Voting On Day 1, I'd Much Rather Be Us Than Them, Yes The Polls Were Wrong in 2022

Hopium Paid Subscribers Gather on June 4th. Happy Memorial Day Weekend All!

Happy Saturday all. Got a few things for you today:

The 2024 Election - For your reading, viewing and listening pleasure this weekend start with my new video presentation about the election - “I’d Much Rather Be Us Than Them”. This video and accompanying post includes my latest bottom line take - the election is close and competitive, neither candidate leads or where they want to be, and we have a lot of work to do. We, however, have a better candidate, better arguments, a strong track record to run on and a far more powerful political machine. All of this is why I remain so fundamentally optimistic about the election.

Note that G. Elliot Morris who is the new chief at 538 confirmed that they, like us here at Hopium, understand the race to be a toss up right now. Trump does not lead, nor he is favored, and commentators simply must stop saying he is.

Also be sure to read the Biden campaign’s new memo and watch their new muscular ad. Here are a few other recent Hopium posts worth diving into:

• Trump 2024 Is Weak Not Strong

• America’s Start Up Boom

• Dems Need A Big Reform and Renewal Agenda

Key themes we continue to explore -

• Why Biden’s strength with likely voters matters, and how Dems just keep winning and Rs keep struggling

• Democrats have significant financial and organization advantages now

• The main GOP attacks on Biden are evaporating and losing their power

• The GOP’s “bad candidate” problems in the battleground states have returned

• Six new things voters are going to learn that will make it hard for Trump to win

Finally, some of you have noted there are loud voices in the daily chatter who disagree with my arguments and analysis. Was that way in 2022 too. It’s OK. It’s to be expected. While I am going to have more to say about all this in the coming days, I want to address one of these areas of disagreement today. The polls were wrong in 2022. Period.

It’s hard for me to believe that this has even become an area of debate and discussion, but for those who want to dive into what happened in 2022, be sure to read the memo I published the day before the November election, my recap of what happened in the election written in November, and this NY Times investigation, “The ‘Red Wave’ Washout: How Skewed Polls Fed A False Election Narrative.” Here’s how The Times story opens:

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, had consistently won re-election by healthy margins in her three decades representing Washington State. This year seemed no different: By midsummer, polls showed her cruising to victory over a Republican newcomer, Tiffany Smiley, by as much as 20 percentage points.

So when a survey in late September by the Republican-leaning Trafalgar Group showed Ms. Murray clinging to a lead of just two points, it seemed like an aberration. But in October, two more Republican-leaning polls put Ms. Murray barely ahead, and a third said the race was a dead heat.

As the red and blue trend lines of the closely watched RealClearPolitics average for the contest drew closer together, news organizations reported that Ms. Murray was suddenly in a fight for her political survival. Warning lights flashed in Democratic war rooms. If Ms. Murray was in trouble, no Democrat was safe.

Ms. Murray’s own polling showed her with a comfortable lead, and a nonprofit regional news site, using an established local pollster, had her up by 13. Unwilling to take chances, however, she went on the defensive, scuttling her practice of lavishing some of her war chest — she amassed $20 million — on more vulnerable Democratic candidates elsewhere. Instead, she reaped financial help from the party’s national Senate committee and supportive super PACs — resources that would, as a result, be unavailable to other Democrats.

A similar sequence of events played out in battlegrounds nationwide. Surveys showing strength for Republicans, often from the same partisan pollsters, set Democratic klaxons blaring in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Colorado. Coupled with the political factors already favoring Republicans — including inflation and President Biden’s unpopularity — the skewed polls helped feed what quickly became an inescapable political narrative: A Republican wave election was about to hit the country with hurricane force.

Democrats in each of those states went on to win their Senate races. Ms. Murray clobbered Ms. Smiley by nearly 15 points.

Not for the first time, a warped understanding of the contours of a national election had come to dominate the views of political operatives, donors, journalists and, in some cases, the candidates themselves.

The misleading polls of 2022 did not just needlessly spook some worried candidates into spending more money than they may have needed to on their own races. They also led some candidates — in both parties — who had a fighting chance of winning to lose out on money that could have made it possible for them to do so, as those controlling the purse strings believed polls that inaccurately indicated they had no chance at all.

