[nathanbedford]

During the primary season I was forced in the schizophrenic role of opposing Trump on this forum but defending Trump to my German neighbors who uniformly regarded him as a Philistine. When Brixet occurred I used that as an analogy, "if you want to understand the Trump phenomenon you must understand Brixet." But my German neighbors, nevermind the establishment, simply did not get Brixet. Perhaps that's because Germany is a very successful exporter of 40% of its GNP. When I suggested to them that the English reaction to the flood of refugees into Germany was really a reaction to loss of sovereignty, they simply looked blankly in return. Angela Merkel presumes to make a decision on behalf of 300 million EU citizens who had no control over their destiny as refugees who were admitted into Germany could freely diffuse into the other countries.

I count the attitude of the Germans to be a function of their extremely limited source of information about America, it is as though all political information came to Americans through National Public Radio and MSNBC. The culture is much like the culture of an American university.

Today, they are appalled that the nation might elect Donald Trump so to defend him requires the teaching of a veritable cram course not just on American politics but on European politics. It's only very lately, for example, that public opinion has begun clearly to swing against the refugee policy. The Germans I talked to simply did not understand the threat from Islam, or even the threat to their way of life from an in-flood of refugees. They uncritically accept the leftist premise that anything can be accomplished by education, that man is inherently a blank slate which requires only the proper education to make model citizens of him. They simply do not understand what Islam represents.

As to the accuracy of polling in America, Real Clear Politics averages actually gives us a very good indicator of how the election is going to go. They were pretty accurate in 2012, for example. If the election is close, I think the bias that you allege to be in the polls of over counting Democrats will simply not be there, it was not there in 2012 in many polls. In fact, all the assurances that we got on these threads that the polls were wrong because the Democrats were oversampled was just plain wishful thinking. When will conservatives begin to trust other conservatives with the truth?

That brings up the next problem relating to a close election: the ground game. Trump has no ground game and the quality of the Republicans ground game which he inherits is questionable at best. The ground game of the Obama campaign in Ohio, for example, was so good that it exceeded pollsters expectations and there is reason to believe that Trump will be vulnerable in a close elections to the ground game which will have been inherited by Hillary. There is always the question of cheating which favors Democrats in close elections.

The most dangerous thing in politics is to underestimate your enemy and to disbelieve unfavorable polls.

[sargon]

If I remember correctly, though, these same organizations that were accurate in 2012 were very much off in 2014.

These outfits tend to be in denial and miss these wave elections. Same thing happened in 1994 (and 1980).

In elections such as 2008 and 2012, the "accuracy" of the mainstream pollsters can be attributed in large part to them getting the party splits and voter enthusiasm right.

In those other cycles that I referenced, in each case they missed the "wave", and I think that's exactly what's happening this cycle.

As for "disbelieving unfavorable polls", there aren't even that many of those left to disbelieve. Even with the obvious pro-Hillary bias, the polls have been trending in Trump's direction. And we also know historically that undecideds tend to break against the incumbent in such instances, and while Hillary isn't technically an incumbent, she's certainly a proxy for one, and those considerations still apply, IMHO.

Tournout decides elections, and turnout should favor Trump very heavily this year, unless something highly unusual happens between now and November 8. The evidence for that is ample and compelling.

The Revolution is ON!

Vote Trump!