With the unfolding contested election, the only clear conclusion is the uniform polls declaring Joe Biden with commanding leads nationally and in states like Wisconsin were laughingly false. It appears that pollsters at newspapers like the Washington Post (which gave Biden a 17 point lead in Wisconsin on Election Day) have succumbed to the same pressures of echo chamber journalism as their journalistic counterparts. Polls on NBC, CNN, and the major newspapers all gave the same reassuring message that only a hardcore group of knuckle-dragging racists were left supporting Donald Trump. It has been a conversation with themselves in an echo chamber of unrelenting negative coverage. That narrative crashed and burned last night. As I noted today, if Trump is reelected, he will have the mainstream media to thank.
This is the result of a movement to set aside objectivity in journalism in favor of advocacy. The most surprised are often those who ignored or avoided the real evidence on the ground of a close election.
The embarrassing protection of Joe Biden from allegations of sexual misconduct, the Hunter Biden scandal, or even serious campaign questions fooled no one. Instead, it further alienated voters as the establishment maintained a uniform narrative against Trump on every and any issue. Moreover, it is hardly surprising that Trump supporters were undercounted by media when it prefaced such requests for self-identification with coverage labeling any Trump supporters as “drug addicts,” Nazis, racists, liars, or brainwashed zombies. How open and forthcoming does NBC expect voters to be in a poll when its analysts are referring to Trump supporters as existing on “lizard brains”?
The media bias ultimately insulated Trump from backlash as the public simply grew suspicious of all media reports. The media has rendered itself as unbelievable as the subject of its current ire. While denouncing Trump as a pathological liar, the media has been pathologically biased. Polls consistently show the media racing Trump to the bottom on trustworthiness. Most of the media now feeds a steady diet of unrelentingly negative stories to a shrinking audience of true believers. Some polls show that the only group deemed less trustworthy than Trump is the media. The Knight Foundation has found that three-fourths of the public believe the media is too biased; some 54 percent believe reporters regularly misrepresent facts, and 28 percent believe reporters make things up entirely.
What I previously wrote deserves repeating:
Thus, polls indicate that the unending attacks on Trump and his supporters in the media are not conditioning but, instead, are repelling voters. They are fulfilling his narrative that voters cannot trust the media. Many voters may still view both Trump and Biden as over-inflated clowns, but they resent being continually conditioned to hit one clown and hug the other. Indeed, if Trump is reelected, he may have the media to thank.
You know, the Media constantly skewing polls in Biden’s favor probably worked to screw Biden. I mean, if you think your candidate is going to win in a landslide, do you really want to stand in line for 2 hours???
I think most Republicans and Trumpers don’t much believe the polls anyway, so they just go vote.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Pretty much. If they thought they had the fattest chance in hell of winning legitimately, none of this would be happening. The DNC is a zombie looking for brains to eat.
Mr. Turley, two things. I am a LONGTIME fan of yours, I am a conservative who voted for Trump, Bush and Bill Clinton twice…make of that what you will. But it’s tremendously short sighted on your part to thank the think tanks or media. Actually it’s dumb. Trump may lose not because of the media, but because of the media, actblue (there’s a reason why all of these states had 10’s of millions of dollars more for the dem candidates and you don’t say a word?…it’s called money laundering), BLM and the direct deposits to actblue through BLM. More than anything…the media you want us to thank…has created 1/2 a country full of lemmings that make them believe Trump is a racist and colluded with Russia.
2nd I read an article from 2012 that this election disproves your whole premise for getting rid of the Electoral College.
“The greatest irony of the Electoral College is that it does precisely the opposite of what the Framers intended: Rather than encouraging presidential candidates to take small states seriously, it results in turning most states into near total irrelevancies. With our two-party monopoly on power in the United States, candidates spend little time, if any, in states that are clearly going to go for the other party — or even for their own party. Thus, there is little reason for President Obama to go to Utah or for Mitt Romney to go to Vermont. The result is that elections are dominated by swing states while campaigns become dominated by the issues affecting those states.”
Trump did EXACTLY what you said doesn’t happen. More than that if you want a socialist country, which I know you don’t…get rid of the EC…let New York, IL (Chicago), California and half of Texas/Florida decide our elections.
