We have understandably arrived at a meter reading of “Empty,” on the gauge of our reserve tank of vocabulary, relative to the characterological and universal unsuitability of Donald J. Trump, to occupy America’s Oval Office. Accordingly, we will refrain from further remarks on that painful subject and focus on the recent bizarre, humorous, one-time departure, from the normal political polling process.
The predicted outcomes, declared by America’s professionally consulted political pollsters, [such as the Gallup Poll, Marist University Poll, Harris Poll, Monmouth University Poll, Pew Research Center, the Quinnipiac University Poll and many others] have a reasonable measure of utility as an indication of the preferences and sentiments of the voting public. Certainly, it would be foolish to quixotically attempt to assay individual, preferential sentiment in a Nation of approximately, 145,000,000 potential voters. Accordingly, by practical necessity, we look to the Nation’s professional pollsters for their predictions of sentiment, such as in the present context, the likely winner in our current Presidential election.
Prodigious time, effort and expense on the part of these companies is necessarily devoted to compliance with the proclaimed universal and undertaken mandate and ethics of objectivity; by maintaining impartiality in the selection and wording of questions, including their interrogative sequence, as well as the vital selection of representative and relevant model test groups. Nevertheless, despite the existence of universally proclaimed and undertaken strictures, it is at times disappointing and confusing to discern nuanced, or even completely disparate reported result as between pollsters.
At this juncture in the present writing, by the unavoidable need for contextual rationality, we are obliged to painstakingly extract whatever related words, are empirically still extractible from our above- referenced, depleted Trump lexicon tank. We need only just enough to remind the reader that he, falsely and tactically, underplayed the significance of the advent and the virulence of the pandemic of coronavirus. He did so, initially, by denying its evident seriousness and potential mortality and then by ridiculing the recommendations of the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci and virtually all responsible medical practitioners, doctor and nurse alike, that Americans must prophylactically distance themselves, from each other, if possible, by quarantine, and strictly mandated the wearing of protective masks.
Trump’s many loyal followers, due to Trump’s tactical nonchalance, refrained from taking such prudent preventative measures (masks, and distancing), as a perceived political statement of support for Trump and thereby increased the danger to themselves and, (selfishly) to other Americans. But this fact has already been exhaustively treated in past writings and is only tangentially related to the theme of the present writing, intended as a nuanced observation on the recent political polling.
Americans, enthusiastically following the daily election returns and relative electoral standing of the incumbent Republican Presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump, and the challenger, former Vice-President Joseph Biden, Democrat, have observed the nuanced phenomenon, relative to our main theme. Early computation of returns from votes personally cast, showed a significant and undeniable lead for Trump. However, the absentee, mail-in votes, undoubtedly necessitated by voter’s prudent observance of the recommended distancing precautions, regarding the infectious nature of the pandemic, were reportedly, seventy-five percent of all cast ballots and decidedly favored Joe Biden, the Democratic challenger. We may by deduction, in this nuanced Presidential election, have uncovered a new and unique model of predictability, worlds apart from the universal, traditional polling measurements of professional political pollsters.
As stated, President Donald Trump, was negligent and irresponsible by his discouragement of the protective wearing of masks and in the observance of the distancing cautions, urgently recommended by the American medical establishment. In fact, the non- observance of mask wearing seemed to irrationally morph into a clear partisan, political statement supportive of President Trump. From this empirically observed fact, it becomes logically acceptable to assume that the numbers of individuals who voted in person (partisan non- observers of the physically restrictive precautions) were Trump voters, which assumption was proven true by the demonstrated early returns, themselves.
As the mail-in absentee ballots (reportedly, ¾ of the voters) began to arrive over the next few days, the tide dramatically turned to, and then surged, in the challenger’s direction, ultimately to the point of his numerical success. In accordance with the empirical reasoning, as set forth in this mini essay, we can logically conclude that the write-ins, doubtless compliant mask wearers, were (the successful) democrats.
This anecdotal confluence may merely be a uniquely nuanced event; nevertheless, for the historical moment, it constitutes an inarguable upheaval or revolution, in the prediction of electoral outcomes, by traditional polling methodology.
It might have done sufficient service as an effective and accurate weather- vane, pointing in the direction of probable success, to merely arithmetically calculate the number of affirmative responses to the simple inquiry, as to whether the respondent was wearing a protective mask.
-p.
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