Trump Polls Mount as WikiLeaks Rips Podesta and Pat Buchanan Provides Historical Perspective

ELECTION DAY MINUS 12. What you need to know now about new polls, WikiLeak's Podesta email dumps and the state of the American Republic. • • • NEW POLLS. Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump has decreased and she does not appear to be causing a wave of Democratic support, according to the latest ABC News tracking poll released Tuesday. The results : Clinton 49%; Trump 40%. In the previous tracking poll, Clinton had 50% and Trump had 38%. ABC News actually pointed to the possibility that Trump may overcome recent controversies. The same poll looked at voter preference in their congressional district, and it appears voters are evenly split over their support for Democrat and Republican congressional candidates, with no trend toward Democrats : Democrats 47%; Republicans 46%. Independent voters are split evenly when deciding between Clinton and Trump, while Independents favor Republicans more in voting for Congress, according to the poll results. Among independent voters : Clinton: 41%; Trump 41%. Independent voters' congressional support : Republican candidates: 51%; Democratic candidates 39%. • The ABC News' poll breakdown. Male voters : Trump 45%; Clinton 42%. Female voters : Trump 37%; Clinton 54%. Men, no college degree : Trump 61%; Clinton 29%. Women, no college degree : Trump 56%; Clinton 37%. The poll was conducted by landline and cell phone from Ocober 21 to 24 in English and Spanish among 1,119 likely voters. • And, the RealClearPolitics' average of national polls -- including ABC News' tracking poll -- puts Clinton ahead by 4.2% over Trump. • Good news in Florida's race for the US Senate -- Republican incumbent Marco Rubio leads Democratic Representative Patrick Murphy by 10% in a Bloomberg Politics poll released Wednesday. The survey of 953 likely voters in Florida shows: Marco Rubio 51%; Patrick Murphy 41%. Independents support Rubio 51% to 36%. • The Question -- has Trump's calling polling "rigged" actually had an effect on polling? Are the pollsters beginning to realize that their tilted poll results do not sit well with the majority of Americans -- and more important, do the pollsters know that Trump and the GOP are winning this election and that they better get in line or be pushed aside permanently??? • • • POLLING -- ONE MORE TIME. A new Podesta email reveals the Democrat 'oversampling strategy' to inflate poll numbers. Hillary Clinton's recent lead in the polls has many doubting Donald Trump's ability to win the upcoming election, but a leaked email reported by financial blog Zero Hedge shows Democrats using "oversampling" to inflate polling numbers. The email, sent in 2008 by Democratic activist Tom Matzzie, reads : "I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling." According to Zero Hedge's shared pen name Tyler Durden : "That's how you manufacture a 12-point lead for your chosen candidate and effectively chill the vote of your opposition." However, the Washington Post rejects Zero Hedge's interpretation, arguing that Matzzie wasn't talking about public polls, since those are handled by independent pollsters working with media outlets. Instead, the WP presumes that Matzzie was referring to internal polling done to inform media buys. According to the Post, campaigns often oversample, meaning intentionally including more members of a certain group in sampling, to "figure out how to craft a message" tailored to those groups. BUT, the problem with the WP analysis is that the email is vague about how it will use the oversamplign results, and the email sounds very much like skewing polling samples in order to get the preferred polling result -- in favor of Hillary. There is another word for that -- CHEATING. • Donald Trump is accusing pollsters and the media of deliberatley putting a bias against him into their surveys, because many include too many Democrats in their sampling surveys. Trump and his supporters argue that mainstream pollsters are under-sampling Republicans to account for a rise in Independents, while failing to account for an enthusiasm gap that favors Trump or the new voters he could bring into the fold. Conservative news outlets agree with Trump’s arguments, seizing on a trio of national polls that show the race between Trump and Clinton is a toss-up. • A half-dozen pollsters interviewed by TheHill acknowledged it’s tough to do a poll on the 2016 race. They blame unprecedented volatility, two historically unpopular candidates, fast-changing voter behavior patterns and shifting demographics. All of those factors "make it tough to figure out exactly who will show up on election day." Even though the pollsters interviewed by TheHill largely dismissed arguments that polls showing a tight race are the accurate surveys, many pollsters are puzzled by the extreme variations in the surveys. A new survey from the conservative Rasmussen polling group gives Trump a 1-point lead nationally. A Los Angeles Times-USC poll -- one of the most accurate from 2012 -- has Trump qnd Clinton tied. And a survey from IBD-TIPP -- which has been among the best for the last three presidential elections — has Trump ahead by 2 points. All three surveys were featured Monday in the conservative Drudge Report under the banner of “Shock Polls.” The polls showing a tight race are very important since there are also recent surveys that suggest a landslide win for Clinton, who has had a 6-point lead in the RealClearPolitics average -- although Hillary's lead is now down to 4 points. Rasmussen polling analyst Fran Coombs says : “I’m scratching my head just like everyone in America. Believe me, we’re not putting the thumb on the scale to make Trump look better. It’s a crazy election year and this is what the numbers tell us. We’re comfortable with our methods.” The LA Times / USC survey has drawn scrutiny for consistently being the only survey to find Trump with a lead. One pollster interviewed by TheHill dismissed that survey as “experimental,” noting that it contacts only the same fixed pool of respondents, rather than reaching out to new voters for each poll. But that same methodology worked in 2012, when it predicted Obama would win by 3.3%, even when many other polls showed Obama doing worse. The President won reelection by 3.8%. LA Times Washington bureau chief David Lauter defended the poll : “Obviously, the poll’s [2016] results