I am still a fan of yours, you seem like a very straight shooter…now tell me why I am wrong on the Electoral College.
I’ll try not to shake my head in disappointment.
You are right regarding the electoral college.
With respect to money in politics, you need to be careful not to go down the democrats road.
So long as govenrment has power there will be some person or group seeking to bend that power to its interest.
That is not avoidable.
We should bear that in mind not merely regarding government itself – but also elections.
With the money involved and what is at stake the incentives for fraud and misconduct are enormous.
You do not control fraud and corruption by controlling money.
You do so by limiting power and by imposing rules that are simple and restrict the opportunity for fraud.
When I voted – my signature was checked against voter registration rolls, my ID was then checked. I then filled out a ballot, which I fed into a scanner, that automatically counted that ballot.
I could not get a ballot without establishing BOTH that I was who I said I was AND that I was eligable to vote.
But once I had a ballot in my hands, no one else handled that ballot until AFTER my vote was counted.
Further My vote was counted during the election exactly when that vote was cast.
Neither I nor anyone else had the opportunity to change my vote after the election ended, nor to add/subtract/change ballots or counts.
Further the entire process is trivial to verify after the fact.
All ballots are collected after they are scanned.
Further the number of people who actually voted and the number of ballots scanned and the number of ballots collected and preserved after scanning all match.
The corruption in Washington has stained our constitution, who knows if it can be clean again? An outsider came into their midst and they revealed who they really are and I point to both side’s. Stop counting ballots for another day with one of the most important elections? What was that all about, your choice of candidate wasn’t tallying enough? Now ballots will be mysteriously located for one or the other contenders. I noticed COVID19 seemed to go on holiday the last couple days as well. Is Joe Biden’s character any better then Donald Trump’s as an American President, will there be a special counsel to investigate the many questions about his conduct? There were so many hateful questions about Americans choice in the last election are there none now? I guess not.
I blame both sides for this debacle and I’m sad for all my brother Americans.
Again, Turley never lets a chance go by to criticize the mainstream media. OK, Turley, how are the mainstream media bad or wrong for reporting what polls show? In fact, doesn’t Fox do the same, and weren’t Fox’s predictions very similar, if not identical?
Turley’s premise seems to be that pollsters purposefully misrepresented their results, as if they uniquely don’t care if their product fails on the most public of stages, rendering their reputations and futures worthless. Ridiculous, and whatever the causes of that failure, intelligent observers look forward to the coming autopsies for an explanation – Rasmussen had Biden up 5 yesterday.
Turley might also want to note that like the Hunter laptop, the major media outlets all saw the Steele Dossier 2 months before the 2016 election and chose to not cover it.
We understand his disappointment in the likely result of the election, but as a law professor we should expect more from him than this kind of biased and pointed coverage. By the way, “lizard brain” was a description by a part time contributor on one of the networks competitive with Turley’s Fox News network. Has he heard some of the descriptions of Democrats every night on there?
JF – typical left wing nut.
You completely miss everything.
First: Nearly all Pollsters FAILED miserably in 2016, The FAILED miserably with BREXIT, and they FAILED miserably in 2020.
There is ZERO doubt of this – it is self evident FACT.
It is also a major problem. It is a massive error – way beyond the margin of error.
To an intelligent person it means that the polls are not trustworthy.
Second: Given that the polls have failed, in order to correct that in the future we need to understand WHY. Turley’s speculation as to why seems reasonable to me. But you think it is wrong. Fine, it is still important to determine WHY such a large error.
We can not fix problems if we do not understand their causes.
If you think Turley’s analysis is wrong – fine, give us something better.
Absolutely there are incentives for polsters to get the results correct. We should not discount the importance of those incentives.
But still they got things wrong – and they now have a 5+ year history of significant error.
One would think you might want to figure out why they – and YOU have been so wrong so frequently.
I still question whether the MSM bravado, declaring large win margins for the Left, is ‘ whistling past the graveyard ‘, trying to re-assure Democrat voters of their supremacy on 11-03 . . . OR was it a head-fake to their opposition that they need-int bother to waste their time voting . . . . OR did it all backfire, actually challenging Conservatives to the polls? I tend to suspect the latter, given some of the really goofy tactics the Left have attempted over the past year!
