April 2, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Trump has led Biden in 88 percent of the five-way race polls taken since Nov. 2023 as third-party candidates could put popular vote into play
By Robert Romano
Former President Donald Trump has led incumbent President Joe Biden in 88 percent of the five-way race polls between Trump, Biden, Robet Kennedy, Jr., Cornell West and jill Stein taken since Nov. 2023, according to RealClearPolling.com — and it could be putting the popular vote nationally into play for the first time in two decades.
Trump has led 29 out of the 33 polls taken nationally between the five candidates since Nov. 2023. Biden has only led two of those polls, or 6 percent, and only one of them was tied. Since national polls track the popular vote rather than the Electoral College, the implication is that the popular vote is up for grabs.
That’s significant because Republicans have been unable to win the popular vote since 2004, when George W. Bush was able to accomplish it in his reelection bid against John Kerry.
Other than that, Republicans have lost the popular vote in five out of the last six elections: 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020.
2004 had been a high-water mark for the GOP, when Bush got 62 million votes. That total was not surpassed by a Republican nominee until 2016, when Trump got 62.9 million votes. And then again in 2020, when Trump got 74.2 million votes.
Comparatively, John McCain only received 59.9 million votes in 2008, and Mitt Romney got 60.9 million. Meanwhile, Barack Obama was able to top 69.4 million in 2008, and 65.9 million in 2012. Then in 2020, amid massive turnout during the Covid pandemic, Biden topped them all with 80 million votes.
Given Trump’s own track record for expanding the GOP base in 2016 and 2020, then, that made his inevitable run in 2024 quite attractive both from a standpoint of keeping his own base of Trump supporters together and with the demonstrated ability to build upon it with each successive run.
From the Republican Party’s perspective, the only thing better than Trump running twice might end up being have had Trump run three times.
And then, in a curious wrinkle, in 2024, with Kennedy running at an average of 12 percent in the five-way race polls—Trump has averaged 41 percent and Biden almost 38 percent—suddenly, the national popular vote is in play.
For Biden, the unfortunate aspect of Kennedy’s run — who initially was running as a Democrat before switching to Independent — is that Kennedy has been consistently pulling more votes from Biden than he has from Trump, setting up a potential spoiler situation.
In the five-way race, in the most recent polls, Trump is averaging a 2.5 percentage point lead, whereas in the two-way race, the lead narrows to 1 percent. To be fair, Trump has been leading a majority of the two-way race polls, too, but the margins are definitely narrower.
It goes without saying that all of this is a monumental shift in national polling that was seen in both 2016 and 2020, when the Democratic candidate was consistently leading the polls and predictably won the popular vote. Maybe not this time. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
Video: Judge Releases Violent Criminal Aliens
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/04/judge-releases-violent-criminal-aliens/
Michael Thielen: California leads the nation in election chaos and confusion. Huntington Beach shows a way forward.
By Michael Thielen
As America’s most populous state, California often leads the nation in both bad and good ideas. After the recent primary election, both extremes were present. In San Francisco, for the first time, a noncitizen serves as a member of the city/county election commission, helping to determine election policies, procedures and ultimately results.
Meanwhile, my hometown of Huntington Beach, Surf City USA, is going in the opposite direction. Huntington Beach just voted to adopt a voter ID measure in city elections, a common sense voter confidence measure already adopted in 34 states.
While Huntington Beach is doing its best to give all voters more faith in our elections, San Francisco highlights the chaos and confusion that lead to voters on all sides lacking confidence in the voting process.
San Francisco does not stop at appointing a noncitizen to the Elections Commission, the city allows noncitizens to vote in school board elections. Seventy-nine percent of Americans reject noncitizen voting, with good reason. In addition to making our elections less secure, it creates administrative challenges for election officials.
And if ever there was a state that needed to make things easier for election officials instead of harder, it is California. California is literally the last state to report election results. Just how bad are elections in California? Last year in Oakland, after lengthy vote-counting delays, the wrong person was declared the winner in a school board election.
Part of the problem is California voting rolls are arguably the worst in the nation. A 2020 report from the Public Interest Legal Foundation found that California was in the top five states for the greatest number of deceased voters participating in the 2016 and 2018 elections and led the nation with the number of interstate duplicate voter registrations credited with voting in more than one state.
Though California was forced to clean up some of its voter rolls, the cleanup is far from complete. In recent months 27 California counties removed five or fewer voter registrations in a two-year federal reporting period, 19 counties reported no data at all, and 21 counties had “more voter registrations than citizens of voting age.
Clean voter lists have bipartisan support, 10 years ago President Obama’s Commission on Election Administration declared them a priority. Because federal law prohibits noncitizens and illegal aliens from voting in federal elections, the move to allow noncitizen voting in California with its inaccurate lists is especially problematic. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 26.7 percent of California’s population of nearly 40 million residents are foreign born, with an estimated 45.6 percent of that number, or over 4.8 million, being noncitizens. Add in automatic voter registration and permitting illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses while banning localities from requiring photo ID to vote, and the state has a recipe for electoral disaster.
Considering California’s long history of failing to maintain voter registration rolls, there is no way San Francisco can accurately maintain two separate rolls.
On the other hand, kudos to Huntington Beach for trying to fight this trend and bring confidence to the election process by passing voter ID. Voters across the political spectrum support voter ID. For example, 77% of people of color support voter ID. So naturally, Democrats in Sacramento have announced they are going to try to ban the popular measure Huntington Beach just passed.
California elections are a disgrace. Wrong winners are declared, results are endlessly delayed, and voting rolls are among the worst in the nation, and more. Instead of trying to clean up their elections, California Democrats go in the opposite direction.
They oppose popular confidence instilling reforms such as voter ID and instead promote unpopular larger roles for noncitizens. No wonder voters do not trust the system. Hollywood could not produce a better horror movie than California elections.
To view online: https://www.ocregister.com/2024/04/01/california-leads-the-nation-in-election-chaos-and-confusion-huntington-beach-shows-a-way-forward/