ROCK HERMON HACKSHAW

AS A freelance journalist, I refuse to dabble in conspiracy theories given that their truths are hardly ever upheld. In the contemporary US political realm/discourse, what has been disappointing is the proliferation of conspiracy theories, coming mainly from those on the right wing of the political spectrum.

Television networks such as Fox News, Newsmax, and others of that ilk perpetuate some of these conspiracies through resuscitation and repetitiveness, without even filtering for veracity.

In the 2020 election, Newsmax and Fox News spread so much false information about the legal outcome that they were eventually sued by voting-machine manufacturers, and, despite paying out over a billion dollars in civil-court losses, they still give voice to frivolous conspiracies.

Even though all the lawsuits against these outlets are still not resolved, they continue their slanted news overage and unobjective political commentary.

It is downright dangerous in many ways. It’s unethical, to say the least. You can endanger lives with conspiracy theories, so there is a moral imperative to be careful as journalists and ones who publicly disseminate information. It is with an awareness of all this that I write this article.

I have observed some strange things happening in this year’s presidential election. I could go down many rabbit holes here, but I will only dwell on the “polling” of potential voters.

When you compare the last presidential election with this one, a few things jump out at you. There appears to be a preponderance of polling this time around, with a few new polling outfits emerging, beyond the traditional CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, Gallup and others which have been around for years.

When you dig deeper into these new polling entities you will find Republican connections behind the scenes. These entities present themselves as marketing researchers or political consultants, and they make their polling results public by employing both mainstream and social media.

These new outfits hardly share their crosstabs. Why is that? Crosstabs will indicate things like the composition of the population that was polled; the type of questions asked from which answers were solicited; the racial, ethnic and religious make-up; gender differences; and specific geographical locations, etc. So, what’s happening here?

A common observation is this: Donald Trump is nearly always winning or close enough to be within the supposed margin of error. This has happened time and again. It doesn’t matter if it’s a national or swing-state poll. Political shenanigans again?

What many people seem to have missed earlier this year was a profound moment in Trump’s election interference/fraud trial. Disgraced lawyer Michael Cohen testified that in 2016 – during the Republican presidential primary – he and Trump conspired to fix the polls. He stated that they finally corrupted a specific poll to show results favouring Trump.

This manipulation of public perception helped him win the primary and eventually the undemocratic electoral college in the general election, despite losing the popular vote count. Remember Cohen was Trump’s fixer: something he used to boast about.

It has been theorised that American voters love to jump on the bandwagon of perceived winners. This is probably happening here: another attempt to manipulate public perception.

Media entities love to do polling aggregates and come up with projections. For example, RealClear Politics and Nate Silver/538 (formerly of the New York Times) are two of the leading political predictors in the US, and they emphasise polling averages in their work. The more polls showing Trump winning, the better his average.

Trump has been insisting from the outset that the polls show him winning the race. He is setting up a scenario whereby once he loses, he will use all this to say that the election had to be fraudulent – even without a shred of evidence.

I suspect he would then stir up (or try to) another January 6, 2021, event – when his supporters stormed the Capitol – to create chaos and confusion. His hope is to get challenges into the court system, then, if it lands at the Supreme Court, conservative justices will then rule in his favour like the court did for George Bush in 2000.

It was rather befuddling that a man convicted of 34 felonies; found civilly liable for sexual abuse of advice columnist E Jean Carroll to the tune of millions of dollars and for defaming her; who dishonestly filed bankruptcy at least seven times over the years; has had thousands of lawsuits filed against him, especially over his business practices; an artful tax-dodger; facing multiple indictments in various jurisdictions for other crimes and misdemeanours; who mishandled – and even stole – classified documents of the US government; a serial adulterer; a confessed female predator; a conman; an arguably racist individual, just to name a few of his undesirable qualities and behaviours, could be leading in the polls.

Initially I thought it was the fact that most of his followers are not highly educated folks, who are either white supremacists or Christian nationalists of all races and ethnicities. However, it is deeper than just that.

There are reasonable folks who see the border/illegal immigration issue as being mishandled by the Biden/Harris administration. Some are opposed to abortions in any circumstances, and others see inflation as something this administration didn’t handle well (despite the pandemic of 2019).

Republicans who appear on political talk shows always stress election integrity. They cast all sorts of aspersions on election administrators as if to undermine the reliability of election results. They imply that illegal aliens are voting without any proof that such a thing is prevalent.

In fact, studies done on hundreds of electoral contests and on millions of votes cast in the last decade have found just a handful of these irregularities. Illegal voting by aliens is a rare event. It is done more because of ignorance, misinformation and confusion, rather than anything nefarious.

Here is the good news in all this: Democrats are fully prepared for Republican shenanigans come election day or beyond. They have an army of lawyers waiting to respond.

Stay tuned-in folks.