I don’t care for Trump.
I favor him to get back at the media.
They use their freedom of the press to suppress our freedom of speech.
Any way that you look at it, this is a sad day for America. We’ve lost the Fourth Estate. There is no pretense of objectivity. Do these so-called journalists even have a Code of Ethics to which they must adhere? The fact that pollsters facilitated a narrative is equally disgusting!
Assuming Biden does win, it is a sad day for America and its reputation. Catty Kay of BBC America World News pointed out that Europeans were stunned that Americans didn’t reject Trump thoroughly and promptly because of his arrogance, his constant lying, his racism, his misogyny, his xenophobia, his disrespect for alliances that have taken decades to develop, that he cages migrants,separates children from their parents and because America is supposed to be the standard-bearer for democracy. Trump has tarnished America’s reputation for decency, and it appears to Europeans that a substantial number of Americans support the things he stands for, which is not good for America’s reputation.
Limeys can lech mein arsche and any American who sings sycophant to them can too as well.
Many voters may still view both Trump and Biden as over-inflated clowns, but they resent being continually conditioned to hit one clown and hug the other.
They resent being lectured by the very elitist atheists who invoke Earl Warren’s SCOTUS mistaken Abington v. Schempp decision on the establishment clause.
It has been educational and predictable to observe these past decades, the elitist atheists continually and ferociously browbeat, condemn and hurl into Sheol, any American who dares to question the atheists shoot from the hip dogmas, their media high priests quoting their sacred “democracy dies in darkness” texts, their Inquisition courts in our public spaces. Americans are finally realizing that the likes of Pelosi, Schumer, WaPo, NYT, et al are the demons that must be cast out.
If religious exercises are held to be an impermissible activity in schools, religion is placed in an artificial and state-created disadvantage…. And a refusal to permit religious exercises thus is seen, not as the realization of state neutrality, but rather as the establishment of a religion of secularism, or at least, as governmental support of the beliefs of those who think that religious exercises should be conducted only in private. Justice Potter Stewart in Abington v. Schempp
There are two positives that offset a possible Biden victory. 1. SCOTUS is a solid conservative majority. 2. The GOP still control the Senate. This gives us a 2 year reprieve from the disastrous socialist policies we’ve been warned to expect and a Court that won’t uphold EO’s that infringe our rights.
Right on cue:
Politico.com’s headline this morning reads, “Biden looks screwed even if he wins.” The Republicans kept a Senate majority and reduced the Democratic majority in the House. If Biden squeaks by, he will have no popular mandate, no Senate, and no help from the Supreme Court. He won’t be able to pass tax increases, big changes in health care, or his Green New Deal boondoggles. He will have the same headaches confirming his favorite nominees as Trump did, and worse, as a Republican Senate casts a jaundiced eye at Biden’s supporting cast.
The good news is that the election stymied the Democratic Party’s plan for radical transformation of the United States into an Orwellian state enforcing political correctness, and turning the federal budget into a pinata for Democratic constituencies. That’s the genius of the American political system. To make big changes you need either a big majority or a small majority for a very long time, and the Democrats have neither.
https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2020/11/04/the-good-news-is-that-biden-is-screwed-even-if-he-wins-n1124975
And with 1. and 2., court packing is DOA, as is statehood for every Tom, Dick, and Harry. With 2., unless the republicans get squishy, tax increase and repeal of the Trump tax cuts are also DOA.
The real danger to freedom and production is Biden’s control of the regulatory agencies. That means more regulations (especially environmental and financial ones), more oppressive enforcement of the current regulations, and new regulatory “rules.”
We may see a first in the history of the American presidency: A president who pardons his own son.
Biden will impose stricter regulations, but he will be fought through the courts just like Trump has been.
So where was the Republican poll watcher from who wasn’t allowed to do his job and said that if you were GOP you were not allowed in, while if you were Democrat you went right in. That sounds smelly, smelly, smelly to me. Plus, how many of us thought this would be a fair election given the hatred of President Trump and the attempted coup??? If Trump has the election stolen from him, I won’t be happy….. And I have a huge number of friends who feel the same way.
