Apparently, the Harris campaign always knew she would lose
It’s one of those “now it can be told” things. Then again, perhaps it’s a lie. But the current scuttlebutt is that the campaign’s internal polling never showed Harris in the lead.
We often hear that internal polls are different than the polls we peons get to see. Apparently, this is a case of such a discrepancy, and another reason to see public polling as more of an attempt to shape voting behavior than to describe or predict it.
This report also seems to go along with statements about how Biden’s awful record was what doomed Harris rather than her own sorry failure to make a case for herself. But what has long puzzled me is not why she lost, but why so many people voted for her when she was unable to speak coherently on most of the topics of the day, or to answer questions asked of her. I’ve seen a lot of presidential campaigns, but I’ve never seen anything remotely like hers in terms of incompetence. In fact, I’ve never seen any politician so poor at expressing himself or herself, or so oddly disconnected.
Well, perhaps we won’t have Kamala Harris to kick around anymore. Perhaps she’ll segue into some professorship or become head of something like Planned Parenthood; I saw that latter suggestion somewhere and it seemed as though that is something for which she might feel a calling. But, looking at some recent YouTube videos of Harris just now, I see that plenty of people think she’s just great and would like her to run in 2028.
Or maybe they’re bots; that’s possible too.
To see what I”m referring to, just take a look at the comments to this video featuring Walz and Harris thanking their campaign workers, and you’ll see plenty of sentiments like this:
You were both perfect. I’m grieving what could have been. Kamala is the President of my heart.
And these:
So proud of you and Kamala! You’ll always be my President and vice! Trump for JAIL.
Anyone else crying…..so poignant…so tender…she’s speaking to us. It’s devastatingly lovely. How can we give up with such beautiful examples of hope. Thank you Kamala. Thank you Tim.
People voted for her in the tens of millions out of hatred for Trump and “vote blue no matter who.” The smarter ones were aware that she would have just been a figurehead
head of something like Planned Parenthood
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Those comments definitely sound like bots or paid supporters, LOL.
You wouldn’t know it from her video to her supporters.
If you didn’t get enough during the campaign, here’s a short clip that will remind you to be thankful that Kamala isn’t president.
Fast forward to around 7:50 for the clip. Halperin only inserts about a minute of her encouragement.
2WAY TONIGHT 11/26 | Trump Transition News and the Latest on the Democrats
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmC-GVMSPU0&t=2119s
So like I said in the open thread, accurate information exists but the legacy media has no interest in reporting it.
All they ever had to do to get these accurate polls is a) ask for them and b) pay for them. They had no intention of doing that. They had no desire for accurate information.
They seem only interested in doing what they can to deceive us, so why are we still looking at any of it? They are doing whatever they can to deliberately poison our perceptions, shouldn’t we stop letting them?
And shouldn’t this fact affect our judgment about when we read about someone like, say, Matt Gaetz, or how the debt ceiling negotiations are going, or a fight over who the Speaker of the House should be, or any other thing that we think is relevant and factual–they are deliberately trying to change our perception of it to benefit the Dems and everything you read about it, including the “and” and “the”, should be treated like a time-share pitch.
The flip side to this is that Trump’s big disadvantage in campaign spending was offset, according to one of his spokesmen, by most of it going toward “earned media”, i. e. getting his name in the news, which is not very expensive. Legacy media hates Trump, but they love to cover Trump.
Something to consider the next time you see a legacy media story about What Trump Said or What Trump Did–keeping his name before the public and profiting from even negative coverage is what Trump has spent thirty years excelling at. And rolling our eyes at What Trump Said Now or What Trump Did Now is missing the point of why Trump did or said it (if he did, since so much of it is exaggerated or invented).
Marisa: “vote blue no matter who.”
Good phrase. Or: Better dead than vote red. (Ironic, given the “better Red than dead” line from Cold War days.) Which is a similar mirror-image attitude of my saying that I’d vote Democrat over my dead body.
I was also rather surprised that Democrat internal polls were so different from the external polls. Which is one more nail in the coffin for credibility.
Agreed and agreed.
