Brian Mudd Explains How He Predicts Elections
On Tuesday, February 2, the Boca Chapter heard a discussion of election prediction from WJNO’s Brian Mudd.
Brian Mudd is the Weekday Mornings 5am-9am WJNO (1290 AM) Financial Analyst & Co-Host for The Palm Beaches’ Morning Rush. Brian has graciously given his time to us on several occasions as the moderator in campaign debates, but this time he came to speak about how he uses his statistical analysis skills to predict the outcomes in elections. The methodology he uses for applying undecided voters is actually based on a concept that was first introduced more than 20 years ago called the “Incumbent Rule”. The incumbent rule outlined how 80%+ of the time, undecided voters on Election Day would break for non-incumbent candidates. Through additional research Brian has been able to boil it down to the concept of the known vs. the unknown.
Brian analyzes races around the country in which the undecided voters can swing the outcome of an election. He then apply the undecided voters based on the historical trends in that particular state over the last twenty years. It’s a lot more work but has proven to be extremely accurate as Brian has been able to accurately pick the outcome 98% of the time in the last two Presidential Elections since he began using this method. This cycle presents two challenges. First there isn’t an incumbent that’s running in either party and secondly, he doesn’t fully apply the method to primary and Caucus races because the nature of the primaries isn’t applicable from one cycle to another (variance with the number of candidates primarily).
Brian has also predicted based on several factors that there is a 92% chance that a Republican (he won’t say which one) will win the Presidency. Brian received a standing ovation for that one.
The meeting started earlier than normal at 6 PM to accommodate Brian because of his early morning work schedule, he has to wake up at 2:30 in the morning. After Brian spoke, we heard from a representative from the Donald Trump campaign, Sue Snowden and a representative from the Ted Cruz campaign, Marion Frank. Marion then went on to discuss the differences between capitalism and socialism; how so many Americans don’t even know what socialism is. However, all members in attendance at this tea party definitely knew the difference.
Read more: Cheat Sheet for 2/1/16 – Iowa Caucus special
Read more: Cheat Sheet for 2-5-16: Who would win New Hampshire today?
Marion Frank on Freedomworks Event
The Palm Beach County Tea Party was in attendance at the FreedomWorks event on 9/12 in Orlando FL, along with over 2500 patriots from all around the country. FreedomWorks was founded to fight for liberty and has brought together some of the best and brightest minds of the liberty movement. They have expanded their ambitions from a free-market think tank to a service center for the grassroots freedom movement across the whole country, encompassing Tea Parties, 9-12 groups and Conservatives.
Their urgent mission right now is to grow the “Freedom Caucus” in the House of Representatives. In order to be a part of the “Freedom Caucus” members must show that they consistently uphold conservative values, such as defunding Obamacare, balancing the budget, securing our borders, ending taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, supporting the VA and most urgently trying to replace Speaker John Boehner with Mark Meadows. Some of the Freedom Caucus members were at FreedomWorks and spoke to the crowd. They included Ted Yoho, John Fleming, Ron DeSantis, Mark Meadows, Tom Massie and Tim Huelskamp. The frustration was palpable coming from the Congressmen about not being able to get done the things they campaigned for because the House and Senate leadership, namely John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have decided to cave on every important issue so they can appear to get along better with the Obama administration. After getting a huge majority in the House and a slim majority in the Senate, things are actually worse than when the Democrats ran the Senate. We have a Republican leadership problem and the only way to fix that is to change the leadership.
A straw poll was taken at the event. All ticket holders could vote for their first and second choice for President. Our very special guest speaker, Glenn Beck read the winners at the conclusion of his speech. At first Glenn said that Donald Trump had won the straw poll. After the audience booed, he said he was only kidding. Donald Trump came in third place with 8%, Dr. Ben Carson in second place with 12% and Ted Cruz was the run away winner with 41%. It it true that Glenn Beck’s audience, Tea Partiers and 9-12ers are more conservative than the average Republican voter, so it came as no surprise that Ted Cruz was the big winner.
We left the event pumped up with enthusiasm. The speakers gave us some hope that Boehner may be replaced within the next few weeks, as there may be enough votes in the House to turn it around. Not so much in the Senate. There are really only 2 definite votes in the Senate to remove McConnell, that being Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. We need better Senators in the next election.
