 92% of registered voters.
Those numbers roughly jibe with my recollections. In 2016 Trump got about 66M and lost the popular vote by several million, so 70M for Clinton seems about right.
In 2020 Trump got about 75M and Biden 80M so 155M seems about right also.
The turnout numbers you see in the press are always percentages of eligible voters, so 61 and 63% falls into line with what you read about.
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You can see why there are voter registration drives — if you got even 1% of the eligible population to register, that’s over 2 million voters.
If they actually thought they would win the election, why would they be trying to assassinate their opponent? There’s a large contingent of voters who plan to vote for Trump but will not openly acknowledge it because they don’t want to endure the childish harassment that comes with it, and you only see evidence of this in anonymous polls The democrats are aware of this contingent but have no idea how large it is, and that worries them greatly. so their solution seems to be to eliminate their opponent.
Althouse mused in another of her posts,
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2024/09/a-question-id-like-to-ask-kamala-harris.html ,
that she wonders, if Harris should lose the election, whether she would 25th Amendment SloJoe out of office before the inauguration so she could “…at least attain the distinction of becoming the first woman President and enjoy the solace of a short stint as the President, perhaps inspiring the nation to long for the full-term presidency we missed or to celebrate you for saving us from the last few months of depending on the declining husk of a President, Joe Biden.“
An interesting idea to ponder relative to how it might affect a future run by Harris. I would think the dems won’t ever want to touch her again if she loses, and even less so if she pulled a stunt like that, but who knows.
Do Anne’s comments in that post give any clues as to her leanings on the voting poll?
Well, now she is just wandering off into fantasy land.
In the first place, the 25th Amendment only makes the VP acting president. That’s happened with other VPs before, by mutual consent.
Second, the 25th Amendment is not a unilateral decision, it requires both the VP and a majority of the cabinet. If she has just lost the election, she has such a firm grip on the party that she can get most of the Cabinet to depose the sitting president?
Third, if she tried such a stunt, the main thing I believe it would accomplish would be to further divide her party. If it came to a vote in Congress, I hope the GOP could suppress their laughter as they voted it down. I wonder how many Democrats in Congress would actually vote for this, besides the squad.
Not even Harris is dumb enough to try such a stunt, in my opinion.