Her incoherence wasn’t the only thing that turned me off. Her double-think messaging turned me off. Such as the “evolved, moderate” Kamala of 2024 versus the much more radical Kamala from 2020 and before. I wonder if her incoherence was a reflection of the difficulty she had in juggling the 2024 “moderate to fool the voters” Kamala versus the real, woke radical Kamala. Her incoherence may have simply been her difficulty at being a credible liar.
But Kamala was also quite capable of speaking out of both sides of her mouth regarding current, 2024 issues. You don’t have to compare 2024 Kamala versus 2020 Kamala. When Nasrallah was killed, Kamala sent out a message of approval. I don’t have a ready link, but I recall reading that when someone in a crowd expressed an anti-Israel opinion–maybe about all the Gazans killed– Kamala said that was a good point.
I have also read that Kamala’s campaign ads in Jewish areas versus Muslim areas like Dearborn gave different, contradictory messages.
How did so many vote for her? Like Neo says, THAT is the question.
The popular delusions that have gripped the country seem mysterious until you recall the book, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.”
This has happened before. It’s hard to explain, except that humans are susceptible to it. It seems a part of our nature. For more see this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_Popular_Delusions_and_the_Madness_of_Crowds
The Dems are such sheep. Some might say they are slaves.
I can sort of understand why someone would vote against Trump, but I can’t understand that millions voted for Harris.
And now we find out that she’s a drunk. Allegedly.
JJ
The biggest delusion is the CAGW scam.
@Gringo:How did so many vote for her? Like Neo says, THAT is the question.
It’s easy. They weren’t voting for HER. They were voting for the Party of Government and the Top Men who actually run everything.
One of my FDR-era relatives, early in Trump’s first term, complained “he doesn’t know how to run the country”. But we’re not a country to be run, we are a free people who can and should run ourselves. The Party of Government does not believe this and thinks that experts and Top Men should run the country for our benefit, that’s it’s self evident they would do a better job of managing us than we do of managing ourselves.
Kamala is a pure sociopath. She knows right from wrong.
Democrats seem to be herd animals.Just follow the leader.
Vote for Kamala?
Why?
It appears what they knew is that the polling they were paying for was telling them things which differed from the polling issued by media organs, Quinnipiac, &c.
“But we’re not a country to be run, we are a free people who can and should run ourselves.”
Niketas is spot on… the only time gov’t should intervene is when specifically permitted or to address gross “chaos.”
Other than that…stay outta my lane
Yet one wonders did the Democrats Propaganda Ministry know as well? I have the feeling they did and have no problem lying to their public.
well they ran the country into the ground, but they thought they could continue the scam, I think several factors played into the matter, the prodigious efforts of scott presler, in registering from sea to shining sea, the team of whatley and trump, which were on rapid response, and then there were other elements,
that was a pathetic effort, if I were an honest progressive, I would be embarassed how little she did to push the plan that she said to believe in, maybe she never believed in anything but destruction, like one of the Old Gods, or like the Eponymous She of H Ridder Haggards tales,
One shouldn’t ignore the element of self-interest in Harris’s campaign managers revealing, post-election, that their internal polling always showed Trump ahead: it absolves the people running the campaign of responsibility for her defeat. The problem was the candidate herself and/or the Biden record she had no choice but to run on.
Given how bad a candidate Harris was, and the catastrophic record of the Biden administration — IMHO, definitely the worst in all American history (including James Buchanan) — I am amazed at how close the election was. I am pleased Trump won, but I am not inclined to gloat.
“The biggest delusion is the CAGW scam.” – Cornhead
That’s just a part of the left’s delusional thinking. Although it’s a big part and is based on fear of a fictional calamitous future.
Another delusion that has spread quite wide is that this is a systemically racist country established on stolen land.
Tying into that is the myth that an egalitarian society is possible. DIE is the weapon being used to further that goal. Diversity, equity, and inclusion – such a high-minded idea. But it’s actually a tool for eliminating merit and hard work. Egalitarianism, bah!
The other delusion that’s quite evident is that men can become women or women can become men, and transgender men should be able to play in women’s sports.
Those are all part of the madness that the left is advancing as their program to fundamentally transform America. And millions have bought in.
Of course, Kamals never said anything about this while running for POTUS. But she sure is on the record as being all in when she was VP and a Senator.
JJ
An Instructor at the University of Nebraska College of Law wrote an law review article asserting as a fact that biological men had NO advantage over women in athletic contests.
