THE PRAIRIE EDITOR: And Now, The Hand-To-Hand Political Combat

The bouncing political ball period of the 2024 cycle

of the national election campaign is now over, and

the concluding period of grueling hand-to-hand

combat for voters has begun.

Both presidential campaigns had polling bounces

preceding, during, and just after their conventions.

provoked by traumatic events, including a serious

assassination attempt, and the sudden withdrawal

of a presumptive presidential nominee.

So much about this presidential election cycle has

been unprecedented, and even now continues to

go in uncharted political territory, that most

attempts to confidently predict outcomes are just

guesses in the dark.

For some time, public polling of voters has become

less and less accurate, especially in the extended

period before the final campaign season from

September to November. Just as systematic bias

has overtaken the establishment media, a similar

bias has seemingly corrupted public polling. Almost

all the raw data of voter polls is adjusted by the

pollsters subjectively to fit their personal expectations

of who will actually vote, so it is quite easy to distort,

either intentionally or unintentionally any poll result.

This includes guessing party and gender turnout.

There is also considerable evidence that the party

affiliations of many voter base groups is changing,

even as we have seen the Democratic Party go

from being a mulri-ethnic working class party to

becoming a party of affluent, highly educated

progressive voters, and the Republican Party go

from being a party of well-to-do elites to becoming

a party of blue collar voters with traditionalist values.

The Democrats’ base of black, Hispanic and Jewish

voters is eroding, and Republicans have been losing

suburban women, business executives and many

college  educated voters in their base.

Only former President Donald Trump is already

well-known to voters. Kamala Harris, J.D, Vance and

Tim Walz are largely unknown. This makes TV debates

and political advertising more significant than usual as

the contestants try to define and characterize opponents

to their advantage.

In spite of being well-known to voters, Mr. Trump,

following the attempt on his life, has the opportunity to

enhance his public image as he has done in his

behavior after being shot, his demeanor at the GOP

convention, his new-found self discipline in the

debate he had with Mr. Biden and with his hands-off

attitude to his party’s nominees for the U.S. Senate this

cycle. His recent action, to repair his long-standing

feud with the Republican governor of Georgia, is his

latest effort to improve his image with voters who

share his politics but have been turned off by his verbal

political style.

In the end. however, all of the strategies to employ

rhetoric, image and personal attack in this cycle, will

almost certainly be outweighed by how the key group

of undecided, independent and wavering voters of

both parties feel about their economic well-being and

their personal security in both their own communities

and in a world of military and economic threats which

only seem to increase.

Realizing that many public polls are inaccurate or

corrupted, that most media is biased, and that much

of what is reported as fact is not true or only partly

true, voters face serious obstacles in deciding who 

to vote for in 2024, The good news is that the U.S.

voter much more often than not, has done what’s best

for the country in election cycles past. With so much

at stake, we can only hope they will do so again on

Election Day, 2024.

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Copyright (c) 2024 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.