This is not a rant about machines programmed in Venezuela, dead people voting, midnight voter dumps, felons voting, phoney mailed ballots with forged signatures, vote harvesting, people illegally in the country casting ballots, people voting more than once, valid ballots being found uncounted in dumpsters, or counting envelopes postmarked after expired deadlines.

Rather, this is about a manifest election steal this past Tuesday. It happens too often, and it has to stop, but it takes too much intelligence by too many people to make it stop. Too many people just are not insightful enough to realize they are being bamboozled. They will be fooled again and again and again until they die and are buried, leaving behind genetic code to assure future generations of patsies. It is about the way that Left-oriented polls steal elections from Republicans.

Back in the late 1960s I volunteered, as a high schooler, for a guy running for New York’s City Council. I learned more about politics during those six months than I ever have since. Brooklyn effectively has only one contending party, the Democrats, so — if you have any brains — you register Democrat even if you are a conservative Republican, and then you work for and vote for the conservative Republican “Democrat” of your choice.  Many one-party polities operate that way. Indeed, I soon will be publishing a series of articles urging Republicans in Ocasio’s district to change registrations away from the GOP — just registered Republicans in that one district — so they can vote her out in the Democrat primaries. That is when she can be kicked out on the rump of her $14,000 “Tax the Rich” Dress. By contrast, a Democrat in that district cannot be beaten by a Republican in a November election. Most voters there simply are not sophisticated enough to discern nuances between and among candidates; rather, they blindly vote party. (Oh, for the Critical Race Theory monitors who see Systemic Racism in every punctuation mark, the fools to whom I am referring are White people. And white, of course, consists of all colors.)

Early on, when in those teens, I learned that polls can be crazy wrong and thereby actually distort elections. Almost invariably, the polling mistakes favor Democrats and the Left. One would assume that, in a world of innocent mistakes, half the time the Left benefits, and half the time the Right. But when it comes to election polling, the mistakes almost always favor the Left. When the polls are distorted, the Democrat almost invariably ends up polling better than the final results. And so it was Tuesday in the Garden State.

Real Clear Politics tries their best — and I am a fan of RCP — to get numbers right by publishing averages of several respected polls, so that the voters can gauge the trends with greater accuracy. Thus, an outlier poll gets mediated by the mix. Going into election day, that RCP average had Democrat Phil Murphy beating Republican Jack Ciattarelli for governor by almost eight points. Such a gap is impossible to close, beyond any margin of error. Even for those of us who discount polls as biased towards the Left, an eight-point gap is profound, a borderline landslide in American elections.

When a candidate like Jack Ciattarelli is down by eight points for months and months — into election eve — it means many things, including but not limited to these:

1. Donors see that Ciattarelli will lose big in Jersey, but Glenn Youngkin might win in Virginia, so they redirect their giving to Youngkin. Ciattarelli still gets donations, but a fraction of what he would be getting if he were competitive.

2. With less money, Ciattarelli’s campaign is compelled to hire fewer campaign workers, print and distribute fewer lawn signs and campaign documents, run fewer TV and radio commercials and newspaper ads.

3. Because of the restrictions imposed in Line 2 above by the reduced funds raised, the campaign inevitably suffers from reduced energy and momentum, no matter the positivism, optimism, and sincere hopes at play. They simply find that they cannot get out the word as effectively as needed statewide. This hurts, too, in attracting armies of volunteers — the lifeblood of elections.

4. The reduced energy and momentum then contribute to raising even less money, so even fewer ads, lawn signs, campaign workers, and ultimately volunteers.

5. The thing spirals in decline. Each round of decline predictably, inexorably leads to the next.

6. Meanwhile, across the aisle, the opposite is happening: a candidate who is much weaker than polling suggests suddenly benefits from a surge in donations, as people believe their money will pay off and not disappear down a rabbit hole. More ads can be purchased. More campaign workers can be hired. More literature and lawn signs. All these also attract more volunteers because people incline to devote more time when they believe they have a shot to win. Also, “big corporate money” — lobbyist money — flows when the polling suggests that is where to ingratiate for later payback.