I complained to the Editor of the Nebraska Law Review and the Dean.
The Dean wrote me back and defended the author and her so-called scholarship. I recently emailed the new Law Review editor and asked for a correction. No word.
I was on the Creighton Law Review and we never would have allowed such insanity to see the light of day.
So maybe Harris’s real game was not to lose … too badly.
That would explain her refusals — I don’t think it was inability — to answer questions clearly. And her dependence on word salad as time filler. The old Rope-a-Dope strategy.
Well, OK. But pity the next Dem candidate, perhaps even Harris herself, to seek campaign donations.
I also wonder if the whole Dem/Deep State World didn’t know, deep down, that Harris was a crap candidate with a crap record who was going to lose.
Of course, Trump sealed that with a sweep of the EC, the popular vote and both Houses of Congress,
These are the reasons that our opponents have basically rolled over, our cities are not on fire, and we are not on the brink of civil war.
To be sure, there will be much passive-aggressive resistance, but not like what might have been.
I’m not exactly buying this. MI, WI, PA were decided by about 250,000 collectively. Not much spread across three states. Polls always contain a margin of error. Add a dash of wishful thinking, and I find it hard to believe they thought they were certain to lose.
“But what has long puzzled me is not why she lost, but why so many people voted for her when she was unable to speak coherently on most of the topics of the day, or to answer questions asked of her.”
For years I’ve been publicly bemoaning the fact that even if all the elections were honestly run, at least 40% of our fellow Americans vote Democrat. Each year the acts and omissions of Democrat Party politicians and spokespeople convinces me that Americans will finally get it, and then over 40% of our fellow Americans still vote Democrat. It’s damn crazy.
MI, WI, PA were decided by about 250,000 collectively.
Mike Plaiss:
Good point, in terms of the Electoral College. Not to be forgotten. Still resounding compared to:
2016: Trump won by 77,000 votes in WI, MI, PA.
2020: Biden won by 43,000 votes in AZ, GA, PA.
I’ve seen other numbers, but in those ballparks.
…at least 40% of our fellow Americans vote Democrat.
Ira:
We live on the Planet of the Apes. Mostly we vote by tribe.
It’s a lot of work and risk to change one’s tribe.
neo writes, “We often hear that internal polls are different than the polls we peons get to see. Apparently, this is a case of such a discrepancy, and another reason to see public polling as more of an attempt to shape voting behavior than to describe or predict it.”
—
huxley (5:12 pm) concluded, “pity the next Dem candidate, perhaps even Harris herself, to seek campaign donations.”
I was thinking in the same vein. Once what neo calls “scuttlebutt” [good word, that] becomes public knowledge (or reasonably public knowledge, correcting for those who either refuse to look, don’t know where to look, or are afraid to look), how willing will the megadonors be to fall for it next time?
huxley (5:21 pm) added, “I also wonder if the whole Dem/Deep State World didn’t know, deep down, that Harris was a crap candidate with a crap record who was going to lose.”
How deep is “deep down”? To me, it’s similar to the fool versus knave question.
– Did they really believe the border was/is secure? Run-of-the-mill true believers may have swallowed it whole, but people who should (and with 100 percent probability *did*) know better, never believed it. After all, it was a feature, not a bug. It was/is intentional and they all know it.
– Did they really believe the pullout from Afghanistan was well thought out? I can’t imagine anyone, not Harris or Jean-Pierre or Psaki or Morning Joe or anyone — save maybe Biden and Doctor Jill — falling for that. And maybe not even the good Doctor.
– Did they really believe that Bidenomics worked/works and inflation is not a big deal? Well, the left-elite were willing believers — * at least publicly * — but they weren’t that affected by the rising grocery and similar prices. The hoi polloi never bought that whopper, but we’re talking about the “Dem/Deep State World”. Sigh.
– Did they really believe that Harris ran a good campaign? *Could* they really believe that? Wow. The willingness to believe is rampant, although at this point, there do seem to be left-leaners who will admit publicly (now!) that Harris was a turd candidate.
I might go on with the “did they really believe” questions, but (alas) I’m too lazy to do that — and dear reader(s) don’t need that. From what I’m gathering, based on many You Tube videos, is that it depends on the individual(s).
