September 1, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Voter Numbers and New Polling Suggest Pennsylvania Could Flip Back to Trump in 2024
By Bill Wilson
Pennsylvania is one state that could be flipping back into Republican control in 2024 if voter registration numbers and new polling have anything to say about it.
According to numbers from the Pennsylvania Department of State, the state has grown redder in the past year. In 2023 alone, twice as many Democrats have switched to the Republican Party as Republicans have switched to the Democratic party, indicating that Pennsylvania could swing back into GOP control.
On top of that, for the first time since 2015, Trump is seen beating Biden in a high quality poll from Quinnipiac.
The presidential race in Pennsylvania was an extremely contentious one in 2020, with Joe Biden eking out a narrow victory over Trump by a 1.17% margin, after Trump won the state in 2016. However, the pandemic and “vote by mail” initiatives may have played a role in how the Pennsylvania election played out last presidential election.
Now, the worsening Biden economy and the Administration’s continued neglect of the working class have created a harrowing environment that could push Pennsylvania even further into the Republican camp.
The Department of State shows 11,000 Republicans changed registration to Democrat in 2023, but twice as many Democrats, 23,000, switched their registration to Republican in the past year. This puts the Democratic lead over Republicans in Pennsylvania down to 450 thousand votes, down from 700 thousand in 2020, and 900 thousand in 2016.
Polling is looking favorable for Trump in the Keystone State as well, with a June 2023 Quinnipiac poll carrying an early warning sign for Democrats. Trump was up on Biden by 1 point – within the margin of error – but nonetheless this is only the second time since 2015 when Trump has come out ahead of either Biden or Clinton in polling.
The Quinnipiac poll shows Trump beating Biden 47% to 46%, and carrying Independents by 14 percentage points, 51% to 37%.
The Biden economy is absolutely driving this sentiment, with 30% of Pennsylvanians saying the economy is the most important issue, followed by 28% saying preserving Democracy and 9% saying gun violence, while 7% say immigration.
For Republicans and Independents, the economy is by far the most important issue with 47% of Republicans and 36% of Independents agreeing, while preserving democracy is the most important issue for Democrats (34%) followed by gun violence (18%) and abortion (13%).
This is more evidence of a strong class divide in Pennsylvania, considering the economy doesn’t even rank in the top three priorities for Democrats, but is the number one issue for both Republicans and Independents by several points.
What is more, President Biden’s disapproval rating has reached nearly 60% in the state, with the Quinnipiac poll showing voters give Biden a negative 39 - 57 percent approval rating.
Pennsylvanians are unimpressed by the globalist cabal’s attempt to take down Trump with their phony lawsuits as well. A full 56% of Pennsylvanians think the Justice Department's case against Trump for “mishandling documents” is motivated by pure politics, not by the law.
With sobering numbers like these, it will be harder for the political elite to claim a Biden victory in 2024 in Pennsylvania. What’s more, with the right approach Trump could win the Keystone state and possibly the presidency with a larger coalition of working class voters than he did in 2016.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/09/voter-numbers-and-new-polling-suggest-pennsylvania-could-flip-back-to-trump-in-2024/
Video: How Trump Prevented World War III
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM0E5H00uSc
Recession soon? Unemployment jumps to 3.8 percent after 514,000 more Americans say they cannot find a job.
By Robert Romano
The national unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics jumped from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent in August as an additional 514,000 Americans said they could not find work in the Bureau’s household survey. Now 6.3 million Americans are said to be unemployed, the highest in more than a year.
But it did not come with a commensurate drop in the number of Americans saying they were working, which also increased by 222,000 to 161.48 million.
Instead, it came amid a 736,000 increase in the civilian labor force, which included a 525,000 decrease in the number of Americans not in the labor force and a 211,000 increase in the non-institutional civilian population.
This represents Americans entering the labor force, either from the sidelines or for the first time, but being unable to find a job.
The news comes amid another drop in the number of job openings were also down another 338,000 in in July to 8.8 million, a 26.6 percent decrease from its 12 million peak in March 2022, which usually happens during economic slowdowns or recessions, and is associated with increases in unemployment, which is what we’re seeing now.
Other troubling signs include the annual growth of consumer credit that peaked at 9.95 percent in April 2022, dropping to 7.8 percent annualized by Dec. 2022 and now is down to 5.7 percent in June 2023. This indicates Americans have maxed out their credit after the rampant inflation of 2021 and 2022, and are now slowing down spending to catch up on their bills. The economy overheated and so did household budgets.
The slowdown in credit accumulation has also coincided with the slowdown of annualized inflation, which peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022 but now has slowed down to 3.2 percent in July. The July number is actually bouncing off the recent low of 3 percent in June, and so the Federal Reserve is still considering additional interest rate hikes, which should further choke credit accumulation until inflation is normalized.
Which usually means a recession, despite President Joe Biden’s hopes that it will not come to that.
On Aug. 9, President Joe Biden was touting the turnaround at a campaign reception in Albuquerque, N.M., stating “We’re in a situation where inflation is the lowest in two years — at 3 percent…” That was a day before the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the uptick in prices.
Ironically, if Biden is hoping for a downtick in prices, that could mean a recession comes sooner rather than later, even as he resisted such an outlook in a separate speech the same day, “unemployment is down and so is inflation. Remember all the experts, including some that worked for me, told us that to get inflation under control we needed to lower wages and reduce the number of people working. No, I’m — that — that’s been sort of gospel… Not a joke. Seriously. Some of you here in the audience are economists. You know that.”
Biden added, “But I never bought it — the problem was too many people are working or working people are working — making too much money. That’s not the problem.”
Here, Biden is simply hoping that upheaval in labor markets—which are inevitable in the business cycle—will be forestalled until after 2024 when he faces reelection.
On that count, the Federal Reserve is still placing a “significant probability of a recession occurring by the end of 2024,” according to the minutes of its July 25 to July 26 meeting of the Board of Governors that was released Aug. 16.
“Respondents to the Open Market Desk’s Survey of Primary Dealers and Survey of Market Participants in July continued to place significant probability of a recession occurring by the end of 2024. However, the timing of a recession expected by survey respondents was again pushed later, and the probability of avoiding a recession through 2024 grew noticeably.”
That is slightly more optimistic than in June when it had projected that “the effects of the expected further tightening in bank credit conditions, amid already tight financial conditions, would lead to a mild recession starting later this year, followed by a moderately paced recovery. Real GDP was projected to decelerate in the current quarter and the next one before declining modestly in both the fourth quarter of this year and first quarter of next year.”
The Fed in June projected unemployment to keep rise steadily to 4.1 percent this year and up to 4.5 percent in 2024, an implied 1.3 million jobs losses between then and now. Now, at 3.8 percent, it is possible that its projection is coming true. Peak employment might be about to sunset, and with it, so too might President Biden’s reelection hopes.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/09/recession-soon-unemployment-jumps-to-3-8-percent-after-514000-more-americans-say-they-cannot-find-a-job/