The year 2023 had so much potential. The usual suspects were screaming the hottest hotness ever. All that global boiling. The dry grass out west from a year with record snowfalls. Drought narratives meet climate narratives to spark a flame that rages (like wildfire) nationwide, but 2023 saw the lowest burn average in 25 years.

The news has been quite good this year with respect to the total number of acres burned on US soil due to wildfire activity. In fact, the total acreage burned this year is under 3 million (through 12/18) which is far below the 10-year average of nearly 7 million from 2013-2022 and the lowest since 1998.

One of the main contributing factors to the down year in overall US wildfire activity is the fact that it has been a mild year in California with the number of burned acres under 390,000 (as of 12/18). This value is down about 75% from the 5-year average of about 1.6 million acres burned in the Golden State (data source). The relatively mild year of 2023 follows another relatively mild year in 2022; however, the two years before that (2020, 2021) were some of the worst on record.

WUWT Also included a screen grab of the official government data, available here.

That’s not the only bad news for Captain Planet and the Climate Cult Profiteers. Overall, 2023, while sold with a hyperbolic fury as proof the world would end if we didn’t revert to stone tools and eating insects, was, in fact – boring. Nothing unexpected or exceptional if you are more interested in climate science than political science.

WUWT did a deep dive here, which was summed up like this.

We are all well aware of the narrative that the weather is quickly getting worse. Unfortunately, data does not agree.1

The weather — and certainly the impacts — of the past 12 months in the United States was actually pretty typical, even benign, in historical context.2

I’ll leave you with one more bit of data that is not at all interesting or exciting. NOAA’s USCRN Surface Temperature anomaly data for the US.

Boring. There is no evidence of a change in temperature trend, which means no boiling or roasting or hottest hotness. It’s just weather, and when you pile all that weather in a row, there’s nothing to see.

Sorry, one more “one more.” Tony Heller checked the Arctic Sea Ice Extent on Christmas Eve. It’s at its highest in Greta Thunberg’s lifetime.

Arctic sea ice has declined over the long term, but I read somewhere that the NAMO is expected to flip again soon, leading to expanding sea ice. None of which will stop the hyperbolic fury. The grift depends on it.

So, here’s to more news about wildfires, boiling, and sea ice news in 2024!

The post They Said “Global Warming” Will Affect Wildfires – 2023 Had Fewest Acres Burned This Century appeared first on Granite Grok.

We hear politicians spout it all the time when they are raising our taxes: “We’re just making them (of course not you) pay their fair share.” But what exactly is one’s “fair share,” and at what point can one be considered to be paying MORE than his or her “fair share”?

It seems like a good and important question to ask in this last post of 2023 and in anticipation of Vermont’s Democrat Supermajority returning to Montpelier next week for the start of the 2024 legislative session, looking, as they always do, to redefine this undefined term upward.

I have asked this question about what exactly a fair share is in the past. (Really fun to ask politicians on the campaign trail. Try it! The resulting squirming is impressive.) I get lots of answers, but rarely, if ever, a straight one, such as 20% of one’s income is enough. Or, as Bernie and his fellow travelers might say if they were being honest, “Everything you earn belongs to us, your government overlords. Just shut up and be happy we let you keep any of it.”  What do you think?

Anyway, we can expect a lot of “fair share” rhetoric buzzing through the airwaves and social media in 2024 as our so-called representatives find new and creative ways to screw hard-working Vermonters out of their wages to pay for more pet projects that provide little real value or benefit to society. See, last sessions’ “Clean Heat” carbon tax forcing you to pay “your fair share” through higher heating bills to not have any impact on climate change, for example. Or the 20 percent DMV fee increases the department said it didn’t need or want, but lawmakers implemented anyway just, I guess, to be “fair.” And, of course, the anticipated 18.5 percent increase in property taxes, which is apparently the new “fair” price to pay for increasingly poor public school performance catering to fewer overall students

Another suggestion coming back next year is a 3 percent income tax surcharge on Vermonters earning over $500,000 a year. That would make the state marginal income tax rate on these folks 11.75 percent – the highest in the nation bar California (13.3 percent). And, just a reminder, our neighbor New Hampshire has no earned income tax at all and is phasing out its tax on dividend and interest income within the next year or so. (Please finish this article before you start scrolling through Zillow.)