But one additional thing I’m getting from You Tube videos is that evidently, some/many megadonors are pissed, especially pissed at Harris pissing away millions and millions of dollars that her campaign didn’t have.
Snicker.
The Dean wrote me back and defended the author
==
Academicians in our time tend to be people of low character. Especially if they’re in administrative positions.
I have to second Mike Plaiss and djf. This smells like bullshit, CYA, and attempts at narrative massaging. I don’t buy it. Never? Not once? In a system that tends to oversample Dems and has consistently underestimated Trump?
Now, I absolutely can believe Kamala was a desperation pick given how they were initially planning to stick with Biden of all people until the debate meltdown. I can also believe the internal polling was showing a distinctly different picture than the public ones for a couple months, and in particular that the last two or so before the election indicated trouble. But I do not, for one second, believe that they consistently showed Trump winning over Harris no matter what. The Harris camp’s actions would have been very different, such as probably not hewing as hard to Walz’s radicals or so on. Ditto the likely hints leaked to the likes of Silver and other friendly pollsters in the hopes of maintaining credibility.
The sardonic side of me asks how much the polling firms bribed these “senior advisors” to speak out now in this vein in the hopes of convincing people they were actually on point. But I don’t think that is the main reason here.
Also take a look at what is actually being claimed.
Bullshit. Especially the “was loyal” part. Kamala and the Bidens have been wrestling for power and priority for literal years, and Biden’s displeasure at the internal party coup has been palpable. They do not like each other, and while there had to be a certain amount of continuity and avoiding open attacks (which is a form of “loyalty”) that had more to do with trying to paint Biden as a winner than actual loyalty.
I feel this is Plouffe trying to CYA.
@Turtler:I feel this is Plouffe trying to CYA.
Of course it could be, and anything the legacy media amplifies has to be suspected. Accepting it as face value does not make the Dem-media complex look better, though it may deflect some blame away from the consultant class.
In a system that tends to oversample Dems and has consistently underestimated Trump?
Polling for public consumption does this, we know. But do we know the same for internal polls commissioned by campaigns? I don’t know that we do. During the campaign we heard rumors of disastrous internals at least for Biden.
Also take a look at what is actually being claimed.
What you quoted is a high-level summary of something I’ve seen more detail on elsewhere. They claim they actually tested different responses to the Trump ads, and the ones that did best were the Harris non-responses that we’ve all come to know so well. It’s not as though they didn’t research the effects of different rebuttals–again, if you believe what they are saying for themselves.
I am amazed at how close the election was. I am pleased Trump won, but I am not inclined to gloat.
I suspect there were still plenty of fraudulent votes for Harris, just fewer than for Biden in 2020 and not enough to overcome the larger support for Trump. But maybe enough to swing some of the House and Senate seats (as in Wisconsin and Michigan). I hope Trump can find a way to eliminate mail-in voting. Isn’t the postal service still under federal jurisdiction?
Jimmy’s absolutely correct.
The question should not be, “Why did so many people vote for Harris?”
It should be, “How do we know that all the votes Harris got are legitimate?”
(That’s a rhetorical question, by the way…cf. Pennsylvania’s illustrious Bob Casey.)
Ditto for all Democrats (especially in Arizona).
And the Democratic Party end game:
“Marc Andreessen Describes “Alarming” Meeting With Biden Admin That Prompted His Trump Endorsement”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/marc-andreessen-tells-joe-rogan-why-he-backed-trump
Opening grads:
+ Bonus:
“Financialization & Missed Boats: When Mythology Papers Over Reality”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/financialization-missed-boats-when-mythology-papers-over-reality
yes when chokepoint became viewpoint based, and not actually crime related
as thanos said ‘it must be like breathing’ that’s what plouffe, but all of his hat tricks failed,
yes a legitimate chain of custody and voter ID would make for a true count
TRUMP.
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP.
TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP.
Donald J. Trump.
Is there a he can’t do??
“ Life of Agony singer detransitioning after curing his ‘gender dysphoria’…”
https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/entertainment/rock-singer-mina-caputo-detransitioning-after-curing-gender-dysphoria/
+ Bonus:
“Trump says Mexico’s president has ‘agreed to stop’ migrants crossing into US through her country…”—
https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/us-news/trump-says-mexicos-president-has-agreed-to-stop-migrants-from-crossing-the-us-border-illegally/
LOL
I’m so thankful that she lost!
