READING BETWEEN THE POLITICAL LINES

BRYCE ON POLITICS & THE NEWS MEDIA

- "Liar, liar, pants on fire."

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I have discussed problems with the Main Stream Media (MSM) on more than one occasion, but as the mid-term elections are rapidly approaching, I have spotted another example of media corruption which voters should be made aware of, specifically, the misrepresentation of voting data.

I first noticed this with the special Congressional election in Pennsylvania's 18th district held in March, where the Democrat candidate squeeked by the Republican by just 755 votes. Prior to this, the New York Times made the observation, "In 2016, Mr. Trump won the district (PA-D18) by double digits..." This was parrotted by the political talking heads on television repetitively. So much so, I became suspicious and decided to investigate their claim.

The first thing I did was go to the Pennsylvania Board of Elections to see what data was available pertaining to the 2016 presidential election on a "district" basis. I quickly discovered, there is no such data as presidential election results are reported on a "county" basis, which is quite common.

Knowing this, I then tried to piece together the data based on the counties in the district. This was not easy to do as District 18 consists of "parts" of Allegheny, Greene, Washington, and Westmoreland counties. This complication explains why there is no presidential election data available on a district basis. Nonetheless, here is what I was able to compile:

ALLEGHENY
- Trump - 257,488
- Clinton - 363,017
GREENE
- Trump - 10,394
- Clinton - 4,157
WASHINGTON
- Trump - 58,941
- Clinton - 34,436
WESTMORELAND
- Trump - 116,427
- Clinton - 59,506
TOTAL
- Trump - 443,250
- Clinton - 461,116

SOURCE: http://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/

Here, we see Mrs. Clinton was actually the winner of this area, not Mr. Trump, but we must remember District 18 consists of "part" of Allegheny County, the largest prize. If we were to cut the county's figures by half, Mr. Trump would win the district by only six percentage points, hardly the "double digits" reported by the MSM. In other words, the MSM is spreading falehoods to the public.

So, I challenge the press to reveal their sources for making such a bold claim. I'm betting there is no such data and this was a fallacious statement designed to mislead the public and encourage "The Blue Tide" to vote.

The victory by the Democrats was widely trumpeted by the MSM to indicate the tide is turning, thereby rebuffing the president, and will likely turn the House of Representatives back to the Democrats. Democrat Conor Lamb may have won the Congressional seat for now, but he faces re-election in November.

ARIZONA's DISTRICT 8

Like Pennsylvania, a special election was held in Arizona on April 24th for District 8. Like PA-DI18, the Arizona District is just a portion of Maricopa County, as represented by the north and west suburbs of Phoenix.

Prior to the election, I spotted an e-mail from a Democrat Fund Raiser. The verbiage was remarkably similar to what we heard in Pennsylvania, to wit:

"If you'd asked me a year ago if I thought Arizona's 8th congressional district was going to be a competitive seat for Democrats, I might have said no. The district has been considered safely Republican for years and Donald Trump won it in 2016 by more than 20 points."

This too was parroted by the media, including CNN who wrote, "President Donald Trump carried the district in 2016 by 21 percentage points." (4/23/2018) Naturally, I became suspicious again and checked the presidential election data in Arizona. Like Pennsylvania, I could find no data on a "district" basis, only by "county." From this perspective, I discovered Mr. Trump won Maricopa County by 2.9 points (47.7% - 44.8%), not the "20 points" claimed by the Democrats. Once again, I started to smell a rat.

The e-mail I received went on to claim:

"But we've seen in 2018 that any district can be competitive if we go for it. Dr. Hiral Tipirneni has been organizing on the ground and talking to voters directly -- and guess what? Two polls this week have her up or tied."

Again, my spider senses told me something was wrong and I looked it up and found two polls:

The first one, from Emerson College in Boston, had the Democrat candidate up by one point. Emerson is a fine school for the Creative Arts, but I question their surveying methodology.

The other poll was based out of Phoenix (part of Maricopa County), OH Predictive Insights, which was sponsored by the local ABC affiliate. According to the poll, the Republican candidate was up by ten points and indicated the Republican will win the race convincingly.

Interestingly, Republican Debbie Lesko did, in fact, win the contest, by a decisive margin of 5.22 percentage points, more than Mr. Trump took in all of Maricopa County. Following her win, the silence from the media was deafening. Had the Democrat won, the hoopla would have been as loud as what followed in Pennsylvania. Why would that be? Hmm...

If anything, the media sounded more like sour grapes following the Republican's victory. For example, "CNN has projected that Republicans won the special election in Arizona's 8th Congressional District, but once again Democrats have overperformed in a deep red district, in another sign the national environment is in the their favor."

THE BOTTOM-LINE

The distortion of the facts by the MSM is reprehensible and denotes their loyalty as they are materially assisting the Democrats get elected. All of this is being done to suggest a "Blue Tide" is rising and will recapture the Congress in November, thereby becoming more of an impediment to the Trump administration.

The lesson here is simple, the next time you read or hear about how Mr. Trump won a congressional "district" by a wide margin, know that the news media is presenting you with a bold-faced lie. And if they top it off with polls that do not seem to make sense, they are probably a figment of someone's imagination, someone in the Democrat party.

And the main stream media wonders why they are no longer trusted by the American public. Go figure.

Keep the Faith!

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Tim Bryce is a writer and the Managing Director of M&JB Investment Company (M&JB) of Palm Harbor, Florida and has over 40 years of experience in the management consulting field. He can be reached at timb001@phmainstreet.com

For Tim's columns, see:   timbryce.com

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