They won’t get away with it.
Poll watcher was in Philadelphia, PA.
Do you have to parrot every Trump/Republican talking point?
Unless some strange facts come to light in the coming days, it seems that the probabilities for re-election are, unfortunately, slim. Thus, I don’t think that the media will agree that its Trump “narrative crashed and burned”. That proposition has as its premise that the media is concerned with truth and accuracy in its reporting, which is simply not the case. The actual goals of most major media outlets are twofold: (1) make money and (2) support the candidate on the left. From that perspective, they seem to have done very well.
there have been a flood of strange facts. pay attention.
We shall see. Thus far I haven’t seen much that has me encouraged.
Next time around, no more mister nice guy
There are a few lessons that are very clear.
1. Billionaires run America. We are their tax slaves. The Democrat party is wholly owned by them at the top. Democrat voters are not our enemies, they are the people too.
2. The Deep State is at the service of billionaires. The Deep state are the entrenched bureaucracies. Not just the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, yes them, but the alphabet soup agency bureaucrat leadership, and the universities too. They are staffed by soulless apparatchiks who are no better than the Soviet ones. Deep staters and higher up bureaucrats are enemies of the people.
3. The mass media inclusive of social media, is in the pocket of billionaires. They are a propaganda ministry, owned by billionaires, and the First Amendment is almost entirely useless now.
4. Billionaires need to be the actual named enemy of the next populist incarnation assuming Trump loses. They are presumptively enemies of the people. They are now guilty until proven innocent. As a class they need severe punishment. They need to be jailed, impoverished, and if necessary, extinguished. Trump was far too kind to them and he failed that way.
5. Silk-stocking Republican saboteurs who stabbed Trump in the back are traitors and they must be punished first, most of all, by any means necessary. They are false flaggers.
6. A lot of the naughty bad tactics that were not ok five years ago, are obviously within the Overton window now. After months of lawless rioting and looting and so forth, law enforcement is emasculated and exhausted and they promise to defund them to boot. Well, that opens up a lot of possibilities. Use your imaginations! For starters, let the “tax revolt” begin
Just understand: power is used and it grows, and if it is not used, it weakens. All liberterian fantasies now are total hogwash and are henceforth condemned. Perhaps wise to stop whining about socialism too. That’s a waste of time. The question is not socialism, or not, that is fantasy thinking. The question is, WHO CONTROLS IT. Of course we retain private property and market pricing mechanisms but when the levers of state power are within grasp they MUST be used to punish enemies, the big ones, not small fry.
Arrest, impoverish, and when necessary, eliminate.
I can see that a lot of the big talk from Bernie Bros, shows those lads had their heads in the right places. If not their hearts. Who knows. Maybe there will be confluence between disappointed Bernie bros and Trumpers.
If they win, when Joe Biden and Kamala begin to openly serve the interests of their billionaire donors, people will see. Income inequality will continue to go up and that is what was driving the Trump phenomenon in the first place. You clueless Biden sycophants miss that dynamic of course but it explains most everything happening now.
Trump is to be commended for sticking his thumb in the eye of the treasonous American in name only, globalist billionaire nation-wreckers. His main mistake was not hitting them hard and fast in the beginning. Trump was too conservative to see where his greatness was leading him, and he hesitated, and was betrayed by the saboteurs he failed to eliminate at the outset.
Oh did I mention the Federal Reserve system? Heck they are always in charge no matter who “wins.” They’ve conjured up trillions for their billionaire buddies while we stumbled through 2020.
Do I sound like some commie? OK. Then you get the point. Capitalist pigs are the enemy of the American people. I mean the big ones. Signed, “SALOTH SAR”
This truly ought to open people’s eyes. No ”Russian disinformation” cover story here. Plain and simple, the media is over-stating the perspective of 5-10% of the nation at the expense of the perspective of 45-50%. Pro-growth, pro-law & order, pro-traditional family values voters need to be proportionately represented among those who report the news and shape opinion. Heads must roll.
