Competing claims about Black voters show a mess the media has made
News agencies ignore their own warnings in the rush to get your attention.
If you follow the news, you may have heard any or all of the following claims about how Trump did among Black voters: He had “the “best performance for a Republican candidate for president in 48 years.” There was no noticeable change from previous elections, with Black voters overwhelmingly going for Kamala. His support among Black voters doubled. It barely changed, if at all.
Welcome to the mess the media has made of exit poll coverage. Today, I explain that the media is ignoring its own warnings, and choosing instead to inundate you with conflicting, untrustworthy claims that could easily turn out to be false. (Some of them definitely will; they can’t all be true.)
2016 should have been a wake-up call. Remember how a majority of white women allegedly voted for Trump? Except, most likely, no, they didn’t.
I explain that despite the many “exit polls” you hear referenced in the news, there are really only two. To make things even more confusing, the folks behind one of them say theirs isn’t technically an exit poll, but “serves a similar purpose.” (Hence the quotation marks in the title of this episode.)
Even reports based on the same survey sometimes have different numbers.
In a brief update last week, I looked at initial reports about another demographic: Jewish voters. Now, I show you an additional layer to the confusion. While the two different surveys offer very different figures, both say there was no change from 2020! That may also seem to go against anecdotal evidence, with many people saying they’re fed up with Democrats’ failure to adequately take on left-wing antisemitism. But maybe there was no big enough shift to show up.
Or maybe, just like last time, it’s too soon for news agencies to know what really happened. But they throw caution to the wind in a desperate effort to get your attention.
That brings us to a second media failure I explore in this episode: news agencies’ inability to accurately cover an actual modern pogrom that took place in the streets of Amsterdam. More on that in the next newsletter.
Also, I offer a reason for hope that the battle for truth will continue — and some steps you can take to help us get there.
For next week, I’m looking into the “why” of the election — the media’s never ending array of alleged reasons that the vote went the way it did. What are the best and worst explanations you’ve seen? Paid subscribers, post in comments or message me. Everyone else use this form.
A big thank you to sponsor MIT45, which encourages you to check out the Kratom Research Institute.
United Hatzalah saves thousands of lives across Israel each year. Its team of 7,000+ volunteers responds, free of charge, to 6.2 million annual medical emergencies. On October 7th, 2023, its heroes saved lives. Pledge to donate any amount using this unique link: bit.ly/3AtS0Tn, and the organization will make a small contribution to They Stand Corrected!
JL
P.S. A new brief clip from my Oct. 7 speech is up:
