Dishonest, misleading and inaccurate polls


Introduction:

The American people seem especially susceptible to "bandwagon" propaganda:  They tend to support any idea that the majority favors, because they are reluctant to swim against the current and question the orthodoxy.  The orthodoxy is whatever the television declares more than once.  As a result, fresh polling information can be formed into a series of self-fulfilling pronouncements.

By and large, the news media in America, and I suppose all over the world, are demonstrably biased toward the political left.  One form of bias is the uncritical presentation of polls.  There are trustworthy polling organizations which are very careful to gather and present their findings in a statistically sound manner that leaves little doubt about the polls' accuracy.  Gallup and Rasmussen come to mind immediately, although there must be others.  Unfortunately, the news media seem to present polling results from almost anybody, and in some cases the polls are thinly-disguised propaganda.

That wouldn't be a problem, except that millions of poorly-educated Americans tend to watch television without questioning anything the television says.  If the television talking head says something, it must be true -- at least until tomorrow when the "facts" may be controverted.  This is due in part to the use of television in classrooms, where every idea the TV screen emits is to be taken as factual instruction.

Appended 10/29/2018:
One TV station with which I am familiar has now replaced the term "Margin of Error" with "Credibility."  But credibility and accuracy are two different things.  I don't know if this is a nationwide trend or if it is confined to one station; but frankly, that station is not known for original ideas.




The Fumes of the 2024 Election.  The Left is still catatonic and barking at the moon.  Everything they told us was revealed a lie.  Harris was never ahead.  She never enjoyed a "bump."  She was never soaring on joy.  She was never 3 points ahead in Iowa or creating a historic Trump "gender gap" deficit with women voters (Trump gained a larger percentage of women voters than in either 2020 or 2016, and he increased his lead with men from both past elections.)  The leftwing polls were mostly rigged to gin up momentum, fund-raising, and voter turnout — and were refuted and embarrassed once again by the accuracy of the sneered-at, but always professional AltasIntel/Trafalgar/Rasmussen triad.

The Polling is Way Worse Than You Know.  For the third straight election cycle, public opinion polling once again underestimated support for President-elect Donald J. Trump, resulting in a significant polling error.  The left-wing Guardian newspaper, based in the United Kingdom, saw their U.S. national polling average err by three points with 99 percent of the vote in the presidential election counted.  This error is fairly consistent with the polling misrepresentation of Trump in the past two presidential election cycles.  The Guardian's polling average appears to have been thrown off by the inclusion of several polls viewed as outliers by other websites that aggregate public polling.  According to their aggregate, the polls predicted a slim lead for Kamala Harris, with 48 percent of the vote to Trump's 47 percent.  However, as the election results stand now, Trump has won a majority of the popular vote at 50 percent, with Harris coming in at 48 percent.

Harris Campaign Advisor David Plouffe Accidently Exposes How Legacy Media Lied to the American People With Junk Polls.  There have been extensive postmortems on Kamala Harris's failed campaign and the absolute drubbing she received from Donald Trump.  Democrat strategist James Carville said the moment he knew the campaign was doomed was when 'The View' co-host Sunny Hostin asked Harris, "If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?"  Kamala answered, "There is not a thing that comes to mind."  But legacy media keep gaslighting voters with polls showing Harris neck and neck with Trump and even leading in some surprising places.

Harris Campaign's Internal Polling 'Never Saw' Her Beating Trump.  [Scroll down]  Of course, it seems it never occurred to these people that Harris was the problem.  It all goes back to President Joe Biden. [Stephanie] Cutter claimed Harris was loyal to Biden, putting her in a corner because she could not say anything negative about him.  Harris told The View she could not think of anything she'd do differently, which confused many of us.  Why wouldn't she differentiate herself from Biden?  Well, that would mean distancing herself from the administration she belongs to:  ["]Cutter said the campaign heard the second-guessing — but, she said, Harris was merely being true to herself and loyal to Biden, and saying otherwise would have backfired.["]

The Editor says...
If the Harris campaign had been honest, and admitted their chances were poor, they could have saved their contributors a billion dollars.  But don't hold your breath waiting for honesty from Biden or Harris.

Kamala Harris' Internal Polls Showed She Was Doomed From the Start.  Kamala's campaign was doomed, and everybody within the campaign pretty much knew it from the start.  For all the JOY!, the WEIRD fact that the campaign insiders never acknowledged publicly and even hid from donors was that their internal polls never showed Kamala ahead.  In fact, their hopes lay in public-facing polls that showed the race tight or Harris even ahead.  [Advertisement]  [Tweet]  Campaigns are expected to spin, but from the sounds of things the Harris campaign was more a con job than a serious attempt to win the presidency.  [Tweet]  Having raised $1.4 billion and spending even more than that, all the happy talk given to donors was pure BS.  The consultants got paid astronomical sums, media companies raked in the dough, and Democrats who contributed their money were fleeced.

Why you can't trust the polls on assisted dying.  Looking at the headlines and the press releases, it might seem like the British public overwhelmingly backs assisted dying.  Dignity in Dying informs us that 84 per cent of Brits are in favour of assisted dying for terminally ill adults.  Humanists UK, which also supports assisted suicide, tells us that over 74 percent of the public support legalising the practice.  This Friday, MPs will have a free vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, which would legalise assisted suicide in England and Wales under certain circumstances.  As such, there has been plenty of debate about what the public might want or not want when it comes to end-of-life care.  And the moral power of supposed widespread support has been seized upon by proponents of the bill.  There are many reasons to doubt the wisdom of these polls, however.  For starters, there is the question of where they come from.  As it turns out, many of those that indicate heavy support for assisted dying were paid for by advocates like the well-funded Dignity in Dying.

Comparison of the 2024 National Presidential Election Polls.  [Chart]

How America's Accurate Election Polls Were Covered Up.  John McIntyre couldn't believe it.  The publisher of the Real Clear Polling National Average, America's first presidential poll aggregator, woke on October 31st to see his product denounced in the New York Times.  Launched in 2002 and long a mainstay of campaign writers and news consumers alike, the RCP average, he learned, was part of a "torrent" of partisan rubbish being "weaponized" to "deflate Democrats' enthusiasm" and "undermine faith in the entire system."  "They actually wrote that our problem was we didn't weight results," says an incredulous McIntyre.  "That we didn't put a thumb on the scale."  The Times ended its screed against RCP's "scarlet-dominated" electoral map projection by quoting John Anzalone, Joe Biden's former chief pollster, who said: "There's a ton of garbage polls out there."  But being called "garbage" in America's paper of record was nothing compared to what happened to RCP at Wikipedia.

Polling 'Nostradamus' gets dose of reality during clash with liberal pundit after bombing election prediction.  The so-called 'polling Nostradamus' was served a heavy dose of reality when left-wing pundit Cenk Uygur went haywire over the professor's wildly incorrect call about Kamala Harris defeating Donald Trump.  Allan Lichtman, who has successfully predicted nine out of ten elections since 1984, appeared to be at a loss for words after the 2024 election as he realized his prediction was wrong.  Uygur, the founder of leftist media network The Young Turks, confronted Lichtman on Piers Morgan's show Tuesday.  He specifically had problems with Lichtman blaming 'voters' for falling for disinformation before slamming his '13 keys' methods of deciding elections.  'I debated Professor Lichtman before.  I told him his theories about "the keys" were absurd.  I was right, he was wrong.  I said he'd lose his keys,' Uygur said.

Shamed Democratic Pollster Quits Profession after Failing to Rig the Presidential Election.  The liberal media swears they're unbiased.  According to them, it's just a weird, inexplicable quirk of fate when conservatives perpetually get the dagger and liberals are always pampered, propped up, and protected.  Still, they're adamant:  "There is no media bias!" [...] Still, the 2024 leader for leftwing bias and partisan reporting was pollster Ann Selzer, the head of Selzer & Co. of West Des Moines.  In the final days of the presidential election, Selzer released a blockbuster Iowa poll that showed Donald Trump losing the ruby-red state he had previously won in 2016 and 2020!  According to Selzer, Harris was now beating Trump 47% to 44%.  It was a bombshell report.  And the media couldn't get enough:  Politico, Axios, Fox, Roll Call, and more all called Selzer's Iowa poll the "gold standard" in polling.  But I guess gold isn't as valuable as it once was, because on Election Day, Kamala Harris only received 42.5% of the Iowa vote.  Ann Selzer's "gold standard" Iowa poll was off by a whopping 16 points!

