Why Am I Skeptical?

The headlines want to pretend there's something new here, Trump now leading in 5 battleground states — all of which Biden won in 2020: poll, but the polls have been the same for months. In April, according to Reuters,

Republican Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in six battleground states in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday that cited concerns about the economy and Biden's performance.

Trump garnered a lead of between 2 and 8 percentage points among voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina on a ballot that included third-party and independent candidates, the Journal said. The results were similar in a one-on-one matchup with Biden, it said.

In Wisconsin, a seventh state where the contest is expected to be close, Biden was ahead by 3 points on a multiple candidate ballot and tied in a head-to-head contest with Trump, the Journal said.

In February, According to Morning Consult,

Donald Trump holds leads over Joe Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The former president’s lead is narrowest in the Upper Midwest, where Wisconsin and Michigan voters are almost evenly split between the two.Donald Trump holds leads over Joe Biden in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The former president’s lead is narrowest in the Upper Midwest, where Wisconsin and Michigan voters are almost evenly split between the two.

In fact, there's been little movement since last fall, but every new poll is hyped as if it's big news. There's also been little movement in the Real Clear Politics averages, which have been showing Trump with minimal leads nationally, in battleground states, and in either two-way or five-way matchups for the same period. Philip Wegmann of Real Clear Politics staff lays out the site's conventional wisdom:

Donald Trump has been indicted in four separate criminal cases, tethered to the courtroom for the past month, and confronted by the embarrassing testimony of not just the former White House officials who worked for him but also by the porn star who allegedly had sex with him.

And yet he still leads in the polls. The long-awaited prosecutions, which Republicans condemned and Democrats cheered, have not cut him down as he seeks a return to the White House. In fact, President Biden has not surpassed Trump a single time this year in the RealClearPolitics Poll Average. Six months from the election, Trump leads Biden 46% to 44.9%.

. . . “It just looks bad, and the voters are getting it,” Trump pollster John McLaughlin told RCP. “They don’t like the idea that the courts are deciding the presidential election.”

But if the voters don't like what they see in four weeks of trial, how come the polls simply haven't moved over the past four weeks? As I noted yesterday, commentators have been calling Biden's acknowledgement that he's put ammunition supplies to Israel on hold "disastrous" -- but a quick web search on the words "Biden disastrous" brings up as well references to his State of the Union, his campaign visit to a Pittsburgh Sheetz station, and his gaffes in general over past weeks and months. But the polls haven't changed.

I'm finding this harder and harder to believe. Three weeks ago, when I first posted about this, I quoted Rush Limbaugh's often-repeated view on the polls:

The polls are an attempt to not reflect public opinion, but to shape it. Yours. They want to depress the heck out of you, and they want to suppress your vote.

In a year where things do in fact look good for Republicans -- and have looked consistently good for the past half year -- it's hard not to infer that the goal of the pollsters, whose customers, let's always keep in mind, are legacy media, will be to minimize the Republican lead, always leaving open the hope that Biden can still turn things around. Any little statistical chatter that might suggest things could change is hyped by the conmmentators in unison.

Let's look at this one strange blip from last week:

A presidential election poll conducted April 16 through 23 by The Bullfinch Group, has the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J Trump, winning Washington state in a 5-way race with current presidential contenders Joe Biden (D), Robert F Kennedy Jr (I), Jill Stein (G), and Cornel West (I).

According to the poll, which is sponsored by The Independent Center, Trump leads with 40%, to Biden’s 35%, Kennedy has 13%, Stein is at 4% West came in at 1%, and approximately 8% of respondents were unsure who they would be voting for president.

This appears to be consistent with polling results in Minnesota:

McLaughlin & Associates surveys conducted for the Trump campaign shows him tied with Biden in Minnesota at 40% each with the inclusion of third-party candidates like independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (9%), the Green Party’s Jill Stein (1%), independent Cornel West (1%) and libertarian Lars Mapstead (0.5%).

But these aren't states that Real Clear Politics considers "battlegrounds", there aren't enough polls in those states to put into averages, so they don't fit the current conventional wisdom, so nobody's taking them seriously. On the other hand, I think there are just too many data points -- polls like these, the collapse of the "lawfare" strategy, and record-breaking rallies in places like the New Jersey shore -- that the conventional wisdom is assiduously ignoring.