{"id":8247,"date":"2026-10-28T22:22:51","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T22:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/?p=8247"},"modified":"2026-10-28T22:23:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T22:23:00","slug":"the-thinking-kat-midterm-tension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/?p=8247","title":{"rendered":"The Thinking ‘Kat: Midterm Tension"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Originally posted at The Coalition of the Brave<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon, my American friends will vote in the midterms, to decide the makeup of Congress and the Senate. The midterms are often seen as a judgement by the US electorate on the performance of the incumbent president, and for the current, er, incumbent, Trump, it seems that judgement will be damming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Reuters<\/a> (the article is behind a paywall, but there’s some info you can see), Trump’s approval rating at the time of this post is 32 percent. Believe it or not, it has been lower than this. The reasons behind his low numbers include the cost of living problems his administration has been responsible for, with many Americans greatly disapproving of his handling of his administration’s self-inflicted crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump is in denial about the state of his government, and about the polls. He has yet again sought to preemptively poison the well, claiming voter fraud is rampant, but this claim lacks evidence<\/a>. This is not surprising; if Trump is speaking, there is a good chance he is lying, and he as a record for lying about voter fraud. To quote from the BBC link:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Studies of multiple US elections suggest postal vote fraud has been extremely rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brookings Institution policy research think tank, external<\/a> looked at the 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections and found an average of about four cases of fraud out of every 10 million postal votes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report used a database kept by the Heritage Foundation – a think tank which has been aligned with Trump in the past – which records cases of electoral fraud that have ended in a conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We looked back in the database, external<\/a> over the last 20 years and found it has tallied 325 convictions as a result of the fraudulent use of postal ballots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2020 study by the American Statistical Association, external<\/a> looked at cases of voter fraud in eight states which send postal ballots to all eligible voters and found no evidence that voting by mail increased the risk of voter fraud overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, according to the study, Oregon recorded 40 fraud cases between 2000 and 2020 having sent out more than 100 million postal ballots over that period.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

From the same link:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Multiple studies show proven instances of non-citizens voting in past US elections have been very small.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Heritage Foundation’s database identified 24 cases of non-citizens being convicted for voting between 2005 and 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2026 analysis by Reuters, external<\/a> of non-citizen voting cases brought in federal courts found that over the last 30 years 129 people have been criminally charged and 73 of those cases resulted in a conviction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The fact that it’s illegal for non-citizens to vote is a pretty strong deterrent in the first place as many worry about their immigration status and it would be an extremely risky move to vote,” says Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s never been any evidence that there are many people who have done that, certainly not enough to influence an election.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, a lot of people – particularly religious conservatives – will believe Trump’s rhetoric without so much as a second thought. The notion that the Dear Leader is failing is outlandish to them, despite evidence. The idea his Republicans could suffer a battering in the midterms that is legit is absurd to his worshippers. The spin-doctoring is already in full swing, with some conservative sites trying to cast doubts on polling and predictions as reflective of unreasonable liberal bias.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some who try to argue that the Democrats would make things worse. That seems highly unlikely. A vote for the Republicans is an endorsement of policies that are making a mess. A vote for Republicans is a vote for a status quo that is creating chaos and serving no one, except for those at the top. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s an endorsement of a man who has in recent weeks appeased a tyrant and a murderer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems there is no interest in the slightest reflection that maybe, just maybe, Trump’s weak numbers are the result of his policies hurting the average American.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately for conservative religious Republicans, most other Americans are seeing through Trump’s rhetoric and can see the harm his policies are doing. Those who refuse to see beyond Trump’s snake oil words are already howling any outcome they don’t like from the midterms must be fradulent or unfair, but like their Dear Leader, they don’t have a shred of credible evidence to back up their claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let’s hope America votes blue in the midterms!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to The Thinking ‘Kat<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally posted at The Coalition of the Brave. Soon, my American friends will vote in the midterms, to decide the makeup of Congress and the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingThe Thinking ‘Kat: Midterm Tension<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics-and-society","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/20251022_221351.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8247"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8259,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8247\/revisions\/8259"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meerkatmusings.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}