Trump calls to 'fully' investigate Iowa pollster who predicted him losing in heavily red state.  President-elect Donald Trump is calling to 'fully investigate' the Iowa pollster who predicted him losing in heavily red state just days before November's election.  The Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey conducted by Ann Selzer of Selzer & Company showed Harris at 47 percent support to Trump's 44 percent.  Iowa had gone red for Trump in the last two election cycles after twice voting for Democratic President Barack Obama — and had not been considered to be a battleground state in 2024.  Despite easily winning the Hawkeye State, Trump posted on his Truth Social that he still plans to investigate Selzer, 68, over possible election fraud.  'A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time.  She knew exactly what she was doing,' Trump wrote.

Ann Selzer to end election polling after 16-point miss in final Iowa survey.  Famed pollster J. Ann Selzer will end her election polling operation after her final survey for The Des Moines Register failed to accurately capture former President Donald Trump's strong support in the 2024 election, resulting in a 16-point miss.  Selzer's announcement comes after the Register in its final poll before Election Day delivered a bombshell result showing Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump 47-44% among likely voters in the state, raising speculation that Harris could mount a stunning upset.  While other surveys had found Trump comfortably ahead of Harris in the state, Selzer's poll raised Democrats' hopes in the final days of the race and was widely reported by other outlets.  Trump ultimately swept to victory over Harris in the state by a 13-point margin, winning the actual vote 56-43%.

Why It's Too Late for Democrat Postmortems.  Over the past sixty years, Democrats have shown us that they are decidedly engaging in terror the more they are in power to get what they want.  On a progressive scale, anyone who confronts Democrats, foils them, or even tells them things they do not want to hear is terrorized and ruined.  Poor Ashli Babbitt was even gunned down in cold blood.  Whether this resistance, delay, conflict, or distraction is internal or external to communism or the Democrat party makes no difference.  Progressive resistance is progressively terrorized.  This is why pollsters cannot tell Democrats the truth.  Pollsters know they will be assaulted or fired depending on how much they tell the emperor he has no clothes.

FBI seizes Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan's phone and computer after he predicted Trump win.  The FBI has seized the CEO of Polymarket's phone and electronics after the election-betting platform successfully forecast Donald Trump's win.  Shayne Coplan, 26, was targeted at his Soho home during a dawn raid on Wednesday, sources told the New York Post.  The insider blasted the seizure as 'grand political theater at its worst'.  'They could have asked his lawyer for any of these things.  Instead, they staged a so-called raid so they can leak it to the media and use it for obvious political reasons,' the source said.  Coplan was reportedly not arrested or given a reason for the raid, but it is thought to be linked to his accurate predictions which outsmarted traditional polls.

The Editor says...
Is outsmarting traditional polls a crime?  Is skepticism a crime?  Is it a crime to distrust a liar?

Agents of Influence:  The Pitiful Presidential Pollsters.  On the weekend before Election Day, pollster Ann Selzer unleashed an Iowa survey for the Des Moines Register purporting to show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by 3 points in a state Harris supposedly had no business winning.  The "late shift toward Harris," declared the Des Moines Register, was happening because of older women dumping Trump.  An editorial page writer from the Arizona Republic warned the "sudden and potentially seismic" numbers "change the nature of the national race."  MSNBC's Rachel Maddow spent 11 minutes gleefully promoting Selzer and calling her the "gold standard."  The liberal ladies of The View on ABC celebrated.  Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg X-posted "Iowa, you have shocked the nation."  On it went, but Ms. GoldStandard™ missed the Iowa call by two touchdowns, plus a pair of two-point conversions.  Trump won Iowa by 13 points, ran the table in the battleground states, and silenced Electoral College critics by winning a popular vote majority.  But there will not likely be any banishment to a shameful retirement.  Selzer boldly seized back the media megaphone, and they apparently still have her on speed dial.

Ann Selzer:  Here's Why My Iowa Poll Was Total and Complete Garbage.  Is Ann Selzer going to retire?  I'm tossing that out there because she was a credible pollster until she dropped what arguably is a suppression poll showing that Kamala Harris was leading Donald Trump 47-44 in Iowa days before voters headed in to cast their ballots.  The state was Trump +18 in June.  It went Kamala +3 during the summer, and no one noticed.  The woman, long viewed as the gold standard in this field, wrecked her credibility in one swoop.  Her poll is now the subject of an internal investigation at Gannett, the publisher of The Des Moines Register, as someone at the paper leaked it to Democrats before it went public.

Election Guru Allan Lichtman Blames 'Disinformation, Misogyny and Racism' For Getting His Predictions So Badly Wrong.  The historian and political scientist Allan Lichtman has blamed "misogyny, racism and xenophobia" for getting his prediction about who would win the White House so catastrophically wrong.  Lichtman, who is best known for devising electoral prediction system known as 'The Five Keys to the White House,' said in an interview with CNN that the American people were simply not "pragmatic" enough to be able to predict the election correctly.