Agree entirely. She was terrible. Completely unable to express a coherent thought.
Late again, so this will probably go unnoticed, but I gotta get it off my chest. Kamala attained her level of incompetence (per The Peter Principle) when she was selected as the VP for Biden. She could hide her stupidity and incompetence under her “minority” veneer up to that point, but not thereafter, due to increased attention from every quarter, especially from places where her protected status wasn’t necessarily accepted at face value. That she was selected for VP and then for the presidential candidate exposed the stupidity and incompetence of the democrat party machine. (This was compounded by Obama’s outsized influence in that machine, but like Kamala, he had attained that position due to his status as “the first black president,” which prevented any criticism of his positions or choices as “racist”.) That Kamala garnered a single vote exposed the stupidity and incompetence of those who voted for her. This Thanksgiving, one of the things I am grateful for is the fact that such voters are in the minority.
Maybe the comments here are making me think Trump didn’t win overwhelmingly against the worst candidate probably ever, after Biden.
Shows how much the Democrats Propaganda Ministry has a hold on the country.
Agreed, Steve (retired/recovering lawyer), but the alarming thing is that the minority who voted for her is large. They have cheated their way into nearly taking the House. The Trump administration will need to move boldly and promptly for two years.
Democrat supporters seem to be people incapable of reasoned judgement.
Democrat supporters seem to be people incapable of reasoned judgement.
==
The Democratic Party is a concatenation of people who resent core Americans and wish to injure them. You could say the same about analogous party electorates in other occidental countries. Their preferred policies are (1) about building a one-party state so that the perspective of core Americans has no influence on public policy and (2) contrived harassment of ordinary people. The attitude is particularly common among those in word-merchant occupations. You have to scrounge to locate a Democratic voter who is not (1) hopelessly confused or (2) snarling and seething and sneering at some segment of the population that is not (looked at collectively) responsible for any observable and measurable social problems above and beyond background radiation. You see it most intensely manifest when you see what street-level Democrats have to say about an everyman being harassed by prosecutors (e.g. George Zimmerman, Derek Chauvin, the McMichaels &c., Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny).
Art Deco:
The Chattering Classless or Chattering Clueless?
“But what has long puzzled me is not why she lost, but why so many people voted for her when she was unable to speak coherently…”
Die-hard leftists would vote for a banana split if it had the “D” next to its name. Anyway, regarding Harris, everyone knew that she would allow all the grifts and all the ideologically-motivated mayhem to continue. For example, no question that it would still be possible, in a Harris administration, to castrate a five year-old. Not to mention the DEI gravy train rolling on.
This is sufficient. No further qualifications (like coherent speech patterns) needed.
In my mind the Dems are a cult. Their followers exhibit classic cultlike adulation of the leaders.
Democrat voters loved Harris because they hated Trump. That made them blind to any faults Harris had.
The 2016 California US Senate debate is available online. Harris sounded like a more or less plausible candidate for the Senate. She just had to effectively repeat the Democrat talking points, and from what little I heard she was doing that. Same thing in 2020, more or less. This time she had to defend the Biden/Harris administration’s terrible record. That was an impossible job — and the Democrat talking points were much worse and more inadequate this year.
The baggage Harris was carrying was a major factor in her defeat, but there’s no question that she was a terrible candidate. There was a decline in her ability to perform on stage. The talk is that she was a drinker or a pot-smoker, but I suspect she was on medication, possibly a medication that interacted poorly with alcohol. Beyond that, though, there didn’t seem to be that much to her.
Kamala tried to play the middle class card, but she couldn’t do that. She was less willing to play the race and gender cards, but to the extent that she did, they didn’t work either. Almost anybody in the higher levels of electoral politics can spout a rationale about why they are in politics and what vision they have for the country’s future (even if it’s all bogus). Harris couldn’t even manage that. Her promises of more spending to achieve targeted objectives (more first-time home buyers, more African-American small businesses) just emphasized how ineffectual and pointless all of Biden’s spending had been.
