Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio put in yet more weekend hours on Saturday slapping together a memo bitching about polling, this time admitting that the “honeymoon” he promised was only going to last a 2-3 weeks has been extended due to the media’s interference and warning fans that Vice President Kamala Harris’s momentum is going to continue building for several more:
When Kamala Harris entered the race, we predicted that she would get a bump in the polls, aka the “Harris Honeymoon”. We said, “The honeymoon will be a manifestation of the wall-to-wall coverage Harris receives from the MSM. The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term.” We’ve certainly had a front row seat to the “honeymoon.” In fact, the Media decided to extend the honeymoon for over 4 weeks now.
The respected Media Research Center recently released an analysis of the media coverage of Kamala Harris and President Trump since Joe Biden dropped out. Their study found that 84 percent of the coverage of Kamala Harris was positive while 89 percent of the coverage of President Trump was negative. But even after all the fawning coverage of Harris and negative coverage of President Trump, we find this race fundamentally tied, particularly in the battleground states going into the DNC.
We keep ragging on the “honeymoon” line and for good reason – it’s fucking stupid and self-defeating. While we’re sure there are plenty of examples of married couples who decided to get divorced within three months of their wedding and the celebratory vacation afterward, it’s not especially common. Even Trump’s three marriages each lasted longer than that. It was a poor choice of phrasing and now Tony Fabs is blaming the media for “extending” it when he was the one who created the expectation that Harris’s momentum would be blunted in the lead-up to the DNC.
Continued:
However, post-DNC we will likely see another small (albeit temporary) bounce for Harris in the public polls. Post-Convention bounces are a phenomenon that happens after most party conventions. In 2016, President Trump and Hillary Clinton both got an average 2-point bump after their conventions. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton got an 8-point bounce, while that same year, George HW Bush got a 5-point bounce.
While they vary, the usual range is somewhere between 1 and 4 points according to a report by 538. So don’t be surprised to see Harris get a temporary 2 to 3 point bump.
But when you see this bounce remember that in 1988, Gallup had Michael Dukakis up 17 on then-Vice President Bush in the immediate aftermath of the DNC. Most polls had John McCain up 2 to 4 points on Barack Obama in 2008 the week after the RNC. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was up 7-points on President Trump after her convention in the RCP average. We all know how those ended up. These bumps do not last.
The other thing to keep in mind is that while the media is going to focus on the national polls, we need to keep our eye on the ball – that is the polling in our target states. Our goal is to get to 270 and winning these states is how we do it. We’ll let the media make mountains out of molehills, while we keep driving forward, sticking to our winning plan of getting President Trump re-elected.
Love the confidence in declaring “These bumps do not last” while selectively providing examples supporting that. Bill Clinton never trailed George HW Bush in 1992 after the convention, nor did Ronald Reagan trail Walter Mondale in 1984. Harris has maintained a lead for weeks now, really since the first true head-to-head polls were sampled and she was no longer a hypothetical nominee.
Spotted at the Barnes and Noble on Union Square in Manhattan, New York City on Saturday
Now maybe Team Orange isn’t wrong to complain about the mainstream media so much as that doesn’t matter and it’s enjoyable to see them squirm as the horserace circlejerkers suddenly betting (for now) on the fierce thoroughbred coming out of nowhere into the final turn. Our advice is just give in to despair and stop posting these stupid memos where anyone can see them and scrutinize them for signs of false optimism so thinly belying legitimate panic inside the campaign.