Honestly, It Really Wasn't That Close.  For months, we heard regime media and many of the pollsters tell us how razor-thin this election was going to turn out to be.  The final Real Clear Politics average of national polls between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris showed the Vice-President was ahead by one-tenth of one percent.  As of the writing of this column, with votes still coming in from different pockets of the country, Donald Trump has won the popular vote by somewhere around 3.5%.  The election really wasn't that close.  All of the Battleground averages, many of them herded by pollsters and mocked by Nate Silver for so doing, tried to tell us that every swing state — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, were all within a point one way or the other.  Here's what actually took place. [...]

Pollster Ann Selzer 'reviewing data' after setting off media firestorm with Iowa poll showing Harris ahead.  Pollster J. Ann Selzer is "reviewing her data" to determine why her pre-election poll, which set off a multi-day media firestorm, inaccurately showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading in Iowa.  Selzer is "reviewing her data to determine why a Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll released just days before the election produced results so far out of line with former President Donald Trump's resounding victory," according to the Des Moines Register.  The shock poll showed a 7-point shift from President-elect Donald Trump to Harris from September, when he had a 4-point lead over the vice president (47% to 43%) in the same survey.  The Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll released Saturday had Harris up 47% to 44%, in a state Trump had carried easily in 2016 and 2020 and wasn't considered a swing state in 2024.

Say, What Happened To 'Closest Election In History'?  For months running up to the Nov. 5 election, the "experts" told us that this would be the closest in history.  Over and over again they said it.  Always with great certainty.
    "This could be the closest presidential election since 1876"
    "Uncertainty reigns in an election closer 'than any I have ever seen'"
    "Kamala Harris vs. Donald Trump is the closest presidential race of the century"
    "2024 Election Is The Closest Presidential Race In At Least 60 Years: Polls"
    "Coping with election-related anxiety in a razor-thin race"
    "Razor-thin race between Harris and Trump should motivate Democrats ahead of Election Day"
    "Dead-heat poll results are astonishing — and improbable, these experts say"
    "America's dead-heat Trump-Harris election"
    "Poll shows presidential race in dead heat"
Turns out, it wasn't close at all.  Trump is currently ahead by 3.5 points in the popular vote.  That will tighten as the millions of votes in deep-blue states such as California, Washington, and Oregon continue to be counted, but if it holds it will be the first time since 2004 that a GOP candidate won the popular vote and only the second time since 1988.  But unless you failed civics class, you'd know that we don't elect presidents by national popular vote.  And if Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan end up in the Trump camp — he's currently leading in all three states plus Alaska — Trump will end up with 312 electoral votes.

[A] Pree-lection Iowa poll favoring Harris [was] far off [the] final margins.  An Iowa poll released the Saturday before Election Day caused shockwaves when it showed Vice President Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump, but the former president easily won the state on Tuesday.  The Des Moines Register-Mediacom Iowa Poll released this past weekend showed Harris leading Trump 47%-44%. However, Trump prevailed over Harris on Tuesday night 55.6%-43.0%, with 81% of the vote counted.  The race was called by the Associated Press at 10:40 p.m.  Eastern, less than two hours after the polls closed in the Hawkeye State.  Pollster J. Ann Selzer had said on Saturday that it was "hard for anybody to say they saw this coming" and claimed that Harris had "clearly leaped into a leading position."  The Trump campaign at the time had pointed to an Emerson College poll that had the former president leading the vice president by roughly 10%.  The Emerson poll appears to be a closer representation of Tuesday's results.

The divine intervention election.  Anyone following politics saw this coming after Kamala's disastrous debate in which Trump let her talk her way out of the presidency, just as he let Biden mumble and stumble his way out of the job.  But the media pretended it was close.  The Des Moines Register went so far as to post a poll that had Kamala ahead by 3 points in Iowa on Sunday.  Trump voters clobbered her and that newspaper as he carried the state by 13 points.  The [people] in the media still believe they have the power to make or break kings.

