Free Republic

It’s not just high-profile movers like Elon Musk and Joe Rogan. They’re joined by about three-quarters of a million people a year.It is no secret that pro-growth policies — low taxes and a light regulatory burden — have propelled population growth in Texas and Florida while the opposite has occurred in California, Illinois, and New York. Elected officials’ response to COVID-19 likely accelerated this trend in 2020, with Florida and Texas netting more than half of the nation’s 1.15 million population increase from mid-2019 to mid-2020. Each state has its own migration patterns, and these shift constantly in response to...

Surveys overstated Democrats’ support up and down the ballot, as some voters were less inclined to participate in polls Public opinion surveys ahead of the 2020 presidential election were the most inaccurate in 40 years, according to an expert panel convened by the main trade group for pollsters, which said its work hadn’t yet pointed to a way to correct the error. In the aggregate, the panel said, polls overstated supportfor Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 3.9 percentage points in the national popular vote in the final two weeks of the campaign. That was a larger error than the 1.3-point...

Sixty-three percent of American approve of President Biden's job performance thus far, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released Monday, up 2 percentage points from late March. The poll found 96 percent of Democrats, 62 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans surveyed approve of Biden's work in his first three full months in office.

Among right-wingers, there has been some delight about polls showing that Joe Biden's popularity at the 100-day mark is the lowest of any president since World War II. Oh, if you exclude Donald Trump. Undaunted by this detail, they note with satisfaction that Biden's approval rating, according to multiple polls, is somewhere between 52 and 57%. At this point in his presidency, Trump's approval was 40%. Americans were far less partisan in the era of Eisenhower, Reagan, Bush and even Clinton than they are now. Large numbers of Democrats were willing to give high marks to Eisenhower when the economy...

A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging “major errors” in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November. In an unusual move, five of the party’s biggest polling firms have spent the past few months working together to explore what went wrong last year and how it can be fixed. It’s part of an effort to understand why — despite data showing Joe Biden well ahead of former President Donald Trump, and Democrats poised to increase their...

As the U.S. Senate considers legislation that would revamp America’s election laws, voters still overwhelmingly support laws requiring that voters show identification before casting a ballot. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote. Only 21% are opposed to such a requirement. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Thirty-six states have enacted some form of voter ID law, but those laws would be nullified if the Senate approves H.R. 1, which passed...

Big Data Poll Director Richard Baris slammed a CNBC economic survey arguing that President Joe Biden won an initial approval rating that topped the first ratings of the last four presidents. CNBC’s recent All-America Economic Survey of 1,000 people claimed that Biden’s leftist agenda won him a whopping 62 percent initial approval rating for his “handling of the economy and for uniting the country.” The result supposedly topped the “first ratings of the last four presidents.” In addition, Biden’s initial rating was “18 points higher than Trump’s.” Baris summed up Biden’s numbers in one sentence: “At this point, there’s no...

A Trump third party could provoke a pivotal realignment in American politics. With the support of 46% of registered voters in the new poll, Democrats would reap the benefits of a fractured opposition and entrench themselves as the nation's dominant party — even without majority support. Among "very conservative" voters — who make up a disproportionately large bloc within the Republican primary electorate — a Trump Patriot Party crushes the GOP 55%-24%. Should Trump remain in the GOP, his wide lead among these highly motivated voters affords him great leverage to influence the direction of the party by wielding the...

The Virginia House Committee on Privileges and Elections approved legislation Wednesday to mandate polling places throughout the state be gun-free zones. The NRA-ILA reports the legislation, House Bill 2081, “prohibits firearms within 40 feet of a polling place,” whether that polling place is on public property or private. NRA-ILA notes:

One of the nation’s more accurate pollsters is bullish on Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s chances to win her runoff race against Raphael Warnock but less confident that Sen. David Perdue will best Jon Ossoff. “We see the Warnock-Loeffler race as one that will be less close. We feel more confident that Loeffler is going to probably prevail,” Robert Cahaly, the chief pollster for the Trafalgar Group, told the Washington Examiner. “We feel more confident that the other one is going to be closer.” Trafalgar’s most recent polls in Georgia show two different races developing, with Loeffler leading Warnock by almost 7...