This additional 3 percent surcharge would say its advocates, raise roughly $100 million per year from not very many people. According to an analysis done by former state economist Art Woolf back in 2018, only 1,658 Vermonters earned over $500,000, and just 488 earned more than $1 million. Still, this tiny group of about half a percent of Vermont taxpayers accounts for 20 percent of all income taxes paid. Is that fair?

Yes, many will shout! I don’t earn $500,000 a year, so who cares? “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that rich guy behind the tree,” as the ditty goes. But here’s the thing…

As Woolf points out,

For most Vermonters who earn [$500,000 or more], having a high income is a one-time event. The Vermont Tax Department looked into this a few years ago and found that half of all the taxpayers who earned $500,000 or more experienced that level of income only once over a 10-year period…. Only 3 percent [of that half of one percent of all taxpayers] earned over $500,000 dollars in every one of the 10 years…. The basic conclusion: Very high-income Vermonters are rich because of a one-time event.”

Such as an otherwise non-wealthy Vermonter selling a house or a business. So, what this 3 percent income tax surcharge really is in practice, with very few exceptions, is not a screw the rich out of their ill-gotten gains play. It’s just the government greedily taking another chunk (on top of the property transfer tax) out of what is, for most of us, the largest investment we will make in our lifetimes, our house, or a bite out of Mom & Pop’s sale of their local business after a lifetime of work. These are often cases in which hardworking people have invested years of equity into these assets in order to fund their retirement. And our government wants a bigger piece of that. And no, it’s not “fair.”

The lesson here is to be careful when progressives try to win your support for some program by telling you they’re going to raise taxes on someone else to pay for it. In the end, it’s just propaganda, and it’s your wallet they end up looting because, as Willie Sutton might observe, “That’s where the money is.”

One of the questions Campaign for Vermont asked in their recent poll was Do you “Support/Oppose: Creating a Vermont Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, which would limit state spending growth to the rate of inflation and population growth; and would require any tax revenue collected in excess of that amount to be refunded to taxpayers. It would also require voter approval for any tax increases above and beyond this formula.” Gratifyingly, 67 percent of Vermonters supported the idea. Only 16 percent opposed it outright. This tells me that a solid majority of Vermonters think we’re already paying more than our fair share, and it’s time to cut off the spigot.

The post When Is Someone Paying More Than “Their Fair Share”? appeared first on Granite Grok.

First, let me tell you what Trump’s actual “crimes” were: Not starting any new wars. Actually getting economically tough, not just talking tough, on China. And, perhaps the biggest crime of all in the eyes of the UniParty, making the Southern border more secure.

Now let me tell you something else. Whenever the Regime-media tell you something is a “conspiracy theory,” that means that they have been caught with their hand in the cookie-jar and they intend to continue swiping the cookies. One such example is the Great Replacement, which according to NPR:

… is a conspiracy theory that states that nonwhite individuals are being brought into the United States and other Western countries to “replace” white voters to achieve a political agenda. It is often touted by anti-immigration groups, white supremacists and others, according to the National Immigration Forum.

Which is exactly what’s happening as illegal immigration is now exceeding domestic birth-rates:

Since August, there are officially more arriving each month than there are children being born to American mothers.

And these are just the official encounters — we don't know how many avoided detection. https://t.co/7Bt52x0385 pic.twitter.com/2APOiICGW0

— ~~datahazard~~ (@fentasyl) December 29, 2023

The Democrats support an open Southern border because they believe that non-white voters are Democrat voters and that, therefore illegal immigration produces a permanent Democrat majority once the American-born children of these illegal aliens  reach voting age. The “traditional” Republicans support an open Southern border because their big donors want cheap labor.