We Keep On Playing Polling 'Head Games'.  Part honest assessment, part hedging bets, a healthy dose of suppression polls, sprinkle in a push poll or two, and that's what political junkies like you and me were treated to all weekend long.  To regime media's credit, the volume and variety of outcomes, from national to battlegrounds and even beyond to other state polling, successfully knocked Kamala Harris' horrific news of the jobs report from last Friday from the headlines.  Instead of Team Harris going into Election Day making the case that the economy is chugging along just fine despite the lasting and ongoing effects of inflation eating away at Americans' spending power, Thursday report of 100,000 fewer jobs than projected for the month of October, and August and September being revised downward by another 100,000-plus took away another final selling point from the Vice-President.  It was huge negative number that should have dominated newsprint and the airwaves.  Instead, we got the Selzer Poll out of Iowa.

Read The Opponent Not the Polls.  From young African-American men to Hispanics to Arab-Americans to Jewish-Americans, the Harris campaign's assumed, almost unanimous, and necessary support has been lacking.  As a result, we see not only an increase in her campaign's messaging to these constituencies, we see the surreal hectoring of young black males — and males, in general — by surrogates, such as the Obamas.  Asking voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is okay; urging voters to support your candidate indicates your campaign is troubled; criticizing voters as not being "man" enough to vote for your candidate indicates your campaign is cooked.

Will it Really be a Cliffhanger?  I think it wise to just vote and ignore the polls and pundits, many of whom are dealing from the bottom of the deck and bluffing.  I'd also ignore those doomsters who claim on the basis of the 2020 election that it will be stolen.  Sure, as I note below, there has been and will be a lot of cheating, but the Republicans are getting better at monitoring it and reducing it.  Sure, the press is lying again, but as I show below, the legacy media has blown its credibility and alternate content providers are capturing audiences away from them.

Liberal Data Analyst Nate Silver Accuses Pollsters of [Making the] Election Seem Closer Than it is.  Liberal data analyst Nate Silver believes Trump will win the election.  His forecast puts Trump somewhere in the mid-50s and Harris in the mid-40s.  During a recent appearance on the Risky Business podcast, he accused pollsters of cheating and putting their fingers on the scale in order to make the race appear closer than it actually is.  He says that the race has gradually drifted to Trump over a long period of time and notes that Harris has been regularly losing ground.

Trump Likely Outperforming Most Polls: Analysis.  Once again, the polling between GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, appears to show a highly competitive, neck-and-neck race, but a new report that relies more on "old school" analytics indicates that the race may not be nearly as close and much more heavily in Trump's favor. [...] Earlier this week, Brit Hume, Fox News' chief political analyst and veteran of presidential election coverage, reflected on how reporters used to evaluate a political candidate's prospects in the "old days," when polls were either "nonexistent" or outdated.  In those times, they had to rely on other factors to make their assessments.  "You'd rely on how the candidate seemed," he said.  "You relied on their events, how the events seemed to go, how well-organized they seemed to be.  You looked at the response of the audience at these events. ... You watched for other signs to pick up a sense of the race.  And you could pretty well do it. ... There are upsets in every election cycle, but you could get a sense of it."

Election guru Nate Silver accuses pollsters of putting 'finger on the scale,' lying to keep presidential race close.  Polling guru Nate Silver lashed out at other survey junkies in his field for "cheating" in the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election — accusing them of recycling some results to keep the race between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris close.  The FiveThirtyEight founder said irresponsible pollsters were "herding" their numbers, or using past results to affect current ones, to keep Vice President Harris and former President Trump within a point or two of each other each time.  "I kind of trust pollsters less," Silver said on his podcast, name-checking Emerson College.  "They all, every time a pollster [says] 'Oh, every state is just plus-one, every single state's a tie,' no!  You're ····ing herding!  You're cheating!  You're cheating!" he fumed.  "Your numbers aren't all going to come out at exactly one-point leads when you're sampling 800 people over dozens of surveys," Silver vented.

Kamala's Closing Message to Black Men:  Excuse Me, I Speak Jive.  [Jimmy] Carter led most polling until mid-June of 1980, and even when Reagan overtook him pretty consistently after that, polling from some recognizable outfits were telling us every day that it might be a long night before we knew who won.  Newsweek partnered with Gallup the final week of October, and had the former California Governor ahead, but only by a single point, 44-43.  CBS and the New York Times paired up on a survey released at the same time, and got exactly the same result.  There were several other polls the final week of the campaign in a flurry, some showing Reagan with a 5-point lead, others at Reagan +3.  The average of all these polls were well within the margin of error.  Of course, the election was a landslide.  Reagan won the popular vote, 51-41, and only lost six states and the District of Columbia nationwide in the Electoral College.  It was a rout.  The pollster were off by an average of 7 points.  I'm not saying the polls are just as off this cycle, but the mood of the country and the polling parallels are otherwise similar.

No Cheating... This Time.  There is a tide in the affairs of men, as Shakespeare said, and now, two weeks before election day, that tide has swung decisively toward Donald Trump.  Forget the establishment polls.  The betting sites show him leading by nearly thirty points.  He's ahead in every last battleground state, according to RCP.  Embattled Democrat senatorial candidates, including Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Tammy Baldwin have abandoned Harris and allied themselves with Trump.  Both the LA Times and WaPo have refused to endorse Harris.  There are more registered GOP voters today than at any previous point in history.

Polymarket vs. mainstream polls.  Is it just us?  Or does it feel like someone slipped mushrooms into the drink of mainstream election pollers and Polymarket bettors.  Both are following the same race (the 2024 US elections) — but each side is seeing/experiencing/presenting two very different realities.

Forget the polls — Follow the money.  The ever-present, ever-changing election polls reflect what a limited group of people think on a given day.  But the billions of dollars wagered on 2024 Presidential election betting proves what a compendium of smart, wealthy people think will happen on Election Day.  Polls are opinions.  Betting markets are opinions, too, but they are opinions backed up by billions of dollars.  The smart money is now backing Trump 60-40.

Why the Polls Merit Skepticism.  The mainstream media, which leans heavily Democratic, would have us believe the presidential race is neck and neck.  An NBC poll from October 4-8 reports a 48%-48% tie, while ABC News/Ipsos shows Harris narrowly leading with 50% to Trump's 48%. However, the same sources and others cast serious doubt on the reliability of these polls. [...] This election cycle bears striking similarities to the 1980 race between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.  Back then, a struggling economy, rising crime, and the Iran hostage crisis frustrated Americans.  Despite polls showing a close race, Reagan won in a landslide, taking 51% of the popular vote and 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49.

Past Presidential Polls Provide a Big Clue About November 5.  [Scroll down]  Here are the specific polls:  For 2024.  Quinnipiac (9/19 - 9/22) shows a tie.  Reuters/Ipsos (10/4 - 10/7) shows Harris +2.  CNN (9/19 - 9/22) has Harris +1.  Fox News (9/13 - 9/16) shows Harris +2.  On average, it's Harris +1.  Now look at the same polls eight years ago.  The dates don't match exactly as the polls are not commissioned on identical dates each election cycle but are all in the same general time frame of early October.  For 2016.  Quinnipiac (10/5 - 10/6) showed Clinton +6.  Reuters/Ipsos (10/6 - 10/10) had Clinton +7.  CNN (9/28 - 10/2) also showed Clinton +6.  Fox News (10/10 - 10/12) had Clinton +8.  The average of these four polls gave Clinton a 7-point national lead over Trump.  In other words, Clinton had a bigger edge over Trump compared to Harris over Trump, and Clinton lost the election.

Kamala The Tax Cutter?  Of all the results from the latest I&I/TIPP poll, the most unsettling has to be that voters think Kamala Harris is at least as much of a fiscal and economic conservative as Donald Trump.  Our latest poll, taken of 997 likely voters, finds that more voters say they trust Harris (who's already announced $4 trillion in tax hikes) than Trump to cut taxes by a 48%-45% margin.  Among the crucial independent voters, the margin is even greater — 49% to 36%.  That's not all.  More trust Harris to bring about energy independence, 48%-47%.

The Editor says...
This poll, if it's accurate, proves there are thousands of poorly-informed voters in this country who should not vote.  If you think for a millisecond that Harris will make the U.S. "energy independent" and Trump won't, you are terribly ignorant if not delusional.

Tell me about that Kamala landslide.  [Scroll down]  But the poll say — trusting the accuracy of the polls six weeks from the election is like trusting a Palestinian ceasefire.  Right now pollsters can say whatever they want and then claim just before the election that the race is getting tighter.  They get judged by their final polls, not these early ones.  That isn't to say the polls are without some utility.  The demographic breakdown in the polls are intriguing.  The NYT/Siena Poll shows Trump has a 14-point advantage among men.  Kamala has a 12-point.  Women outnumber men so NYT calls it a tie.  Women likely oppose Trump on abortion and emotion.  They support Kamala because she is a woman and then call men who support Trump sexist.  What can Trump do to close the gap?  After all these years, likely nothing.  His best bet is to have women stay home, have babies and make sandwiches.  Kamala will help because she has the ability to make women not want to vote.

