F**king Mondays: Elon's Greed Lotto, Broken Polling, Early Vote Data, and Politico's Bullsh*t

It's that time of the week again!

A visual representation of how insane modern polling is

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the round up today:

Elon Musk’s greed lotto

This tweet from Elon Musk perfectly encapsulates the difference between Republicans and Democrats in this presidential race:

Democrats are raising record amounts of cash by appealing to regular people worried about democracy, while a sociopathic billionaire tech mogul is running an illegal lotto appealing to greedy gun nuts and racists.

Despite MAGA claims that Donald Trump is surging in the polls and on his way to a comfortable victory, Musk has increased his bribe for signing the petition (it went from $47 to $100, and now the chance of winning $1 million).

This indicates Republicans are actually extremely nervous about the election and worry the polls are underestimating the Democratic vote. Why else would Musk be pouring his personal fortune into the race?

The Democratic ground game is vastly superior to the Republican one, and they are so far behind in funding that Trump is shilling shady crypto coins to cover the difference. His reliance on Musk, who has no experience running grassroots political campaigns, should not be seen as a sign of strength. It is a sign that the polls are not what they seem, and activity on the ground is causing them a great deal of concern.

Speaking of which…

Polling is broken

Not only are Republicans nakedly attempting to move the polling averages by releasing a torrent of MAGA friendly polls less than a month out from the election, the prediction sites now make no sense whatsoever. Take FiveThirtyEight as an example.

Trump is now favored on FiveThirtyEight to win the election — he wins 53 times out of 100 in their simulation while Kamala Harris wins 47 out of a 100. But if you break down the polling in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, it is obvious Harris should be the favorite.

Trump is allegedly ahead in the polling averages in Pennsylvania where he wins the election 54 times out of 100. If you look at the high quality polls and not the GOP friendly ones, Harris is ahead in all but one. The New York Times/Siena College has her up 49-45, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell Center for Public Opinion/YouGov poll has her up 46-45. Furthermore, A new Washington Post-Schar School poll of more than 5,000 registered voters has Harris up 49-48 in likely voters.

In the Michigan and Wisconsin polling averages on FiveThirtyEight, the odds are both 50/50 with the high quality polls split evenly on who is up. A sensible reading on the polls would indicate Harris should still be the favorite given her edge in high quality polls in the states that would hand her the White House (PA, WI and MI). The flood of new polls and shifting averages may also be creating a “herding” effect, where pollsters start fudging their number to keep them in line with the others.

Also, if you look at early voting data in Pennsylvania today, you can see quite clearly Democrats are extraordinarily motivated to vote and are now leading by a margin of 325,649 votes with two weeks left to go:

If independents are split 70/30 in favor of the Democrats , the margin would grow to over 360,000. We are seeing a similar pattern in WI and MI, with Democrats outperforming the 2020 early vote by considerable margins. This is an extremely important data point that polling does not take into account, affirming the much repeated phrase that polls don’t vote, voters do.

I’ll be going into this in greater depth this week, so stay tuned!

Israel takes out Sinwar

If there was ever a reason to stop the onslaught in Gaza and make a deal with Hamas, this would be it. Via CNN:

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, believed by Israel to be chief architect of the militant group’s deadly October 7, 2023, terror attack that set off the war in Gaza, had been killed in battle.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that Sinwar was killed on Wednesday after a “year-long pursuit.”

“In recent weeks, IDF and ISA forces, under the command of the Southern Command, have been operating in the southern Gaza Strip, following IDF and ISA intelligence that indicated the suspected locations of senior members of Hamas,” the Israeli military statement read.

“IDF soldiers of the 828th Brigade (Bislach) operating in the area identified and eliminated three terrorists. After completing the process of identifying the body, it can be confirmed that Yahya Sinwar was eliminated.”

Will Netanyahu use this victory to scale back the wars in Gaza and Lebanon? Given his history of escalating tensions at every given opportunity, it is unlikely, but the US is putting far more pressure on him to do so. Hamas and Hezbollah are now completely broken organizations, so now would be the time to give peace a chance.

Politico’s masterclass in both siderism

The headline above is a classic example of how mainstream media publications have normalized Trump and deliberately frame the US presidential election as a race between to morally equivalent candidates.

In the aforementioned speech, Trump talked about Arnold Palmer’s penis size, called Kamala Harris “a shit vice president” and ranted and raved like a madman. It wasn’t an “energetic” appearance where he gave a “scattered” speech, it was a deranged performance by a deeply disturbed man who has no business running for any position in public office. Why is this so hard for the press? Why can they not come out and inform their readers just how insane this all is? If Trump wins in November, the press should be held responsible for it.

That being said, Democrats have a lot to be confident about. They are up in most of the meaningful polls, their ground game is excellent, early voting numbers are extremely encouraging, and despite the media’s attempt to downplay Trump’s insanity, he is quite clearly losing his shit the closer we get to Election Day.

Hope everyone has a great week!

If you are enjoying The Banter and would like to support us, please consider purchasing a paid membership. Banter Members get access to all premium articles, The Emergency Meeting Podcast, and exclusive member chat threads. You can get 50% off here:

Listen to the latest episode of The Banter Roundtable Podcast!: