We need something more than 'look at muh polls'

Republicans continue to win in the polls but then lose all the important elections. Rather than forcing innovative changes and forward-looking strategies, the response from the broader conservative industry is to celebrate … with more polls.

“We’re winning! Donald Trump is going to win the primary and run the table in all the critical states against Biden! Just wait for next November and everything will be OK!”

In other words, we don’t need a facelift, a leadership change, or a messaging upgrade.

Now for a reality check. We cannot afford to continue with this delusion. We cannot keep thinking we already have the ball in the end zone when we don’t.

During the 1993 Super Bowl, Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Leon Lett famously celebrated before he got the ball into the end zone, only to have the ball stripped from him by Buffalo Bills wide receiver Don Beebe. In that case, the Cowboys already had a massive lead, so the Lett blunder was merely symbolic. But in our case, we are the ones losing big-time and cannot afford to satiate our imperative to achieve with symbolism or, worse, junk polls.

Conservatives spent much of 2022 anticipating a red tsunami in the November elections based on nothing more than junk polls. Despite the unpopularity of the Biden presidency, the malaise around the world, and record inflation, Republicans bucked all political science trends by losing a Senate seat and two governorships, as well as several state legislative chambers. If not for reapportionment in places like Florida and an overperformance by Lee Zeldin in New York, Democrats would have kept the House. This was the GOP’s third loss in a row.

But … we had won the polls!

So as conservatives continue to celebrate auspicious polling data, let’s review the polls headed into the midterm elections last year. Here is the rate of underperformance by each Republican candidate relative to the final RealClearPolitics poll average headed into the election:

And here are the key governor’s races in 2022:

Notice how Republicans dramatically underperformed in the most critical races, especially considering we are a closely divided country. When you look at the final polls headed into the home stretch, the margin of error is even more dramatic because the polls showed Republicans building momentum in the final days.

Republicans overperformed by a mile in one U.S. Senate race, bucking the national trend. That was in Florida, where the governor was the driving political force in the state and, of course, overperformed in his own re-election.

The lesson of the 2022 midterms was quite clear. We had one man who eschewed the establishment and Donald Trump’s personal flaws, and he resonated big-time. But instead of looking for new horizons, our movement chose to embrace the status quo because who needs to win elections when you can keep winning polls?

And win polls we have! We’ve spent the past year reassuring ourselves that everything will be fine in 2024 because, after all, the polls show Trump beating Biden across the board.

Meanwhile, back in the real world where elections matter, Republicans have woefully underperformed in nearly every special legislative election this year, despite the flagging economy and a highly unpopular Democrat in the White House. In 21 of 27 special elections through September of this year, Democrats have overperformed Biden’s 2020 margins by an average of seven points. This culminated with big losses earlier this month in the off-year elections in Virginia and Kentucky and several other places.

Republicans believe they don’t need to switch strategies because Trump is ahead of Biden in the RCP average by 2.3 percentage points. So what? The midterm elections showed the polls had a consistently pro-GOP bias that evaporated in the face of actual election results. Nevertheless, and despite losing election after election this year, Republicans and conservatives continue to salivate over poll numbers. It’s unreal!

We need a strategy, a vision, and a plan. We continue to elect milquetoast Republicans in deep red parts of the country while we lose to Democrats in swing and even light red districts. We can debate who or what is to blame — and it is likely several factors — but clearly the status quo is not working.

We have a vivid proof of concept for success with a man who shall not be named, but clearly most conservative media are uninterested. So what do we do? Chronicling the decline of the country might be profitable to a select group of right-leaning pontificators, but it is calamitous for the rest of us.