Mike Huckabee explained to Sean Hannity on Wednesday why polls are underestimating the MAGA vote:
Right now if you’re pro-life, if you’re Christian, if you’re a conservative, if you are a MAGA Republican, which means you just think that America’s a great country and we ought to preserve it and protect it and pass it on that way.
If you’re one of those people, you’re kind of thinking that any given day the FBI may show up, bang your door down, and haul you in. If not, they may put you on a list, call you a domestic terrorist, a threat to democracy. So, conservatives simply don’t answer polls. So, I think we’re seeing something that really can’t be factored in.
Huckabee then quoted a conservative pollster who allegedly told him that "no white men between 30 and 50 will answer a poll question." That strikes me as pretty unlikely, but the rest of the stuff about MAGA Republicans sounds unnervingly plausible—at least a little bit, anyway. Sadly, many of them do think that way.
Well, if "no white man between 30 and 50" will answer polls because they're all afraid that the FBI will haul them in for being insurrectionists, then I think it's time for Putin and Xi to push the button together and wipe this Fascist breeding ground off the face of the Earth. With that kind of Y-chromosome pool we need to be pruned from the genome.
"Huckabee then quoted a conservative pollster who allegedly told him that "no white men between 30 and 50 will answer a poll question." "
A few years back, I decided to participate in a poll. Turned out it was a conservative pollster who was doing a push poll. I can understand why nobody (white men or otherwise) would answer a push poll.
Bingo.
Does anyone answer the phone if they do not recognize the number?
When my mom was not doing well, I would pick up more often in case it was a care giver alerting the family to a change in her condition. It was a mainly a constant stream of nonsense.
Fear is a great political motivator.
When I talk to my few conservative friends, the very few that supported Trump, it's clear that fear (well, and grievance, too) is central to their stance. And it is fear of change and a future where the rather simple assumptions of their childhood are constantly challenged.
OTOH, I'm giving money and assistance to Dems all over the country out of fear that the now fully cultified MAGA GOP (is that redundant now ?) will get control of one or both houses in the midterms.
The high level, bothsiderist take on this is both sides are driven by fear.
So, how do we convince ENOUGH people that their fears are mostly unwarranted or overblown and that MAGAism is a far greater danger ?
i thought we weren't talking about white men anymore because it's " It's just a bit of cheap racial and sexual ridicule tossed in to get your liberal audience nodding along".
Does Huckabee really know more about the possible sources of bias in polling than pollsters themselves? Aren't the pollsters fairly desperate to identify those sources to prevent more debacles like 2016 and don't they have the resource to do it, if anyone does? What resources does Huckabee have?
"Aren't the pollsters fairly desperate to identify those sources to prevent more debacles like 2016"
You would think so, but I'm doubtful. I remember that the pollster Kevin liked (Sam Wang from Princeton) predicted comfortable (near certain) Dem blowouts in 2016 and 2020. I wonder if that guy is still at it. If he is, he has zero credibility with me.
You seem to be under the impression that Mikeabee is making statements of fact, subject to analysis for truth or falsity.
He's not. He's preaching.
People who listen to him hear (at least) two messages: (1) Don't talk to pollsters, (2) they should be afraid of liberals, who are coming to hurt them.
This is the classic conservative wind-up. It has happened over and over and over again.
You repeatedly amp up the bullshit that your tribe is about to be wiped out by those evil , who are demonic evil incarnate, so you have to attack them first.
It works. And part of why it works is that people outside the bubble don't believe it is all that bad.
You know, they do have something to fear. Their view of sexual mores is losing ground. Every day, acceptance of gays, of same-sex marriage and of trans people grows. They want to fight that. They think it's an abomination. They sanctivy anybody who makes any headway against it, such as Putin or Orban or Trump.
They think it's part and parcel with having women in the military, and like Putin and his gang, think that makes us weak and vulnerable.
The struggle for racial equality figures in here, though I don't think it's the same thread. That's not something though, that they have the moral assurance of their church leaders blessings.
This is simply wrong, as we are seeing. We gain ground every day. We may lose elections, such as 2016, but it doesn't stop the grassroots progress.
That's not to say I don't care about winning elections, just a dose of perspective.
I mean, it looks like conservatives are now saying "polls are wrong" because the polls for them don't look good. They might be right. Or they might be simply trying to motivate their voters.
They might even be trying to set up a cheating scenariio, explaining why polls don't match outcomes. Ugh.
I think this tweet thread by Popehat kind of answers this
"I think the litter-box-in-schools thing is best understood as a creed, a confession of faith, than as a typical factual statement. It's more "I believe, together with you, that the Other Side is evil and does evil things, and is our enemy" than literal."
https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1580605448234815489
It's one of things they "feel in their gut" and will only change when the topic falls out of their news cycle versus any challenges by facts.
After the USSR fell, Newt and the gang started to shift their focuses, I distinctly remember thinking to myself how it felt like they were making Dems their new enemy/boogeyman. Sadly I think they've just improved on this tactic over the years.
There's one guy (with a blue checkmark) who claims he's an "alpha" on Twitter. He puts it in his name, and repeatedly posts about being an "alpha".
White male fragility. MAGA lives in a constant state of fear -- of being exposed as frauds -- brough on by unresolved insecurities.