The UniParty is winning. America will be unrecognizable in twenty years.

The post The UniParty Wins Again … The Great Replacement Is Succeeding appeared first on Granite Grok.

Much has been said about the disparity between the cost of public education and the return on investment, but everything about government inevitably ends that way, and the more Democrats you have in charge, the greater the imbalance between rising costs and declining output.

It matters little what the budget exists to do; it will inevitably do less at greater expense, and politics ensures it goes to the right people at the wrong price. Take Vermont—a convenient punching bag for this and many a tale of woe. In recent years, it jumped off an ideological cliff, reducing itself to little more than a Liberal playground for failed policy. For our part, we get to watch this not-so-slow-motion decline—an exchange of individual rights and property for incompetent rule and perfidy.

Democrats are the joke that’s not even funny. A party that claims it can handle a complete transition in energy but is incapable of managing the infrastructure we already have. One of the many increases in costs Vermonters will face as they stumble into their Democrat legislature’s 2024 budget is rising DMV fees.

As part of last year’s budget, DMV fees are slated to increase about 19% across the board starting on January 1. That will include everything from registering a vehicle to getting a new license.

“There’s kind of an impression the DMV is the one pushing these fees — we administer them. They pass the laws, we administer them,” said Vt. DMV Deputy Commissioner Michael Smith.

Under the budget approved by lawmakers, it will cost $15 more to register a car, $10 more to register a motorcycle, $6 more for a small trailer, and $11 more for a driver’s license.

The increased fees are expected to bring in about $20 million to the state’s Transportation Fund to help offset lost revenue as cars have become more fuel efficient in recent years.

Who knew you had another 20 million lying around for the state to suck up. Revenue Vermont needs because of a deliberate policy decision to force people into cars that don’t pay gas taxes. Yes, they say “more efficient cars,” but that’s what they wanted, so has anyone thought it forward? To explain what I mean, consider tobacco taxes. If you dared to cut them, Democrats lost their collective hive mind, but their own goal was to end smoking. If you end smoking, there are no tobacco taxes.

If the revenue is critical, but the goal is to zero it out, what’s the plan? A progressive Government does not give back. It never gets smaller. Growing the state first is priority one. The lost revenue must be replaced, and taxpayers are well.

The transportation fund is no different. Much like tobacco, the goal is to get you to abandon personal transportation, but roads and bridges aren’t going away, nor is road striping, salting, and plowing, or any of the line items in a budget, which must increase. What’s the plan? From where do the millions beyond the next 20 million come, and for what?

To answer these questions, look back to public education. Citizens will pay more and get less, and their only hope of getting away from this progressive spiral of doom is to stop electing them to public office. I’d say look to New Hampshire for guidance. We’ve cut taxes and regulations, even eliminated some, but I’m not sure how much longer we’ve got until we are dragged down the same hole.

Every election is the most important one in our lives, and that includes the local/town elections. But the decades-long disaster that is public education hasn’t inspired a revolt at the ballot box, so what does it take to get people to care enough to change their own lives for the better? It begins by kicking Democrats out of office and never ends after that.

Or would you rather figure out where the next 20 million will come from to feed that ravenous beast because that’s what’s in store whether you’ve got it to give or not!

The post Another $20 Million Vermonters Didn’t Know They Had Will Leave Their Pockets Beginning Jan 1 appeared first on Granite Grok.

The Orange Bowl was not a traditional college bowl game in 2023. It was a game between two programs that had something to prove. The 13-0 Florida State Seminoles were snubbed from the playoffs for the National Championship of college football. They were the undefeated champions of the ACC, which many feel is a conference below the level of the SEC and Big 10.

After tonight’s game, these people have a lot of data to prove their theory.

The Georgia Bull Dogs had not lost a game in two years until the Alabama Crimson Tide took them down in the SEC Championship. That one loss kept them out of the playoff tourney and relegated them to play FSU on New Year’s weekend. There would be no three-peat in 2023 for the Dawgs, who had not lost a game in over two years but were denied a shot at the championship when they lost to the Tide.

