I earlier wrote a post about my GOP mother, who this year is not only not voting for Trump but believes him to be the anti-Christ. Really!
Yet this extends further into my family, providing an odd disconnect between the polls and my reality that I’ve never seen before in a cycle.
My family poll has only three participants yet it has always been my personal bellwether for the state of GOP races both local and national.
My poll is tilted 100% Republican and by no means is it scientific. Still, it is telling.
The three participants:
Mom: 73, Hispanic Republican woman, a lifelong GOPer made solid by her father, Reagan.
Sister: 47, Mother of three, staunch Republican supporter. She is the suburban housewife.
Brother-in-Law: 47, Father of three, white, educated and affluent. A seriously hardcore Republican and wisconsinite who supports and loves Governor Walker. Yeah, that kind of hardcore.
In 2012, this group went solidly for Romney — who at this point looks like Eisenhower in comparison to Trump.
Polls at the time supported this dynamic.
But in 2016 it is different and oddly, it is not reflected in the polls as per normal — Trump appears to have 90% of the GOP base under his slimy thumb.
My poll says otherwise, my poll says GOP support is not there - thus the disconnect.
My mother, as I said before, will vote for Hillary in this election — an astonishing turn as is.
My sister, she who absorbs her husband’s GOP blather day in and out, sent me an email where she told me her true feelings about Trump:
“He is a scumbag.”
She went on to say she likely would not for Hillary but will likely abstain from voting at all.
My brother-in-law, who is still climate change denier and Obama hater, has been positively silent, saying nothing except that he didn’t know if he’d vote for Trump. Said he also would probably abstain.
Huh? This coming from the guy who went to great lengths to espouse the greatness of Sarah Palin.
In these rough terms, by my bells, Trump(et) should not be even close.
And yet, here he is.
So….why? Why, when solid GOPers are fleeing, is Trump so close in polls?
My two main suspects for this disconnect are the emergence of the “uneducated white voter” and the weaker opposition. The third suspect, a true x-factor, is abstention.
Uneducated, white voter: All of a sudden there seems to be enough of this demographic to tilt this entire election. Converse is that Hillary should gain amongst the minority groups but apparently there are hundreds of millions uneducated voters getting ready to vote Trump!
Point is that a group we’ve never talked about is suddenly so relevant to this election. Seems to reason they should have been front and center to fight back Black Barry in 2008 and 2012 but weren’t.
Where did all these white idiots come from? And what happened to minorities ‘tilting’ elections? Seems to have flipped in one cycle.
Weaker opposition: This makes more sense as Hillary is nowhere near the candidate that Barack or Bill were. She is likely a better public servant than either but not campaigner.
Problem with this argument is that Hillary’s opponent is so much worse than Bill’s or Barry’s that the point should be null and void. We know she is qualified, at least.
Abstention: This one is tricky and has received little attention — how do pollsters handle those who claim they will abstain? My sister will not vote for either (and I’m sure there are many more) — what does a pollster do when confronted by someone like her? Is that person tossed in with the candidate of their party affiliation?
In many ways I believe many Trump supporters are under the surface — they don’t want to publicly admit it out of fear of ridicule but will do so to a pollster on the phone.
So which is real? The polls or my familigia-meter?
This has never happened before so I’m not sure what to think. I imagine, as usual, that the truth is somewhere in the middle, resulting from a combination of forces and variants.
Abstaining voters, more than any other, intrigues me the most.
For example, what percentage of each parties affiliated voters are going to abstain? How does that affect polling as a whole as well as the effectiveness of party I.D.? This is not so much ‘turnout’ because these are people will show-up at the polls and likely vote GOP down ballot.
In my case, of the three participants, 66% of them will likely abstain! And the third will be voting for Hillary, the opposition.
And that’s as close as I can come to a conclusion - perhaps the disconnect originates from the fact that “Abstain” is not on the ballot this year.