Opinion.
Roughly 45 million people have already voted as we move into the final weekend of the election.
To read more articles by Mark Trahant, go to: Marktrahant.substack.com
Speaking of early vote, Western Native Voice has a cool graphic tracking the early vote in Montana. This is fantastic; I would love to see this kind of data across Indian Country.
Across the country, polls continue to reflect the deepening unpopularity of Donald Trump. (I have to love the “influencers” on social media, many getting paid by Elon Musk, and the drumbeat of messages that the polls are all wrong. We shall see.)
A slew of October polls shows the president’s disapproval ranging from the mid-50s to a high of 66 percent.
From YouGov/The Economist poll:
- Registered voters prefer Democratic candidates for Congress to Republican candidates by a 6-point margin (46% vs. 40%), according to this week’s Economist / YouGov Poll. Democrats lead by more among likely voters, according to both of YouGov’s two definitions of them:
- An 8-point Democratic lead (50% vs. 41%, with the lead calculated by subtracting and then rounding) among the likely voters defined by YouGov’s loose screen, who are those registered voters who either have already voted or say they definitely or probably will vote
- An 11-point Democratic lead (52% vs. 41%) under YouGov’s strict screen: registered voters who either have already voted or say they definitely will vote
Data expert Nate Silver says that Democrats now have a nearly 8-in-10 chance of capturing the Senate in Tuesday’s midterms.
From The Daily Beast:
“Updating his model on YouTube show The Argument, the Silver Bulletin founder addressed how a three-way contest in Montana—where Independent Seth Bodnar faces Democrat Alani Bankhead and Republican Kurt Alme—had artificially skewed calculations.”
“We’re gonna revise Alaska later tonight, and that might bring me down to like 78 or 77. But like, yeah, we’re in the mid to high 70s, right?”
“And that’s a little bit higher in prediction markets, but like I, I feel, I feel decent about that actually,” he added, noting that the refined figures remain grounded despite standing above general market odds.
“Silver predicted Barack Obama’s 2012 election victory with startling precision, correctly calling all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C. This built on his breakout performance in the 2008 presidential election, where his model correctly predicted 49 out of 50 states, missing only Indiana.”
I should also mention the latest NYT poll in the Minnesota Senate race; it shows Peggy Flanagan opening up a 14-point lead (I can hear Peggy telling her supporters to run like they’re five behind.)
Dirty Tricks and the Dans
It’s so interesting that President Donald Trump and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy have asked for a criminal investigation into new accounts that Democrats recruited Daniel J. Sullivan to run against Daniel S. Sullivan as a decoy to confuse voters.
It’s an old political trick — once used by Joseph P. Kennedy to help his son, Jack, win his first congressional race. Actually, that sentence is wrong — Joseph thought it would help his son, but the race was a JFK landslide. And the political dirty trick was for nothing.
Peltola says she was not involved. The Associated Press reports:
“I just want to clear the air,” she said at the top of a speech in a downtown bar in Juneau, Alaska’s capital. “I knew nothing about any other candidate on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters.”
That will be the topic for Alaska investigators, but why? Is the dirty trick illegal? No. It’s dumb — and I say that knowing that we don’t know all the facts yet. (But every political strategist should be asked before thinking about doing something like this … “what if the news breaks the last week of October?” That question would lead to a negative answer.
It’s also worth noting that it’s not the only ballot malarkey in Alaska. Will those cases be investigated as well?
Inside the same New York Times piece that reported on the Democrats’ recruitment of the second Sullivan, there is this …
“Alaska’s voting system makes it especially easy to add spoilers to the ballot. The state holds nonpartisan primaries, so candidates can claim any party affiliation on the ballot without being vetted by parties themselves. That allowed Mr. Sullivan of Petersburg, a longtime supporter of Ms. Peltola and other Democrats, to land a spot on next week’s ballot.
“Republicans have also taken advantage of this system. When Ms. Peltola ran for re-election to the House two years ago, the state Republican Party backed an effort to help a Democrat — an inmate who ran his campaign from a New York prison — stay on the ballot.”
Eric Hafner is on the ballot again, and is still inside prison. His mother, Carol, did not make the November ballot. Neither has been to Alaska. Two years ago it was the Democrats that sued (and lost) trying to keep Hafner off the ballot.
From the Anchorage Daily News:
“The spending to elevate awareness of Hafner’s status as a federal inmate to boost Hill is part of a broader pattern in Alaska’s congressional races, where PACs have poured millions of dollars into campaigns involving candidates who received little support in the August primary.
“In the U.S. Senate race, two PACs have spent more than $2 million boosting Gerald Heikes, a Republican challenger and perennial candidate who received just over 1% of the vote in the August primary, in an effort to weaken the front-runners.”
In its story, Reuters makes two key points:
“This guy’s existence is gonna hurt Mary Peltola so much more than it helps her,” said Alaska-based elections and campaign attorney Scott Kendall. But with so few undecided voters left, he added, the revelations were unlikely to impact the outcome of the race.
Julie Wyatt, a 62-year-old logistics manager who lives in the capital of Juneau, said such trickery was nothing new in Alaskan politics, and she still planned to vote for Peltola.
“If the Republicans are this desperate, Mary has them on the ropes,” she wrote in an email.”
This whole affair shows how the pros don’t yet understand how to campaign in a Ranked Choice Vote election. Voters could pick both Dans and Mary Peltola would still lose … if she doesn’t convince enough voters to be her first, second or third choice. This tactic would be far more potent in a three-way race without a runoff.
Of course our elections would be better if campaigns focused on policy, instead of thinking about shortcuts. But that’s not our world. (Think about how much time has been spent talking about Dans instead of affordability, climate change, taxes, etc.)
And it’s worth remembering the first dirty trick in this election season started when Republican Sen. Steve Daines in Montana picked his successor by announcing that he would not run for re-election only a few minutes before the legal window closed. Legal? Sure. But not cool.
And that dirty trick, so far, seems to be working. The latest NYT poll shows Daines’ pick, former US Attorney Kurt Alme, with a lead in the three-way race.
There’s another, twisted version of the Dans’ name game taking place in Arizona. The Republican running for Attorney General has been running ads targeting Navajo voters and making claims about his ability to take action regarding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Peterson is a familar name and the ads play into that.
From Sen. Jamescita Peshlakai (who is a candidate for the state Senate) on her Facebook page.
“He does not give a hoot about us. His own cousin — ”Paul Petersen, a lawyer and former Arizona public official, was sentenced to six years in federal prison for his role in orchestrating an illegal adoption scheme involving pregnant women from the Marshall Islands”. I was serving in the Senate when this became public. I know it’s not Warren, but it’s so close to his home, and he did not help stop it? Or report it?
“He was an obstruction for us all the years in the legislature.
Bottom line: vote Kris Mayes.”
Native Edge Podcast
I was a guest on Native Edge Podcast with Chris James. A fun conversation — sharing here. We will both be on air Election Night with the ICT/FNX broadcast.
The post Where We Stand (and About Those Dirty Tricks) appeared first on Native News Online.