Maybe it’s not fair, but it’s inevitable when you let partisan people decide the fate of these future NFL athletes. Yes, these Dawgs had much to prove and their egos to mollify as the FSU mascot raced onto the field and planted a flaming spear into the fifty-yard line. That was the last moment to cheer for Seminole fans, as their heroes in Garnet and Gold were no match for their counterparts from Georgia. This game was ugly, and even friends and family switched the channel before the two-minute warning,

There was a big difference between the make-up of the two teams that met today for bragging rights and pride. Because of injuries, the Noles were down to their third-string QB, but as many as twelve key players opted not to play for an undefeated record. These players chose to protect their bodies for the upcoming NFL Draft. Rather than putting on the uniform and playing for the pride of the school that had allowed them to showcase their talents, they sat it out, and thus, their team was embarrassed in the final game of 2023.

In contrast, Carson Beck, the Quarterback for the Georgia Bull Dogs, not only played in the Orange Bowl but has opted not to go for the cash of the NFL but to return to Athens, Georgia, for his Senior year to win another National Championship for his school and, hopefully, a Heisman Trophy for himself. That difference in commitment and pride has brought back-to-back championships to Georgia, and that is why Florida may never rise to that level again.

The 2023 Orange Bowl had no impact on college football’s National Championship but was a microcosm of life. Those who put themselves above their teammates may have a big payday but may never know the feeling of winning a championship. Those who put their team above themselves will always be champions. The Orange Bowl was only a game, but I bet the players will have very different memories to last a lifetime.

The post What Does 63-3 Really Mean appeared first on Granite Grok.

Joe Biden has something in common with Donald Trump. They’ve both been president, and neither has seen any need to debate anyone in the 2024 contest for similar and different reasons. Both are far enough ahead in the polls that debates are more risk than reward.

There is simply no reason to step into any ring of that circus.

And while Trump could probably walk onto a debate stage without fear of falling and with very little prep. Biden can’t say that. I’d be surprised if Grandpa Joe can still manage to sniff hair, and I doubt he does any debates in 2024, and not just because we’ve predicted the DNC’ll replace him after he wins the party nomination at their convention. He always lacked intellectual agility, but his decline has reached a point where even wearing an earpiece for prompts (which he lacks the hair to hide (like Hillary) would only confuse him. It would be ugly, so Joe won’t be debating anyone… ever.

Democrats should be okay with that—no debates, I mean. We already know most of them don’t want Biden but, like good party animals, will compromise the speed with which we receive election results by writing him. No paper ballot hand counting is allowed, but if the New Hampshire Bien write-in campaign is even moderately successful, poll workers will be forced to count those write-ins to tabulate results manually. The machines won’t know.

That is a reasonable delay in Democracy. It is a worthwhile distraction so local Dems can show their fealty to Dear Leader and a party that has been fixing its presidential primary for years. But that’s what good little Marxists do. It will be required after the resolution – might as well get good at it now.

If, however, you’d like to pretend you want to live in that Democracy you keep flapping your skinny little lips about, there’s a debate in New Hampshire on January 8th. Even in a pretend Democracy, you are allowed to pretend to have competing opinions about managing the planned decline and fall of that Democracy. And, no Biden, which should increase the draw. It’ll be safe to bring your daughters.

The lonely political vigil of long-shot Democratic presidential candidates Marianne Williamson and Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips will be transformed on to the debate stage early next month in New Hampshire – without Joe Biden, who is neither on the state ballot nor agreeable to any debate interaction with competitors.

The debate between self-help author Williamson and Phillips is set to be held at the New England College on 8 January, and moderated by Josh McElveen, former political director of radio station WMUR, two weeks before the state holds its primary.

Update: The debate will be hosted by New England College, a liberal arts nonprofit school, on Jan. 8 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Manchester, N.H. It will be moderated by the founder of the communications firm McElveen Strategies and former WMUR Political Director Josh McElveen, and it will air on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 at 7 p.m. EST.