Democrats fear pollsters are undercounting Trump.  Senate Democrats are worried pollsters are once again undercounting the Trump vote and say Vice President Harris's slim lead in battleground states, especially Pennsylvania, is cause for serious concern.  After getting shocked by Hillary Clinton's upset loss in 2016 and surprised by then-President Trump's stronger-than-expected performance in 2020, Democratic lawmakers are bracing themselves for another election night surprise.  They hope that Harris can overperform the polls herself by driving young voters and Black and Latino voters to the polls in big numbers, but acknowledge that whether a larger-than-expected pro-Harris coalition emerges is an untested hypothesis.

Why Are Election Projections So Divergent?  One of the most striking things about following this campaign is the fact that election projections are all over the place.  I was chatting with a political science professor friend of mine, and he was projecting a 1980 Reagan-style victory for Trump — an assessment I tend to agree with — while the online analysts are showing a dead heat with a slight advantage to Kamala Harris.  While Nate Silver has been more Trump-bullish, even his latest projection shows a very slight advantage for Harris.  The answer, of course, comes down to the polls and what you take away from them.  Most of the polls show Harris with a very modest lead in the national horserace, although one that doesn't match Biden's in 2020.  That, in itself, should make you a bit skittish about believing that these polls are favorable to Harris.

Not believable:
Morning Consult Poll:  Sen. Cruz Trails in Texas Race.  Incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is trailing his Democrat opponent in the latest Morning Consult poll.  Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player, leads Cruz 45% to 44%, Morning Consult poll results show.  It's the first time Allred has been ahead in the Texas U.S. Senate race.  Texas voters have selected a Republican to represent them in the Senate every year since 1990. [...] The RealClear Polling Average shows Cruz with a 6-point lead.  A YouGov/University of Texas survey conducted Aug. 23-31 found Cruz 8 points ahead.

Election Home Stretch — What do the Polls Say?  [Scroll down]  It's hard to predict the outcome at this point.  There are still a few months until the election, and there will likely be at least one October surprise.  What are the key issues concerning voters?  It is reminiscent of when Bill Clinton challenged George H.W. Bush in 1992, and the campaign mantra was, "It's the economy, stupid!"  Thirty-five percent (35%) of battleground state voters say the economy is the most important issue for them, followed by border security (17%) and abortion (13%).  Surprisingly illegal immigration and the border fall far behind the economy.  That may change as news of Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment buildings in Aurora Colorado, Chicago, Dallas, and New York City makes headlines.  Many other cities likely have or will face the same.  An illegal alien truck driver killed a Colorado man and received less than a one-year prison sentence.  Deportation?  Fat chance in sanctuary Colorado.

Polls pointing to a Kamala Harris victory appear to be skewed by including too many Democrat voters.  [Scroll down]  [Analyst Ryan] Girdusky has identified that older white liberals are more likely to answer polls than older white or Hispanic conservatives.  That response bias — answering polls at a far greater frequency than other groups — skewed the polls in the last two elections and now the same is happening again.  There are other problems, too.  The surveys showing Harris the farthest ahead are polls that are conducted entirely online.  That is normal practice in the UK. [...] The same cannot be said for the US, where whether a voter completes an online survey differs hugely depending on how that voter looks and thinks.  By digging into the data underneath the Harris leads, we see those online polls over-sample three key groups:  younger Americans, voters who are the most engaged in politics, and people who work remotely from home during the day.  All those groups are more likely to be Democrat.  Add in the fact that older Republicans use the internet less and are more likely to distrust entering their personal data online, and it is clear that there is a problem.

Nate Silver Forecast Has Chance of Trump Winning at 61.5%, Harris at 38.3%.  Statistician Nate Silver on Friday released his latest 2024 presidential election forecast, which shows former President Donald Trump at 61.5 percent and Vice President Kamala Harris at 38.3 percent.  The rise in Trump's chances of 15.4 percent is a flip from Silver's forecast on August 23, when Harris's chances of winning were at 53.5 percent and Trump's at 46.1 percent.  Those numbers came right after the Democratic National Convention, when the vice president was still enjoying a mainstream media honeymoon.  A few weeks have passed since then, and Harris has not held a single press conference, opting for one sit-down interview with running mate Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) on the Democrat-friendly network CNN.

