The media obsession with polls, “horse races” and determining who’s up and/or down continues.
The Hill has given us the latest read on how this presidential campaign will turn out.
The conclusion? Polling data may be skewed beyond all recognition because of the high unfavorable ratings of both major-party nominees-to-be.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/281910-doubts-creep-into-trump-clinton-polls
The pollsters are having difficulty taking their findings to the bank. Republican presumptive nominee Donald J. Trump’s favorable ratings are in the tank; Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton’s plus-side scores are right behind Trump’s.
Voters’ fickleness puts more guesswork into the polling, according to The Hill.
Will it be a high-turnout or low-turnout election? My own guess is that it’ll be the latter. Voters might decide the choices between the major-party picks are so dismal that they’ll just sit it out. They might not want to consider a third option because that ticket has no chance of winning.
Then again …
Some pollsters think the turnout will be high as voters are motivated to vote against the other candidate.
The anti-Clinton voter bloc will be set to vote for Trump. And vice versa.
All of this seems to be the ingredients tailor-made for a patently miserable campaign.
Hey, hasn’t Trump himself declared he has no intention to “change”?
My fellow Americans … we are in for a rough ride to the finish line.
I’m an odd duck. By that I mean I don’t fear most things the “media” trots out to fill the 24-hour news cycle. I mean that my estimate of those who can apply arithmetic to everyday matters (and to ‘momentous’ ones in the ‘news’) has declined over the years. I remain serenely detached about political matters (with the occasional exception of local ones) – knowing by simple arithmetic that any one single vote matters not one whit.
One false-ism goes: “if you don’t vote you have no right to complain” – ironic in that it narrows the idea of ‘rights’ and betrays igorance of the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I believe the American Constitution is mostly silent about the popular vote which has spring up state by state since 1788.
Contrast that with the bedrock contained in “freedom of speech (or) the press” and peaceful assembly (though it is lreported both have been lately eroded on various college campuses).
Speaking of campuses, when I was a child at a small Indiana college, a popular pithy warning went: “18 will get you 20” – referring to “statutory rape”.
By then 18 also got you the same vote as the rest of us.
When I hear of trigger warnings against expressions that in my day were merely in the fringe (but are now out-of-bounds on those various college courses) I really know my own duck feathers are glaringly un-fashionable.
So – I distrust my own feelings about others’ voting behavior – their apathy, “wasting” their votes, and how many will react to the next Trump Card (a seeming endless deck).
At a minimum, failing to vote muffles one’s voice a good bit.