Talk of a Constitutional Convention at Wellington
We had another packed house for the Wellington Chapter meeting on Oct. 14th. We welcomed several first timers to our Tea Party, as well as about a dozen veterans. As you are aware, the Tea Party has a special place in our hearts for veterans of all wars. The concern for the future of our country is at a fever pitch, so we gave all our participants a chance to voice their opinions.
Our Chapter Leader, Marion Frank, began the meeting with a Cliff Notes version of Mark Levin’s new book, The Liberty Amendments. Mark contends that Article 5 of the Constitution states that an alternate way of amending the Constitution is to convene a Convention of States to propose amendments, thus circumventing Congress. Mark proposes 11 amendments, including term limits for Congress and Supreme Court Justices, limiting federal spending and taxes, limit federal bureaucracy, promote free enterprise, to protect the vote and Mark’s favorite to grant the States authority to directly amend the Constitution.
While Marion was speaking, many in the audience were wondering how we could possibly get 34 states to convene a convention. That brought us to our guest speaker, former chairwoman for the Palm Beach County Tea Party, Pam Wohlschlegel. Pam recently joined a new organization called Citizens for Self-Governance. This organization was started by Mark Meckler, one of the co-founders of Tea Party Patriots. Mark Meckler began working on a project called Convention of States at the same time he found out that Mark Levin was working on his book. It appears the ideas of the two “Marks” are coming together in perfect harmony. Meckler’s organization is actually putting together the people and resources to get the conventions going in 40 states. It was so exciting to hear Pam talk about the details of this genius plan.
The final portion of the meeting was dedicated to whatever our audience wanted to talk about. Two of the topics we talked about the most were how can the Tea Party reach out to more veterans and how can we reach young voters, mainly college students. One of our first timers, Christopher Ryan, an entrepreneur of 27 years old, shared his thoughts about why we are having such problems getting to the youth of this country. We are committed to finding new ways to reach out to veterans and young voters. We are going to target our future meetings to achieve those objectives.
Overall, it was an extremely informative and enlightening meeting. Our next Wellington Chapter will meet on November 14th at 7:00 PM at Total Wine.
Standing Room Only at the September Wellington Meeting
Our Wellington Chapter of the Palm Beach County Tea Party held its meeting on Monday, Sept. 9th in the classroom at Total Wine in Wellington. People started arriving a full hour before the 7 PM meeting in order to get a seat. By the time the meeting started, it was standing room only.
The Chapter Coordinator, Marion Frank opened the meeting with a short discussion on Syria. She opined that the whole ordeal was a Wag The Dog scenario and was just meant to divert America’s attention away from all the scandals.
Henry Colon was called up to speak for a few minutes to introduce himself to the group. Henry is running as a Republican for Congressional District 21, the seat currently held by Ted Deutch.
Mel Grossman was formally introduced as the new President of the Palm Beach County Tea Party and he spoke for a moment about our future plans. He also spoke about the meeting we had in August with Dennis Michael Lynch, fighting the Amnesty bill with everything he’s got. We watched the beginning of Dennis’s documentary called “We Come To America, Part II”. If anybody wants to get a free copy of this chilling documentary, they can leave a message and let us know.
Janet Campbell gave an accurate accounting of what is coming with Common Core. Many Tea Partiers were hearing this information for the first time and they were shocked by what they heard. Janet offered a math example to everyone. She handed out index cards and asked everyone to multiply two compound numbers together. Most people were done in about 30 seconds and all got the correct answer. Janet then handed out the instruction sheet for Common Core way of doing the same math problem. It involved drawing boxes and guessing. After about 4 minutes, Janet told everyone that it no longer matters if the right answer is found, as long as you show your work, the teacher cannot mark you wrong. It was also pointed out that the new American history books will skip over our Founding Fathers and begin with Abraham Lincoln. Our children in elementary school will also learn that Martin Luther King, Jr. will be labeled as a “founding father”. This was all the Tea Partiers needed to know about Common Core and all are ready to fight it in our state.
The next Tea Party meeting in Wellington will be held on Monday, October 14th.
Some pictures from Delia:
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