have been an outlier compared with other surveys, but if ever there was a year when the outlier might be right, it’s this year.” The IBD-TIPP poll has been praised by data guru Nate Silver as among the most accurate for several cycles in a row. TIPP pollster Reaghavan Mayur told TheHill he believes the surveys showing Clinton with a double-digit lead are equally deserving of scrutiny : “In 2008, Obama defeated McCain by 7.2% and that was a blowout election in terms of enthusiasm. Everyone was revved up and to accentuate it, there was the financial tsunami,” Mayur said. “And you’re telling me now that now in 2016 Clinton is up by 12? Does that jibe with anything we’ve seen in the past or common sense?” • • • THE STATE OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC. Veteran conservative GOP analyst and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan says there is no need to panic if Trump doesn't accept the election results. ressed by moderator Chris Wallace about whether he would accept defeat should Hillary Clinton win the election, Donald Trump replied, "I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense." Hillary called his answer "horrifying," setting off a fire storm on post-debate TV panels with Hillary-supporting pundits falling all over one another in anger, outrage and disbelief. "Disqualifying!" went out the cry on Clinton cable. "Trump Won't Say If He Will Accept Election Results," shreiked The New York Times. "Trump Won't Vow to Honor Results," ran the front-page headline in The Washington Post. • But, asks Buchanan : "what do these chattering classes and establishment bulletin boards think The Donald is going to do if he falls short of 270 electoral votes? -- Lead a Coxey's Army on Washington and burn it down as British General Robert Ross did in August 1814, while 'Little Jemmy' Madison fled on horseback out the Brookville Road?" Buchanan says one word explains the hysteria of the establishment -- Fear. Buchanan's reasoning : "The establishment is horrified at The Donald's defiance because, deep within its soul, it fears that the people for whom Trump speaks no longer accept its political legitimacy or moral authority. It may rule and run the country, and may rig the system through mass immigration and a mammoth welfare state so that Middle America is never again able to elect one of its own. But that establishment, disconnected from the people it rules, senses rightly that it is unloved and even detested. Having fixed the future, the establishment finds half of the country looking upon it with the same sullen contempt that our Founding Fathers came to look upon the overlords Parliament sent to rule them." • Buchanan says the Establishment panic is also traceable to another fear : "Its ideology, its political religion, is seen by growing millions as a golden calf, a 20th-century god that has failed. Trump is 'talking down our democracy,' said a shocked Clinton. After having expunged Christianity from our public life and public square, our establishment installed 'democracy' as the new deity, at whose altars we should all worship. And so our schools began to teach. Half a millennia ago, missionaries and explorers set sail from Spain, England and France to bring Christianity to the New World. Today, Clintons, Obamas and Bushes send soldiers and secularist tutors to 'establish democracy' among the 'lesser breeds without the Law.' Unfortunately, the natives, once democratized, return to their roots and vote for Hezbollah, Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood, using democratic processes and procedures to re-establish their true God. And Allah is no Democrat." • Those are tough words, even coming from Pat Buchanan, but one has to admit he makes sense. By suggesting he might not accept the results of a "rigged election," Trump is committing an unpardonable sin, says Buchanan, because he is saying out loud that none of the three axioms of the Progressive left -- diversity, equality, democracy -- is to be found in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Federalist Papers or the Pledge of Allegiance. In the Pledge, we are a "Republic." Buchanan cites Ben Franklin, emerging from the Philadelphia convention, being asked by a woman what kind of government they had created, he answered, "A Republic, if you can keep it." Among many in the silent majority, Clintonian democracy is not an improvement upon the old Republic; it is the corruption of it. • Buchanan points out Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, the Clinton bundler, announcing that by executive action he would convert 200,000 convicted felons into eligible voters by November. If that is democracy, many will say, to hell with it. Buchanan agrees : "And if felons decide the electoral votes of Virginia, and Virginia decides who is our next US President, are we obligated to honor that election? In 1824, Gen. Andrew Jackson ran first in popular and electoral votes. But, short of a majority, the matter went to the House. There, Speaker Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams delivered the presidency to Adams — and Adams made Clay Secretary of State, putting him on the path to the presidency that had been taken by Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Adams himself. Were Jackson's people wrong to regard as a "corrupt bargain" the deal that robbed the general of the presidency?" • Buchanan also gives the example of the Establishment recoiling in horror from Milwaukee Sheriff Dave Clarke's declaration that it is now "torches and pitchforks time." Yet, says Buchanan : "Some of us recall another time, when Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in "Points of Rebellion" : "We must realize that today's Establishment is the new George III. Whether it will continue to adhere to his tactics, we do not know. If it does, the redress, honored in tradition, is also revolution." Baby-boomer radicals loved it, raising their fists in defiance of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. But now that it is the populist-nationalist right that is moving beyond the niceties of liberal democracy to save the America that they love, elitist enthusiasm for "revolution" seems more constrained. What goes around comes around." • • • Dear readers, I can only say, Right you are, Pat Buchanan, right you are. This election is about saving the Republic and its Constitution -- political correctness be damned.