I think we see the power of the Democrats Propaganda Ministry. They hammered Trump for 8 years and managed to get the worst candidate at least to win some states. Sundowner might actually been worse as a candidate than Harris as he barely left his basement. She at least went on very safe interviews but still had at least 1 fix her answers.
I have a relation who is as current on our affairs as any illiterate seventh grader. And what she does know is generally wrong, and she is certain of it.
But there was an interesting hitch in a discussion some years back. When I pointed out that Levine, then public health big shot in PA took his mother out of a nursing home before….my relation interrupted, “It’s not illegal to take your mother out and put her in a hotel.”.
Right answer, wrong question. She knew Levine knew what would happen–that’s why he put his mother into hotel–and she knew what it was, as well. But she was okay with it because….it was a dem state. But she had to divert the argument.
The bad guy…? Ron De Santis. He doesn’t make people do stupid stuff.
@ Barry > “Marc Andreessen Describes “Alarming” Meeting With Biden Admin That Prompted His Trump Endorsement”— LINK
That was just about the most frightening thing I’ve read all month.
Some things we’ve seen on the internet before, some were new to me, and some were an extrapolation of past trends that AFAIK did NOT make the news.
That is straight-up fascism, of the kind the Democrats accuse the Republicans of fostering but actually practice themselves, and have since Wilson and FDR (sadly, some Republican presidents have also dabbled in the pond).
We knew about the legal-but-shouldn’t-be moves that the Democrats have used to harass industries they don’t like. It might take some real journalists to uncover WHICH tech founders were on the hit list, since most of them seem to be Democrat allies.
Maybe there are some conservatives who don’t toe the line sufficiently close to win the Marxist Seal of Approval.
The next point has shown up in the news recently, but I was unaware of the magnitude of the situation. To be fair, AesopSpouse (until he retired) and some of our sons work from home, to a certain extent, but they DO show up at the office on either a regular schedule or as needed.
I also have friends in government agencies who are diligent and earn their salaries, whether at home or at the office. However, there is a great deal of leeway for abuse in the situation.
And since no one ever gets fired for incompetence, maybe it’s cheaper having some of them at home NOT working than in the office messing things up.
Cheaper still to not have them working at all. I suspect that one of the things motivating the high level of Trump-hate in Washington was his too-long-delayed initiative to re-do Civil Service rules to get rid of them more easily.
I don’t think it was any great secret, it just didn’t have a “hook” that would drag it into the media on either side.
Maybe they could all learn to code.
There might even be some tech start-ups to hire them, under Republicans.
This next concern is very important, and has been exposed in multiple stories about different critical sectors in the last few years. However, this particular bit is the one that makes you want to know how soon we can put the DOD leaders and the Congress committee members allegedly overseeing them on trial for treason.
With capabilities like these, I wonder why the Chinese bothered with the spy balloons, which Biden Inc. allowed to wander at will until called out by the right-wing media and the public.
And why can’t American manufacturers meet FAA regs if the Chinese can?
Or, is it that the Chinese don’t have to?
(In the same way that employers don’t have to follow regulations for illegal labor that they do for American citizens and legal immigrants — which IMO is the main driver of the high cost of legal labor. It isn’t that Americans “won’t do the work” illegals do; they aren’t even asked to do it.)
There were more topics of concern discussed, and at the end some speculation that the Trump administration will do to YouTube what Musk did to Twitter by opening all the archives for examination.
I don’t know if they can, but where there’s a will, there’s probably an obscure statute.
A fair use of Democrat precedent: if you don’t want the Law used against you, don’t use it against your opponents.
Don’t expect that the Democrats are going to have problems finding donors again. It’s highly unlikely Trump and company will be able to roll back government to the point that the rich and somewhat powerful won’t want to make another grab at the levers.
As to the internal/external polls, I think that is mostly the error bars and how the results were spun. Despite claims I don’t think beyond the most egregious and probably least accurate cases do polling companies intentionally slant question to manufacture results. The campaigns likely do pay to get the error bars as small as feasible while media polling is likely to have more potential for error. A plus/minus 3 percent range encompasses any result from a >1% squeaker to a 5% blowout. The campaign polling was probably more accurate but likely showed a ‘jump ball’ until the final week or two. The claim to have always been behind might be a bit self-serving but it does align with the range of possible outcomes from the public polling.
Bahaha!