The Left’s Party machine doesn’t want either of them, so this is more an exercise in policy approach, but it is something Democrats in New Hampshire have been denied, so I’d expect the junkies to be there.

They’ve also been denied the media spotlight New Hampshir’s primary provides. The access to insiders, the donor class, and political operatives who would have come from all across the world to cover Democrats vying for the attention of Granite State voters.

The handful of no-names have been here. There’s a bunch of them. There are more than 20 filings in both parties for the Presidential primary contest. Local Dems may have had the opportunity to press the flesh with one or more of them. Or not.

Joe Biden is conspicuously absent from the list, but Vermin Supreme is there. So are Williamson, Phillips, and others from a dozen states and DC. So, you might see why any Democrat debate in the 2024 New Hampshire primary season might be attractive.

It is a meaningless debate, but so is the Democratic presidential primary, so why quibble?

The post Presidential Primary: If You Want to See Dems Debate There’s One Coming Up in New Hampshire [Update] appeared first on Granite Grok.

President Biden’s sliding poll numbers have set off alarm signals among Democrats, who are beginning to see that he might lose the 2024 election to Donald Trump. Those polls have also gotten the attention of pundits who have confidently said for three years now that Trump could never again win a national election.

The polling results published over the past few months suggest otherwise: Trump is currently the favorite to win next year’s election.

The most recent RealClearPolitics Average has Trump leading Biden by 2.6 percentage points, a switch of about four points since late summer when Biden led 45%-43%, and in a long-running decline of seven points for Biden since he won the 2020 election with 51% percent of the popular vote.

More ominously for Biden, a recent Bloomberg poll showed Trump well ahead (by an average of five points) in the seven swing states of Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It appears the most significant factor in recent months is a surge in support for Trump (from 43% to just above 47%), while Biden has essentially remained stuck in neutral.

Joe Biden is an unpopular president, almost as unpopular as any president in the post-war era. According to the RCP Average, just 40% of voters approve of his handling of the job. His ratings have been falling for more than two years since the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Not coincidentally, voters also take a dim view of where the country is heading, with 68% percent saying it is headed in the wrong direction and just 25% in the right direction.

The president’s ratings have gotten steadily worse over the course of this year. More than 60% of voters say Biden “has moved too far to the left” on policies important to them. Voters are also pessimistic about the economy: 47% say things are getting worse, while just 22% say they are getting better, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll. These are alarming numbers for an incumbent seeking reelection.

Biden is also underwater on nearly every major issue. According to an early December Wall Street Journal poll, Trump is favored over Biden on the three issues voters say are most important to them: the economy (52%-35%), inflation (51%-30%), and securing the border (54%-24%). Voters also favor Trump over Biden on crime, the Russia/Ukraine war, and even the war between Israel and Hamas. These latter two ratings, on Ukraine and Israel, undoubtedly surprised Biden and his supporters, who assumed that voters would endorse his policies in regard to these conflicts. By contrast, voters favor Biden on just two issues: abortion (44%-33%) and Social Security/Medicare (44%-38%).

Voters in these surveys also question Biden’s fitness to hold office, especially as they look ahead to the prospect of another four-year term. According to a new Harris/Harvard poll, 62% of voters doubt that he is fit to carry out the duties of the presidency, and another 48% think his presidency is getting worse year by year and month by month. Whatever their views on the issues, voters appear to think that Biden is increasingly incapable of addressing them.

Biden is losing support among Hispanics voters, a key constituent group of the Democratic Party. Hispanics have been trending away from Democrats and toward Trump over recent election cycles. Hillary Clinton carried Hispanic voters by 37 points in 2016, but Biden carried them by just 21 points in the 2020 election and lags well behind that margin this year. According to recent polls conducted by Economist/YouGov, Biden led Trump among Hispanic voters by 18 points in August, by eight points in September, by four in October, and by just two points (41%-39%) in December. These voters express strong disapproval of Biden’s performance in office, and even disapprove (51%-33 %) of his policies on immigration. Since Hispanics represent about 15% of all U.S. voters, their move away from Biden and toward Trump accounts in part for Biden’s recent slide in the polls.

Another key constituency turning away from the incumbent president is independent voters. Biden carried independents by nine points in 2020. They were a crucial part of his coalition in the swing states he carried narrowly last time, and an important ingredient in his popular vote majority since independents represent one-third of all voters. As with Hispanic voters, he lags far behind that margin in this year’s surveys. A recent Economist/YouGov poll taken in December gave Trump a six-point margin over Biden (38%-32%), with many of those voters still undecided. Still, this represents a 20-point slide for Biden among independents since the 2020 election.

Biden also faces an “enthusiasm gap” among some previously loyal groups who turned out to support him in 2020 due to their dislike for Donald Trump but are disappointed thus far with his performance in office. This is true, in particular, with young voters and, surprisingly, with African American voters as well.

Some suspect that voters under age 30 who are abandoning the president are disillusioned by his support for Israel in its war with Hamas, his failure to cancel student loans, and an insufficiently aggressive posture in regard to climate change. Biden won those voters in 2020 by a margin of 60% to 36%, but due mostly to their dislike for Donald Trump. Much of that antipathy remains. Recent polls continue to give Biden a lead over Trump among these voters: A Yahoo poll in December gave Biden a 55%-27% lead over Trump, while a more recent Emerson College poll reported a smaller margin: 45%-40%. At the same time, just 35% of those voters approve of his performance in office, according to a poll by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, a measure of their lack of enthusiasm for his reelection campaign.

To the extent young voters disagree with Biden, they do so for progressive reasons – and are unlikely to vote for Trump. But they could stay home, which would be a blow to the Democrats. According to the same poll, fewer than 50% of young voters say they will “definitely” turn out to vote next year, compared to 57% at this point in the 2020 election cycle. In addition, roughly 10% of these voters say they would vote for Robert Kennedy in a multi-candidate race, which further narrows Biden’s lead over Trump in this group.

Biden seems to be in unlikely trouble among black voters. They are by far the most loyal of all Democratic Party voting groups: Biden carried these voters overwhelmingly in 2020 (92%-8%), which also helped him in the swing states. Trump may never win a significant share of this vote, but a doubling of his 2020 total now seems within the realm of possibility. A recent Economist/YouGov poll has Trump with support from 12% of these voters, with many still on the fence.

Perhaps more ominously for Democrats, a growing share of blacks say they will not vote in a contest between Biden and Trump. In a series of Economist/YouGov polls, the percentage of black adults saying they would not vote at all increased from 7% in August to 11% in December. This, despite Biden going a considerable distance to appeal to those voters by appointing African Americans to prominent positions in his administration and taking their side in controversies over civil rights, crime, and government spending. Biden’s challenge among the black community, then, as with young voters, is in regard to enthusiasm and turnout, and not so much with the direct match-up with Trump.

Biden’s strategy for the 2024 campaign becomes clearer in view of his sagging poll numbers. Instead of running on his record, which will be difficult to do in view of his overall ratings, he will emphasize Trump’s defects and the dangers a Trump presidency will pose to the constitutional order.

“We may have problems,” his allies are already saying, “but the other guy is far worse.” The various legal prosecutions underway will be woven into this strategy as a means of appealing to independents and those “on the fence.”

A conviction of Trump in a court of law would aid immensely in this strategy. In addition, Democrats will redouble their efforts to mobilize minority voters and young voters, while sharpening their appeal to Hispanics. Democrats will also ride the abortion issue, which worked for them in 2022, and is one of the few issues that cuts in their favor. Democrats understand that a victory for Trump in the presidential race will also mean that Republicans will take control of the Senate while expanding their margins in the House of Representatives – and thereby enable Trump to carry out his threatening agenda.