The survey of 1,018 likely voters, taken December 8-10, found incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R) down slightly to Democrat challenger Jon Ossoff, 49.1 percent to 48.8 percent. Just 2.1 percent of respondents were undecided. Meanwhile, in the special election, incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler is ahead of far-left Democrat Raphael Warnock, 50.4 percent to 47.3 percent. The poll found 2.3 percent of voters undecided.

An Arizona judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit from two voters alleging mishandled ballots, the final election-related case pending in the state that voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in more than 20 years. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret Mahoney ruled that the case, involving only two ballots, would not have altered the outcome of the election.... Meanwhile, Drobina said that a tabulator rejected his ballot when he tried to insert it on Election Day, after which a poll worker suggested he put it in a slot for ballots tabulated by individual election workers. Alexander...

• GOP support for stricter gun laws has fallen 14 points since 2019 to new 22% low • 25% of Americans favor a handgun ban in the U.S., near record lowWASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the absence of a high-profile mass shooting in the U.S. in 2020 and amid the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest related to racial justice issues and the contentious presidential election campaign, Americans are less likely than they have been since 2016 to call for increased gun control. The latest majority (57%) in the U.S. who call for stricter laws covering the sale of firearms marks a seven-percentage-point...

Veteran pollster Frank Luntz, contemplating his industry’s major misses in a second consecutive presidential election, declared his profession “done.” The results of a highly contentious race between President Trump and Democrat nominee Joe Biden have Luntz feeling a little dismayed, especially when polls seemed to be indicating an easy win for the challenger for months. “The political polling profession is done,” Luntz told Axios earlier today. “It is devastating for my industry.” In a separate interview with Fox News, Luntz said it is “unforgivable” that public opinion surveys failed to correct the mistakes of 2016 and again underestimated support for...

The pollsters got it wrong again. Some claimed going into Tuesday's election that Joe Biden had an unbeatable margin of 17 points in some states. Pundits claimed Republicans would lose between five and 15 seats in the House. It appears they've picked up a few. And because final results will not be known until states count mail-in votes and end their extended vote-counting processes, Republicans could pick up a few more. Why do some continue to employ these pollsters who miss the "silent majority," or in this case "shy" Trump voters, many of whom refused to speak with or hung...

Mishkin, 65, would seem an unlikely election analyst for the news network that is closely associated with the Republican Party. A registered Democrat, both his parents were Holocaust survivors, as he detailed in a speech to his Upper West Side synagogue B’nai Jeshurun in 2001. His father was the physics and engineering professor Eli Mishkin, whose obituary said he was the first person to receive a doctorate from the Israel Institute of Technology. His mother Esther volunteered at YIVO, the institute for Jewish research that preserves European Jewish history. Tuesday night wasn’t the first time Mishkin angered Republican politicians tracking...

Pollster Frank Luntz on Wednesday reacted to the 2020 election, giving credit to President Donald Trump for not trusting the polling showing his opponent Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden up to a big lead heading into Election Day. Luntz, on Fox News Channel’s “Outnumbered,” described the Washington Post’s poll that had Biden winning by 17 points “polling malpractice.” He went on to say Trump and his pollsters were “correct,” whereas polling across the country “was so wrong.”

Could it be?,Maybe someone in charge of Fox News is a Democrat? Are all hosts of Fox News being told to "Just Pretend Joe Biden is 10 points ahead when discussing election issues with guests,spokespersons,contributors, etc.How often does Fox bring up the surging republican registrations in all swing states heading into last week? Remember, maybe back in July/August when the hosts of Fox had to pretend that Joe Biden was actually ahead of Trump by 9 or 10 points? We knew it was all a lie.

Going into Election Day, Democrat Joe Biden and President Trump are in a virtual tie in the critical state of Florida. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey of Likely Voters in Florida finds Biden edging President Trump by one point - 48% to 47%. A week ago, Trump had a 49% to 46% lead. Two percent (2%) like some other candidate, while four percent (4%) remain undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.) Factor in those who haven’t made up their minds yet but are leaning toward one candidate or the other, and the numbers don’t change:...

U.S.—In order to help voters absolve themselves of responsibility and guilt for the politicians they selected, polling places around the country are offering a bowl of water to all voters in the voting booth, sources confirmed Saturday. "We noticed early voters looking really queasy as they left the polling station," an election official told reporters. "Some just vomited on the spot, while others just looked like they were going to be ill. So we instituted an emergency measure, allowing people to wash themselves clean on the way out." While some are praising the move, others say it's not enough. "Sure,...