7. When polls show that a candidate is going down in blazes, media do not cover the campaign as intensely. There are fewer articles, fewer adulating childhood profiles, fewer photos of the spouse. Sometimes even fewer debates, and fewer voters watch. Remember how, when Robert O’Rourke’s initial polling was suggestive, he got Vanity Fair magazine covers about how “Man, I’m just born to be in it”? Now he has nothing left but vanity.

8. As election day approaches, if a candidate has absolutely no chance, his or her voters are less motivated to go to the polls, to stand shuffling their feet on line, waiting to be counted. Excuses for not voting that are lame become elevated. “I ate too much, and I am feeling a bit bloated.” “I am having a bad hair day.” “Tonight is the last game of the World Series.” “I am concerned about COVID.” “I don’t want to be forced to wear a mask.” “I can’t find documentary proof I was vaccinated.” “I don’t want to be asked whether I was vaccinated.” “The car is low on gas.” “The kids need me to help them with their homework.” “Tuesday nights are my night to do the diaper changing, the laundry, the cooking, to throw out the garbage cans.” “Tomorrow I have a big client meeting.” All these excuses — and more — disproportionately hurt GOP candidates because Republicans trend towards greater suspicion as to voting early and mailing ballots, so the GOP necessarily relies on a big election day turnout.

In an eight-point “laugher,” an election simply becomes a sociology study about people who vote “no matter what” and those who do not. But when the polls are profoundly wrong, and an eight-point spread really is only one point, then an election is being stolen, maybe purposefully, maybe inadvertently. But this matters deeply. We may know the tally, but we do not know the true state of the pulse or the pulse of the state. (READ MORE: Keep Those Wrong and Fake Polls Coming!)

The Monmouth Poll is a major New Jersey survey. They had Phil Murphy ahead of Jack Ciattarelli by 11 — eleven — points in a race that truly was only one point apart. Monmouth alone could well have cost Ciattarelli and the people of New Jersey the election. Fairleigh Dickinson, another New Jersey university, had the spread at nine. So did Stockton. And Rutgers at eight. This incompetent and amateurish polling by university-affiliated pollsters is awful: university people reposing in Woke echo chambers. Moreover, as all the Virginia psephological post-mortems have reflected, this was a watershed election night with bellwethers ringing from Richmond and Trenton to Washington, D.C.

The reality — always — is that we all have to disregard the polls somewhat. But it also is too risky and plain unrealistic to blow them all off completely. Voters have just so much money to donate, just so much time to volunteer. Even pundits want our writings to focus our readers on the issues that matter most. Thus, when writing about presidential politics amid a Democrat primary season, there came a point to reduce the focus on Elizabeth Warren after she lost Massachusetts because she was going nowhere, and we likewise barely discussed Kirsten Gillibrand because her candidacy was ridiculous. Similarly on the Republican side, Carly Fiorina is there to be ignored. The focus has to remain on the races that matter. However, this season saw Jack Ciattarelli receive far less focus, attention — and thus money and all that money buys in a tight election — because the polls told everyone that he did not have a snowball’s chance in purgatory, while Glenn Youngkin really had a shot.

In the end, the enhanced focus by Republicans and conservatives on how Virginia has been attempting to corrupt their young kin in the public schools with critical race theory, transgender bathrooms, and making kids crazy into believing they are in the wrong bodies, while attacking the good work of the police, and promoting border chaos to replace the state’s moderate, centrist voting majority all paid off. With the Virginia economy beset by a rage of inflation, with supermarkets being extra-taxed, and with crime soaring, Virginia’s voters not only threw Democrats out of the governor’s mansion but also elected a fabulous Black woman, Winsome Sears, their new Lieutenant Governor and Jason Miyares, an Hispanic Republican, their new attorney general. Ms. Sears, who absolutely is delightful and winsome, is the first woman and first Black person ever elected to be a heartbeat from the Virginia governor’s office, and Mr. Miyares is the first Latino ever elected to hold statewide office in the Commonwealth. This is great, great stuff.

But Jack Ciattarelli was robbed in New Jersey, yet one more victim in a state known all-too-well for the way its crime is organized.

And, while contemplating organized crime, Ralph Northam soon will be back on Richmond’s streets, available to help make newborn babies feel comfortable. Ralph the Ripper. Bada Bing.