Trump, on the other hand, if he can side-step the legal challenges, has his own cards to play in the campaign. For one thing, voters know him, and there is nothing new that Democrats can say about him that they have not already said, ad nauseam, for several years.

Voters can also compare the Trump and Biden presidencies – and Biden does not come off well in that comparison. According to a Wall Street Journal poll taken last month, 50% of voters say Trump’s policies helped them, while just 23% said the same about Biden’s policies; indeed, 53% of voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them in some way. This allows Trump to ask the question Ronald Reagan posed to voters in 1980 during his campaign against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Many voters will say “no.”

More importantly, Trump does not have to win the popular vote in order to win the election in the Electoral College. The election will be decided in a series of separate races in seven or eight swing states where Trump may have an advantage. If he wins even half of them he is likely to win the election. The national popular vote, measured by these polls, will be somewhat beside the point in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats will register large margins of 7 or 8 million votes in the populous states of California, New York, and Illinois, as they did in 2016 and 2020, while Republicans will carry their own large states (Texas and Florida) by less than one million votes – giving Democrats a substantial edge in the popular vote that will not translate directly into electoral votes. Any vote beyond 50% in a state is of no use in the Electoral College – and Democrats tend to “waste” more votes than Republicans.

Trump lost the popular vote to Clinton in 2016 by two percentage points, but still won a safe majority in the Electoral College by carrying nearly every swing state. Biden won the popular vote in 2020 by more than four points (51.3%-46.8%), but carried the critical swing states by narrow margins, in the cases of Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin, by less than one percentage point. A swing of less than 1% from Biden to Trump in those three states would have given Trump a tie in the Electoral College, so that the election would have been decided in the House of Representatives. In addition, reapportionment following the last census will allocate three additional electoral votes to the states Trump won in 2020 – two more to Texas and one to Florida – and three fewer to the states Biden won. This will make Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes slightly easier to navigate. (Pollsters would do well next year to survey the swing states and mostly ignore the national vote.)

It appears, then, that Biden must win the popular vote by at least three points, and perhaps by as many as four, in view of what happened last time in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin, to be assured of winning a majority in the Electoral College. Current polls have Biden running two points behind Trump in the popular vote, but at the same time show that he is behind by at least five points in the swing states. These polls, along with results of past elections, suggest that there is a gap of at least three points (and maybe four) between the national popular vote and the outcomes in those swing states.

Some have said that Trump has a ceiling of 46% or 47% of the popular vote, and has no chance of reaching 50%, which they say he will need to win the election. This is not so: Trump can win the election with 47% percent of the popular vote if he can keep Biden below 50%, perhaps with the assistance of third-party or independent candidates. If Trump stays close to Biden in the popular vote, which current polls suggest he can do, then he is likely to win the game in the Electoral College.

Trump is fully aware of this (many are not), and will campaign accordingly. He is also aware that Biden will not be able to campaign from his home as he did in 2020, lest voters conclude that he is not up to the job; but the attempt to run a vigorous campaign may further expose that weakness. Nor can he allow his vice president to lead the campaign because she is more unpopular and prone to gaffes than he is.

Trump’s rise in the polls sets the stage for an unusual campaign ahead. Democrats may conclude, in view of Biden’s weakness across the board, that a traditional campaign focusing on issues and turnout may not succeed this time around – and that their hopes will rest upon winning the legal campaign against Trump.

This may explain recent moves by the special prosecutor to expedite the case against Trump in order to win a verdict prior to the election. The reversal of fortunes between Biden and Trump also accounts for the revival of charges that Trump, if elected, will prove to be a “dictator,” and so should be disqualified from the ballot. Those cases, and perhaps the election itself, will be decided this year by the Supreme Court.

For these reasons, and others likely to develop, this is bound to be an ugly and unsettling campaign – and one in which the traditional rules of national politics will be cast to the winds.

James Piereson | RealClear Wire

The post What’s Behind Biden’s Sliding Poll Numbers? appeared first on Granite Grok.