A new poll by Democracy Institute shows a turning tide in favor of President Trump emerging from the Republican Convention last week. The independent research group – which was one of the few to accurately call Brexit in 2016 – has President Trump beating Joe Biden 48% to 45%.
The researchers attribute the President’s sudden surge to a successful show of strength at the RNC and the inability of Democrats to quell the anarchy and lawlessness destroying American cities. Previous polling shows the vast majority of Americans are strongly opposed to any attempt to defund the police or divert funds from law enforcement, including majorities of Democrats and Hispanics. Yet Joe Biden essentially endorsed a defund agenda, and only recently admitted the protests are violent.
Law and order are only growing in importance as riots rage from coast to coast and the death toll rises due to anarchy. Democracy Institute confirms that restoring law and order is the number one issue for voters right now, with 37% stating it is the most important issue, followed by 27% who say the economy is number one.
Democracy Institute found that President Trump’s lead widens across key swing states, with Trump leading Biden 49% to 42% in battlegrounds. Trump is leading 48 to 45 in Minnesota, 47 to 44 in Florida, and 47 to 43 in New Hampshire.
The Republican convention helped President Trump lock in a sizeable lead by securing voter allegiance, but the DNC barely helped Biden. Twenty-one percent of respondents say they’re ready to support President Trump after the Republican convention but just eight percent say the Democrat convention swayed their vote in favor of Biden. What’s more, only 3% of probable Trump voters say they could change their mind, while 9% of Biden voters say they could.
Democracy Institute’s director Patrick Basham noted that Trump’s sudden surge can can be attributed to Biden and the Democrats’ refusal to condemn the violent mobs destroying cities. Biden has maintained for months that the protests are “peaceful” and only recently admitted that some of the protests have turned violent.
Basham noted that, “The Biden campaign made this move for one simple reason. Its own internal polling numbers revealed what Democracy Institute/Sunday Express polls have shown for the past three months: the overwhelming majority of Americans, including Black voters, are opposed to the organized anarchy – looting, vandalism, mayhem, and murdering of innocent people – explicitly and implicitly cheered on by a considerable cabal of Democratic politicians, while an even large number simply turned a blind eye.”
This sentiment confirms what a number of other polls have found, though the reality is rarely covered by the mainstream media. A recent Hill-HarrisX poll shows that President Trump gained 9 points with Black voters and 2 points with Hispanics during the Republican convention last week, compared to the same poll conducted August 8-11. President Trump’s support among Black voters rose from 15% in early August to 24% last week, and his support among Hispanics rose from 30% in early August to 32% last week. Clearly, President Trump’s commitment to law and order and promise to support law enforcement is helping, not hurting, with minority voters.
Market Research Foundation pointed out in early August that President Trump is actually gaining Black and Hispanic voters as well as men, independents, and West Coasters. As shown below, Trump gained 4 points with Independents and 3 points with men, and 2 points each with Black and Hispanic voters over a two-week period in August that spanned the violent Portland standoff as shown below.
In June, Market Research Foundation noted that Trump’s approval rating climbed with both groups after the George Floyd riots prompted him to take a tougher stance on crime, as shown below.
Trump’s sudden overwhelming lead might sound out of step with the bulk of polls over the past few months, but as Market Research Foundation recently pointed out, a majority of polls showing Trump trailing Biden are statistically flawed.
First, several recent polls are under scrutiny for oversampling Democrats and Democrat-leaning populations compared to their actual size of the electorate. One CNBC poll oversampled younger voters by 20% and undersampled older voters by 15% and Republicans by 8%, all of which skewed the answers in Biden’s direction.
An August 10-11 Reuters/Ipsos poll contained a sample of voters that did not resemble the 2016 electorate at all. The pollsters constructed a sample of 50% Democrats and 37% Republicans, despite Republicans making up 48% of the 2016 electorate.
It’s not hard to paint Biden as a winning candidate when oversampling members of his own party and undersampling the opposition. This is one more example of mainstream polling bias intended to mislead instead of inform, and that deception appears to be creating an issue of its own – Republicans and independents are less willing to share their real views with pollsters.
A recent study from CloudResearch confirms that Republicans and Independents are twice as likely as Democrats to feel uncomfortable sharing who they are voting for in phone surveys. The researchers controlled for age, race, and income, but political party was the only characteristic consistently correlated with a reluctance to share their views.
President Trump’s lead appears to have widened to the point where even Democrat-friendly sample sizes and Republican fear of backlash are not enough to skew the polls in Biden’s direction. The number one issue for a majority of Americans, including key constituencies the Democrats are desperate to hold onto, is restoring law and order. Unfortunately for Biden, he has embraced the exact opposite for far too long to be taken seriously when he suddenly admits the radical anarchists toppling buildings and setting cars on fire are not “peaceful”.
