The first line of The Quiet Man movie:
I’ll begin at the beginnin’.
October means the season is now autumn and we all know what season it really is…
No, silly.
It’s Election Season.
Yes, again.
We are four weeks from actual Election Day here in America and blessedly the campaign commercials will finally end.
Before we even begin to look at all of the polling that is criss crossing our screens, let’s get a level set on the basics or The Beginning.
Election Basics – Top Five
- Politics is about the future, not the past. NO ONE cares (much) about past accomplishments. Oh, they have an opinion and it’s likely well informed; however, folks CARE about what’s going to happen vs. what has already occurred.
Advantage – Democrats. They at least know what they will do in the next Congress – stop Trump. Not a difficult bumper sticker.
- “Good gets better, bad gets worse” great quote from longtime pol Haley Barbour. Momentum matters and rarely does it reverse four weeks out.
Advantage – Democrats. Incumbent parties are losing all over the globe (yay democracy) as everyday people are still suffering transitory inflation. Neither party here in America is willing to comprehensively tackle the underlying causes and thus it continues. The party out of power tends to win these discussions.
- Environment – probably the #1 predictor of overall electoral outcomes. If the wind is at your back, you will win more than lose and vice versa if you are facing gales.
Advantage – Democrats. Yes, I know there are polls showing varying degrees of generic ballot testing. Yes, I know that summer polling has been off in recent cycles. That’s not the point here. It’s just a bad year for the GOP and likely a good year for Democrats. Why? The GOP is in power and most elections have had one theme for as long as I can remember – change. This is just likely a change thing. Yes, it would help if the GOP had a message other than “we suck less.”
- Candidate Quality – an often overlooked dynamic in elections, but it is a top three element.
Advantage – Toss Up. There are simply too many races to grade Candidate Quality and show one of the parties being ahead; however, several key races like the Texas U.S. Senate race are draining resources away from other possibly competitive states. That hurts the one area where the GOP rarely has an advantage…
- Money – As the old saying goes, “Money talks and Bravo Sierra walks.”
Advantage – Republicans. The GOP has a big lead in financing elections but is it being allocated efficiently? Is there enough to make up for the negative Environment? Well, this is why we play the game.
How To Impress Your Friends
With all the polling out there, it’s hard to know what’s REALLY happening in the election.
Impress your friends with this one shot straight to the gut:
FOLLOW THE MONEY and THE CANDIDATES.
That tells you EXACTLY what’s going on.
