Richard Wolfe: Trust your gut, not the polls
You’ve heard this before. Political polls are poor predictors of eventual results. Poor with regularity and sometimes embarrassingly so.
Late in March, a special election in Alabama for State House District 10 was held after the previous incumbent, Republican David Cole, pleaded guilty to felony voter fraud (election integrity!) and resigned his seat.
In said special election, Republican Teddy Powell lost to Democratic candidate Marilyn Lands despite his internal campaign polling — conducted in December — which suggested he was on course for a comfortable victory. Powell's polling suggested he’d net 47.7 percent of the vote against 36.8 percent for Lands.
Oops.
Lands flipped the previously Republican district capturing 62.4 percent of the vote versus 37.6 percent for Powell. Which amounted to a near 25-point victory, something fairly described as a landslide. And nearly a 36-point swing from the Powell polling conducted just three months earlier.
So, what happened?
In February, in between the December polling and the March election, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos were the legal equivalent of children. Lands' campaign focused heavily on supporting access to abortion and, of more immediate relevance, in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
The Alabama decision was the opening foray into the sketchy realm of what the right refers to as ‘personhood’. While not specifically banning IVF, per se, the court said three couples could bring suit under the state’s wrongful death law because their frozen and stored embryos were accidentally destroyed.
Doctors and hospitals that provide IVF treatment have since halted providing IVF treatment. For its part, the Alabama legislature is rushing headlong to enact laws that would, potentially, bestow personhood only to embryos that have already been implanted.
If there remains any doubt still, nearly two years post-Dobbs, regarding the salience of women’s reproductive rights at the ballot box it’s time to have another think. Teddy Powell’s polling may have been a bit optimistic foretelling a nine-point advantage, but even bad polling rarely gets it wrong by 36 points.
Dobbs opened a Pandora’s box for red states across the country. Where forced-birth proponents once hailed their resurrected supremacy over women that they don’t even know, they are now becoming increasingly aware that they may have wished too hard.
Because attacks on women’s bodily autonomy are kryptonite for Republicans. Michigan Republicans are all too aware of that, having lost virtually all of state government in 2022 due largely to Proposition 3 (which enshrined a constitutional right to abortion).
In Arizona, a long-dormant law — dating back to when Arizona was just a territory and slavery was still legal — bans abortion from the moment of conception and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. In response, half a million signatures have been gathered to put abortion on the fall ballot, setting the stage for an overwhelming turnout at the November election.
Even the disgraced and discarded and thus far four times indicted, currently on trial, not immune, sexually predatory former president (DADATFFTICOTNISPFP) sees the political peril here. Notwithstanding his recently declared position that decisions on abortion access should be left up to individual states, he has called on AZ state officials to “act immediately” to overturn the ban.
Republicans in the Arizona House then blocked attempts to bring a repeal bill to a vote. Twice. The Senate seems more inclined to consider a repeal, but the inescapable fact is abortion, as a campaign issue, gives Republican politicos fits.
We’ve seen this sort of thing elsewhere, and not just in states considered bastions of liberalism. Fifty-six percent of Ohio voters upheld abortion rights. Fifty-nine percent of Kansas voters rejected a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have said there was no right to an abortion. Signature gathering has begun in Montana to enshrine abortion access in its constitution.
Florida became the latest state to pave the way for a November electoral showdown on the issue after its Supreme Court judges let stand a ban on abortion after six weeks.
There could be over a dozen states that consider an abortion referendum in 2024, which would be a record number of ballot measures that have long-lasting implications for abortion policy.
Closer to home, the Ottawa Impact cabal are undaunted by any of this. They’ve inked a spanking new (and meaningless) anti-abortion resolution, but they’d really rather not discuss it. So much so they chose — all of them — to not attend a candidates’ forum where they might have been asked questions about it.
Political genius. See you in August.
— Community Columnist Richard Wolfe is a resident of Park Township. Contact him at wolf86681346@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Richard Wolfe: Trust your gut, not the polls