End the first amendment already. it’s useless. The people will get the word out on the street when need be. Right now the first amendment just protects billionaire megaphones like Twitter, perverts, and the ACLU rackets going around suing people who dare to pray in public. It’s useless. It only protects the vested interests. You can see how it doesnt even protect students or professors anymore. Forget it. Throw it in the garbage. — Saloth Sar.
Worst case. They can’t seat Harris as she can’t take the oath of office. without violating it at the same time. Hmmm Clinton or who? The Senate can block everything. The Representatives excluding the Pelosites have no power and Pelosi has no power as the democrat anti pelosites will coalesce form a coalition with the GOP and others. and she’s out out out. As is the left can’t get a budget past and it’s pay back time. Senate it’s nominate all you want it’s Garland time. and then there is the Supreme Court. “Hardly a paradise anymore for the socialists.
That’s the worst case. In foreign affairs President Trump can oust the traitor General and replace him an several layers like him easily with three sentences. I don’t trust you. I’ve pulled your clearance. No Clearance no commission.
end of ocnversation. Winning an election does not give one power and this close that works two ways.Nice! Which ones going to pony up the 1200 and 500 first. Ha ha ha .. Given the above the left can’t stop him doing it before January 20.
The General you mention…is that Milley or Esper or Barr (AG). And in general I don’t know how to purge so many if these high career ppl being they ALL bow systemically to the Democrat Party same as DC-MSM-TECH-Govt. employees and all their tentacles-Wall Street-EDU-Celebs….you name it!
Twitter is big brother along with the main stream media very depressing. They think voters are too stupid to make a judgment about what’s real and what’s not. No reporting on possible Biden corruption but constant reporting on Trump grab the pussy tape.
It appears that pollsters at newspapers like the Washington Post (which gave Biden a 17 point lead in Wisconsin on Election Day)
About 30 years ago, 98% of the public had a landline and you could assemble a probability sample through random-digit dialing. Nowadays, pollsters appear to dredge data from wherever they can get it and then massage it using all sorts of a priori assumptions about the composition of the turnout. IOW, the polls are an artifact. Someone’s going to land on the best model. (This year it may have been Trafalgar, an agency that 538 excluded from it’s analyses). The media being the way it is, it wouldn’t surprise me if their polls were a species of psyops – deliberately bad.
Many of the Pinko posters here mistook wishful thinking for analysis.
They felt their TDS and thought that most people felt the same way.
The Pinkos were lied to by the MSM (and their pollsters) because they were gullible consumers of anti-Trump rhetoric.
Well, we all grow up eventually. Time for our resident Pinkos to reflect on their mistakes.
I hope you don’t need your social security, your Medicare or your civil rights. That’s what what 4 more years of the Grifter in Chief will take away from us. Of course the billionaires, the corporations and MCCONNELL and his wife along with the rest of the cronies will be fine.
Bahahahhahahha…turn off CNN.
Why do you refer to yourself as “Justice,” Holmes?
LOL! Racel Maddow, don’t you still have a TV show? Idiot
And you beleive that because ?
What have you been right about ?
Why should you be trusted ?
I have seen absolutely no evidence that Trump, McConnell or republicans are seeking to take away Social Security of Medicare or civil rights.
Of Course medicare and SS are bankrupt and will hit a wall soon enough – and neither political party has the courage to address that.
Chinggis say: When all people who do not agree with you about Trump seem “Pinko” to you, is good idea to check for pink tint on your glasses.
Chinggis:
Pinkos refers to those gullible people who swallowed the MSM manipulation, hook line and sinker.
Those people who allowed their TDS to skew their judgement.
Frankly, the people who stopped thinking.
I think that description fits you.
Chinggis Say: Thank you for making my point. Enjoy your pink tinted glasses.
One thing that should be clear AGAIN, regardless of the ultimate outcome of this election,
is that those on the left side of all of this have been egregiously deluded AGAIN.
the last time I check you are on the media too..
Yes Anonymous, but I used common sense to filter their statements.
Suggest that you try it
Anonymous:
I am being snippy. I apologise.
We – all of us – were lied to about the election.
That isn’t right and we need to turn away from the professional liars.