Sorry. Mikey. Anyone Who Ever Worked With Scripted TV Knows This Election Wasn’t Rigged.

I can’t help but literally laugh in the faces–or at least the Facebook profiles–of the ridiculous amount of people who are besides themselves with anger and fury that Spencer Pratt’s political career has come to a wholly unexpected crashing halt.  Having our s(h)itting president rant to the point where his usual orange tan clearly had more than a few tinges of red while squatting down with Kristen Welker in a Wisconsin barn was merely the tip of this iceberg meltdown.  When it was announced late Monday that somehow the early show horse Nithya Raman had pulled off a relative Silky Sullivan finish to move into second place and a November runoff with the incum-petent Karen Bass, it was for some both revelation and revulsion.  Witness how the gentleman who is one tainted Big Mac and one stained couch away from the presidency reacted, as Mediate’s Alex Griffin chortingly reported yesterday:

CNN’s chief congressional correspondent, Manu Raju, spoke to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Monday and asked him about President Donald Trump’s ongoing claims that the Los Angeles mayoral race is “rigged” against Republicans. 

“Speaking of fraud, the president keeps saying that there’s election fraud in the California mayor’s race. What evidence is there to prove that?” Raju asked Johnson while walking through the U.S. Capitol.  Johnson replied, “You tell me, Manu. They are counting votes weeks after the election. We have entire nations with huge populations, like India, that can count their votes in 24 to 48 hours.” Raju cut in, “You’re saying it’s rigged, like the president?”“I’m not saying it’s rigged. I’m saying it stinks to high heaven, and everybody knows that. Let’s — let’s — let’s remove the appearance of impropriety. Let’s have — what, what a concept — let’s have votes on an election the day of the election. That’s what many states are able to do. I think California is playing around with us,” Johnson insisted.

“But what evidence is there to prove that the election was rigged?” Raju pressed.  Johnson replied, “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream, it is impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here, and that’s a concern.”

You sadly undereducated reforming masturbator.  You’ve obviously never spent any quality time with a television researcher.

What I saw unfold over the past week is literally no different than what I’ve observed–and sometimes paid handsomely to explain to equally befuddled people with more skin in the game–with delayed viewing.  Ever since Nielsen was able to effectively capture the behavior of folks who at the time had to DVR some of their shows and create multiple data streams we’ve analyzed and reissued reports on how “live-plus-seven” numbers would evolve from “live-plus-same-day”,  Heck, I incorporated such a sizzle piece into a pitch I recently wrote for a show seeking renewal that looked at that phenomenon in relative terms.  This otherwise more obscure program outperformed a host of more recognizable titles in “seven-day lift”–a point that resonated strongly enough with the network they were negotiating with that it helped secure a renewal.

Now if we can put aside our base Dinesh D’Souza instincts for just a second let’s do some very basic Excel math on what has transpired in this real world “seven-day lift”.

Here’s how the vote looked after night one: