I just tuned into the 3 P.M. news hour on Fox and caught an interview with Jason Miller, speaking for the Trump campaign. Usually when someone connected to Trump (or Trump himself) shows up on Fox for an interview, it’s not what anyone would ever describe as a give-and-take designed to elucidate the truth. To the contrary, these events are pre-scripted sessions in which the Trump-ite just gives some brief speeches about whatever topics he or she chooses to discuss.

Lately, however, I notice that the Fox commentators have started asking real questions and even, on occasion, voicing some doubt about the veracity of what the designated Trump-spieler actually says. This was clearly what was going on at the 3 PM news hour, when Miller was directly questioned about the fact that early voting appears to be favoring Democrats by an 80-20 margin in certain key states.

To which Miller replied, “But what your story doesn’t cover is that in the battleground states, we are going to have the greatest get-out-the-vote program of all time. We have millions of people who are going to make sure that every, single registered Republican gets to vote, and this includes millions of people who will be voting for the first time.”

I have been following politics since 1960 and have voted in 5 different states over those 60 years. This includes states in the Midwest, the Northeast and the Deep South. I have never (read: never) seen a Republican GOTV effort in any of those states. For that matter, I have never seen any attempt by the GOP to register people to vote.

I don’t know if you know this, but generally speaking, Republicans don’t feel comfortable around people who want to vote. Voting is something that should only be done by people who have a real stake in the system, meaning, they have lots of money, or income, or both. And most people like those people have always been registered to vote. To Republicans, that’s what ‘one man, one vote’ really means. And notice I said one ‘man,’ not one ‘person,’ okay?

So to test Miller’s statement about how well his campaign is coming along, I went back to a little survey I did on September 15 and brought it up to date. The September 15 study found in 8 of the reddest of all red states, that in 2020 Trump was running about 10% behind where he ran in 2016. Today I added 9 more states to this list, which covers every state that gave Trump at least 56% of the vote in 2016.

The blue line is the percentage of the vote that Trump got four years ago; the red line is the percentage which he is polling today:

Notice that Trump is polling behind his 2016 voting number in every, single state. Notice that he is near or falling under 50% in 5 states. And here’s what you can’t see in this graph which is the most important number of all, namely, that as of today, the Sedaris dog-shit vote in all these states is under 6%. In other words, if every, single voter who hasn’t decided to vote for Trump walked into the booth and pulled his lever on November 3rd, he’d still fall way behind the numbers he racked up in 2016.

States like Kansas and Missouri are barely able to squeeze out a majority for the GOP? A state like Montana is barely over 50%? If I were Jason Miller and I actually could deploy some people to go around and get out the vote, I’d focus on states that have always voted Republican before I started worrying about states that are in play.

Right now, Nate Simon says that Joe’s on his way to win 348 electoral votes, RealClearPolitics puts the likely number at 313. These numbers assume that Trump will handily win the usual red states.

He will?