June 19, 2024
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Uncommitted Voters in Battleground States Favor Trump – But will they Vote?
By Bill Wilson
According to a large survey done by the Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, non-committed voters who feel disillusioned with the political system still trust former President Donald Trump over incumbent President Biden on most major electoral issues by double digits.
The post conducted a survey of over 3,500 low propensity voters in six battleground states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – that fall into categories of either infrequent voters, new voters, or uncommitted voters.
According to the Post, the sample of Deciders included one or more of the following categories: individuals who voted in either 2020 or 2016 but not both, voters under age 25, voters who registered after 2022, voters who said they were not committed to either Trump or Biden, and voters who switched parties between 2016 and 2020.
The Post has dubbed these sporadic, non-committed voters the “Deciders” and noted Deciders lean younger and more ethnically diverse than frequent voters. According to the research, Deciders approve of Trump over Biden by around thirteen points, even though they largely feel dissatisfied with their political options.
It's not new information that infrequent voters favored Trump in the last two election cycles, but the fact that current infrequent voters are more likely to overlap with groups Democrats have traditionally dominated with – younger voters and minorities – this does pose a serious threat to Biden.
According to the Post’s extrapolations, a full 61 percent of registered voters in the six battleground states are Deciders, with 33 percent being infrequent voters and 44 percent being uncommitted to Trump or Biden, and 17 percent fitting both groups. The remaining 39% of registered voters are the non-Deciders, voters in battleground states who are committed to Biden or Trump and likely to turn out in November due to their voting patterns.
Whether the Deciders will vote and how they will vote remain wide open to a variety of factors, but the data does reveal an edge for Trump among Deciders, and that on key issues like the economy and immigration, Deciders favor Trump over Biden.
According to the survey, Deciders favor Trump over Biden by around six percentage points – 44 percent to 38 percent – in a head-to-head race. At the same time, when Kennedy is added to the ballot, a full 61 percent of Deciders say they would definitely or probably vote for Kennedy.
Although Deciders rate both Trump (53 percent) and Biden (66 percent) negatively, Trump enjoys a higher favorable rating (47 percent) than Biden does (34 percent). In other words, while Biden is 32 percentage points in the negative with Deciders, Trump is a mere six points in the negative, a 26-point gap in Trump’s favor.
On key issues, Deciders strongly favor Trump on seven out of the ten issues, including the economy and immigration. Deciders favor Trump on the economy by 32 points (53 percent to 21 percent), on immigration by 28 points (49 percent to 21 percent), on crime by 22 points (41 percent to 19 percent), on the Israel-Hamas war by 16 points (35 percent to 19 percent), on the Russia-Ukraine war by thirteen points (37 percent to 24 percent), and even on “threats to democracy” by nine points (38 percent to 29 percent) and gun control by six points (32 percent to 26 percent).
The only issues where Deciders favor Biden are climate change by 17 points (35 percent to 18 percent), racism by 14 points (35 percent to 21 percent) and abortion by 11 points (36 percent to 25 percent). However, climate change, racism and abortion are relatively low priorities according to the data.
Overall, while Deciders are being placed in that category specifically because they will have an outsized impact on the electoral results in battleground states and because they are uncommitted, Deciders trust Trump over Biden on a multitude of issues and are slightly more open to Trump as a candidate over Biden.
Other research Daily Torch reported on earlier this month revealed a similar conservative-friendly lean among new voters who lean young and Hispanic. We noted that a new data report from BSP Research and UnidosUS shows that newer voters entering the voter pool – either formerly non-voters or younger voters who were ineligible to vote previously – skew heavily independent and are less likely to be Democrats than older minorities are.
The UnidosUS report found that new registered Latino voters are significantly less likely to identify as Democrats compared to established voters. Just 45 percent of newer voters identity as Democrats, compared to 59 percent of more established (and usually older) voters, a fourteen point difference.
What should be taken away is that a majority of eligible voters in battleground states are in the persuadable or new voter category, and uncommitted voters skew young, minority, or low propensity. Yet, despite minorities and young people supporting Biden by wide double digits in 2020, they are leaning away from Biden.
Whether these voters turn out to vote in November or decide to sit out the next election remains to be seen, but the Post’s findings highlight the large impact of low propensity voters in battleground states.
Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/06/uncommitted-voters-in-battleground-states-favor-trump-but-will-they-vote/
Video: How Biden’s Actions Encourage Extremism
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxN71u_RAgk
Something Fishy at House Intel Committee
By Rick Manning
The D.C. Swamp is full of hypocrisy and double talk with little that comes out of it which doesn’t need an interpreter. Much to my surprise, on many of the media programs which I appear on regularly, that is the role which I play – Swamp Decoder.
One of the relatively under the radar issues which is currently percolating in the bowels of our Capitol is the loud complaining by the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Turner over the appointment of two of his fellow Republican members, Scott Perry and Ronny Jackson, to the very Committee from which Adam Schiff pronounced lie after lie during the Russiagate scandal.
Turner's complaints are unusual for many reasons, but the most obvious is that he really serves in his Chairmanship at the pleasure of the Speaker of the House. His willingness to openly demand that he control who gets a seat on his committee is a clear demonstration of the challenges Speaker Mike Johnson faces on a daily basis. The fact is that no one fears him, because three Republicans can vote him out of office unless Democrats save him.
The most recent attempt to remove the Speaker by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, ended when Democrats voted to save the Speaker along with most Republican members including the national security/Intel wing of the GOP House led by Turner.
The result is that rather than Turner owing his job to Speaker Johnson, the dynamic is reversed. Empowering the House Intelligence Committee Chairman to vocally dispute the Speaker’s choices for the Committee.
Democrat Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joined Turner in attacking the appointees through a separate press availability stating that he would seek to have them removed if he were Speaker.
So who are these brigands causing such gastric distress amongst the ranks of the elected defenders of the deep state?
Representative Scott Perry (R-Pa.) is a retired U.S. Army National Guard Brigadier General – a perfect person to add to the Intelligence Committee as someone who has had a blood stake in the decisions coming from the intelligence gathered over the past thirty plus years. But Perry was not just a weekend soldier. He flew 44 helicopter missions in Iraq and was qualified to fly every rotary aircraft in the U.S. Army. Perry is a man who understands warfare and its high costs, exactly the right choice for the Intel Committee.
One might ask, what is Perry’s offense? In the wake of January 6, the overzealous FBI confiscated his cell phone in an attempt to implicate him in the events of that day. Apart from the public embarrassment of the FBI’s very public phone theft, Perry has been a vocal and honest leader in the House Freedom Caucus using his knowledge and strong personal belief system about our Constitution and the liberties it guarantees as a guiding star as he legislates. Perry has also had the audacity to question official narratives surrounding the intelligence community’s abuse of power in their attempt to undermine President Trump’s presidency through Russiagate.
Representative Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) is a former Captain in the U.S. Navy’s medical corps. He served as the official White House physician from 2013 to 2018 serving both President Obama and Trump, prior to winning a seat in Congress. The president’s physician is privy to some of the most important intelligence information of anyone on earth – the physical and mental state of the most powerful person in the world. Yet somehow the intelligence community protectorate find him unsuitable to serve on a Committee overseeing their activities.
Representatives Scott Perry and Ronny Jackson are the right Members to ask the tough questions of our nation’s leading intelligence officials behind closed doors, and Speaker Mike Johnson should be praised for appointing Members concerned about both our national security and the civil liberties which make our country unique in the world.
Contrast the reaction to Perry and Jackson to the strange case of then Speaker Nancy Pelosi ally Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.). In 2015, Swalwell was appointed to serve on this very House Intelligence committee. It turns out that Swalwell also had an uncomfortably close relationship with a Chinese spy. None of the paragons of protecting the nation complained at all about spilling the nation’s secrets to someone who hung with someone paid to get information for the enemy. When found out by the general public, Swalwell wasn’t booted from Congress. Nope, he got a minor don’t do it again from the flaccid House Ethics Committee and was appointed to get this, the Homeland Security Committee and the Judiciary Committee.
The very Committees that oversee our FBI, Justice Department and the various spying components of the Department of Homeland Security. I’m sure his former paramour, who is now back in China, was devastated to learn that she was not able to continue collecting information based upon his new responsibilities.
So in the upside down world of D.C. speak, some would have you believe that Brigadier General (Ret) Scott Perry and Captain Ronny Jackson are not fit to serve on the House Intelligence Committee, but no one had any problems with San Francisco lawyer and Chinese confidante Eric Swalwell getting all the secret scoops.
With all that being said, I will let the reader review the facts and decode this one for themselves. But Magic Eight Ball says, ‘something smells mighty fishy.’
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/06/something-fishy-at-house-intel-committee/