We don’t know who is ahead in the primaries, and it is almost certainly not who is polling best in shit polls

Because nothing is more important than made up numbers.

I’ve been holding back on this for a while, only because I fear some right wing toad at Pew will agree and tell someone who has influence to alter GOP policy, but I am quite certain that Donald Trump is not the favorite among Republican Primary Voters. Walker and Perry should not have dropped out–Perry would likely have been at a minimum the third most popular candidate if he’d have just cooled his jets. Bush is doing the right thing and not panicking, perhaps because someone finally woke up and figured this out.

I was heartened to see Robert Wuthnow agrees that shit polls tell us nothing and he even quotes this humble blog in his new book. If you think about what the whore pollsters are doing these days, you can easily see where Trump winds up on top in bad national polls and why Hillary appears unbeatable even though she can only get a few hundred rich people to show up at a cocktail event while Bernie Sanders is filling stadiums with raucus supporters.

The whore polls are probably achieving less than .5% response rate. Yes, you got that right. I don’t even believe they get their claimed 5-8% response–not even Gallup or other supposedly reputable whores. The Pew-Gallup Religious landscape study claims 10-11%–my hand calculation was 8.8%, and they worked on that. They aren’t working on polls that happen every single day. They have caller banks of low-wage workers (probably piecemeal pay, more interviews, more money….hmmmmm….). They’re just trying to get to 500 interviews. Calling mostly on landlines—which most younger people (and now we’re talking 50 being young….) and minorities don’t have. And, most people don’t answer their phone if they don’t know who’s calling, this is true of cell and landlines. We almost never answer our phones, and certainly not if a foreign number or “no details” is in the caller id.

Who answers their phone when called by strangers? Old conservative white people. And, not just any old conservative white people, the types who watch reality TV and sit around in their armchairs like Archie Bunker. Trump supporters. Rich professional conservatives who would vote for Bush or Walker or Perry or Kasich (all governors from heavily Republican high population states) do not answer their phones when plebes call. They probably pay extra for a blocking service. The other types of people who answer the phone when strangers call are the old retired Democrats who used to be schoolteachers, nurses, and other civil servants—heavily female, and much more conservative than the majority of Democrats.

I don’t know how Trump fest is going to work out, but I suspect Bush will weather the storm and prevail. But, tomorrow Bernie Sanders is going to destroy Hillary Clinton in the debate, and the polls will still show that she’s ahead among the bluehairs.  Sanders will win easily unless Biden enters, and he’ll beat Biden as well. Hillary is gong to have a hard time convincing Biden to broker her his delegates, since I think Biden will beat Hillary. It’ll be an interesting convention if that happens.