Free Republic

Synth-pop musician Dave Ball, who was one half of the popular 1980s band Soft Cell, has died at the age of 66. The electronic musician, who, along with bandmate Marc Almond scored a UK number one with Tainted Love, died on Wednesday, just days after completing a new Soft Cell album. Almond, 68, described him as a "wonderfully brilliant musical genius".

While Dave Ball today on these pages cautions us that polls no longer are reliable, in his article Trump in a Landslide: Here's Why, the New York Times’ own polling guru is picking up signs that the paper’s bête noire may be surging in public support. Nate Cohn writes in Don’t Assume Trump’s Approval Rating Can’t Climb Higher. It Already Has.: "Donald J. Trump doesn’t always seem like a candidate focused on expanding his base of support. He may have done so anyway. The share of Americans who say they have a favorable view of him has increased significantly since...

How does one know what the voting public thinks? Once upon a time, long, long ago, public opinion polls may have reflected, however faintly, some generalization of public opinion. For a multitude of reasons, that is no longer true. To demonstrate that point, compare the August 29 Rasmussen poll showing President Trump’s approval rating of 47 percent with the Quinnipiac reported approval rating of 38 percent. Even more irrational are the Quinnipiac poll result that whatever is left of Joe Biden would beat Trump 54 percent to 38 percent in a general election and the Economist poll number that asserts...