And here is the final Real Clear Politics 2022 Senate Map, one generated from the polling averages at the time. It has Republicans getting to 54 Senate seats. They got to 49.

The polls and polling averages were wrong in 2022. They fed the false red wave narrative being spun by Republicans that most commentators adopted. Given this, it would seem prudent for commentators this time to be a bit more careful about jumping to conclusions about the election driven from polls alone, and to be a bit more careful about being bullied into understandings from Republicans who have been lying about the 2020 election for three and a half years, who fabricated and sold the false red wave in 2022, and who are already lying about this election, every day.

I realize there are many in the game who are fighting for clicks. That’s fine. Here at Hopium we are fighting for our democracy.

Do More, Worry Less - 4 ways to do more, worry less here at Hopium now. I will be building out and expanding this section in the coming weeks:

• Donate To and Join The Biden-Harris Campaign - Job #1

• Help Ruben Gallego Win Arizona

• Win North Carolina By Supporting Anderson Clayton and NC Dems

• Win The House By Backing Our 11 Candidates In Republican Seats

Thanks to all who’ve given to or volunteered for these critical efforts. We’ve already raised over $165,000 for our 11 House candidates!!!!!!

Upcoming Events - It’s almost June!

• Tue, June 4, 7pm ET - Monthly Hopium Paid Subscriber Get Together

• Wed, June 5, 1pm ET - Monthly Hopium Founding Members Get Together

• Thur, June 20 - Simon speaks in person at a Wisconsin Democratic Party Event (Madison) - more details soon

• Thur, June 27 - 1st Presidential Debate!!!

• Sat, June 29 - Simon speaks in person at Network NOVA’s 8th Annual Women’s Summit, Tyson’s Corner, VA - More info, register

Look forward to seeing folks at these upcoming events. If you want to join our paid subscriber events and aren’t yet a paid subscriber you can sign up here.

The Importance of Voting on Day 1 - Our elections have changed a lot in recent years. Most voters can now vote early in person or with no-excuse mail ballots. This has made it far easier for people to vote which is one reason we’ve seen such a big increase in turnout in recent years. It also has forced our campaigns to move away from Election Day focused get out the vote programs, and begin our work to get our folks to vote much earlier. The recognition that our Election Day is now as Tom Bonier calls it “just the last day of voting” is central to why Team Biden asked to move the debates up this year. People start voting on September 20th, and it was smart to move the debates to before people started voting.

This new early vote electoral system is important for Democrats, who traditionally have more episodic and new voters in our coalition. This extra time to do GOTV allows us, if we have the money and the volunteers, to reach down and touch more less likely voters than we could in the past, and this increases our turnout and helps us win.

Practically, the faster our voters vote the quicker our campaigns can reach and turnout these less likely voters. Every night campaigns get the list of people who voted that day, so when you vote early you come off the campaign GOTV rolls (and you stop getting canvassed and called!!!!) allowing the campaign to move on to other people who have not voted yet. So having Democrats vote as early as possible, on Day 1 as a I call it, is something that increases turnout for us and helps us win.

All of this is why I want to encourage everyone in the Hopium community to become an advocate for Voting on Day 1. Make sure you do it yourself. Educate your networks about why it matters:

Voting on Day 1 increases Democratic turnout and helps us win

Voting on Day 1 has other benefits. A heavy early turnout leads to stories about “hey everyone is voting” putting social pressure on people to go vote, which also increases turnout. Voting early in big numbers also becomes a very public affirmation that our democracy and election system is working as intended, which creates a greater incentive for people to vote and makes it far harder for the Republicans to cheat, disrupt or contest the election.

We have four months to develop an understanding among Democrats that Voting on Day 1 is a vital new tool we have to help us win and make it far more likely the 2024 election comes off without interference. There is a reason Trump hates non-Election Day in person voting so much - it makes our democracy work better and far harder for him to cheat or challenge the election results.

Keep working hard all and let’s all commit today to Vote on Day 1. It’s another way we can also ensure we have the election we all want to have this year - Simon