A reader's guide to the polls.  No single public opinion survey offers an adequate basis for assessing the state of an electoral contest.  Averages of multiple polls tend to minimize the impact of individual erroneous polls and locate the most probable course of public sentiment.  There are two different ways of constructing averages of multiple polls.  One is simple: take all the polls on a race (national or a specific state) and determine the average of the results they report for each candidate.  The other is more complicated: use standards of quality based on the prior performance of individual polling organizations as well as the sample size and timing to determine the weight that a specific poll receives.  In principle, polls conducted by organizations that have been accurate in the past, use large samples, and have been released recently will receive a greater weight than those that score lower on one or more of these dimensions.  A well-known example of the first, simpler method is provided by RealClearPolitics (RCP); of the second, more complex method, by FiveThirtyEight (538).

Stop Worrying About the Polls:  Kamala's Lead Is Fake.  Can Kamala win?  Only if the public buys into the massive public relations campaign touting her as a leader and the Democrats' desperate attempt to blame Trump for the country being on the wrong track.  Keep in mind Kamala's problems as a candidate.  She is immersed in the world of identity politics.  She has rarely been able to succeed without the help of powerful politicians.  She has never run anything significant — no city, state, or business.  She has managed her own offices but has a reputation as a terrible boss.  She avoided most of the assignments given to her by the Biden administration, especially border czar.  Finally, she is the misguided middle-class daughter of a Marxist economics professor, which may account for many of her socialist views and her inability to connect with working-class folks.

How Civil Wars End.  [Scroll down]  RFK Jr. was accorded full rock star treatment upon surrendering, complete with fireworks.  Trump overlooked Kennedy's previous description of him as a "sociopath." Several months earlier, both traded extreme insults.  Trump's embrace signals his base to accept the anointed.  Kennedy has many failings, but delusion is not one of them.  He realized which side will win.  The devil was in the polling details.  Fake polls are as pernicious as other types of fake news.  Democrats are in trouble.  Profound insights were provided by Mark Zuckerberg's August 26 House Judiciary Committee letter.  His command of a global data collection provides access to public sentiment.  He is abandoning Democrats and telegraphing Trump's impending victory revealed in his data. [...] Trump's internal polling reveals Democrats don't have a snowball's chance.

The Last Election Before the War.  If Harris wins this election, by fraud, or default (which is a possibility) the game will be on.  There is no way, knowing what I know now about how these votes are created and inserted into the system, the infrastructure in place to do that and only that, that they will ever convince me that she won, that a majority of legal voters elected her.  I don't care what they do to manipulate the polls in advance of the second steal.  I knew the first one was fraudulent, but I thought there were so many people with skin in the game at the upper levels that they would put things in place to ensure that there was a reckoning to some degree.  Watching what has taken place over the past four years, I know there's no interest in our republic.  They want a change, preferably without voters at all.  That's what we're fighting against.

Pollsters overestimated support for Labour by the largest amount in 50 years, analysis has revealed.  The final opinion polls ahead of the general election overestimated Labour's vote share by 4.2 percentage points, and underestimated the Conservatives' vote share by 2.9 percentage points.  Sir Keir Starmer stormed to victory on July 4 with a landslide of 412 seats, but his party's vote share was just 34 percent — the lowest of any governing party since the First World War.  The Conservatives saw their vote share plummet, and received just 24 percent.  But the gap between the two parties was significantly smaller than had been predicted in the weeks leading up to the election, which pollsters had believed was around 20 percent.

Underreported Polling Suggests Trump Is Poised to Win PA.  Eight years ago this week, Hillary Clinton led in Pennsylvania by more than nine points; four years ago, Joe Biden led by nearly six points.  Clinton lost Pennsylvania by less than a point, while Biden won it by more than a point.  Heading into the Democratic National Convention, the Emerson/RealClearPennsylvania poll showed Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris by a point.  Averaging together the Pennsylvania polling taken since Harris became the Democratic Party's nominee, the state's presidential race is a dead heat.

Do NOT Believe the Main Stream Media's Pollsters!  The mainstream media is back to its old tricks.  They are now pushing phony polls to show Kamala Harris has tightened the race and/or even pulled ahead.  Be warned, they are fake.  These polls do not take into account a few factors that lead me to believe Trump is up by double digits.

Bookmakers are not pollsters, but they provide some of the same information.
Kennedy Endorses Trump — Media Endorses Kamala.  Over the past 72 hours in America, things have changed in the landscape of national politics.  Kamala Harris's odds of winning the 2024 presidential election have seen a reversal among leading bookmakers.  Perhaps the most important disclosure came August 10th when Polymarket, often described as the "world's biggest prediction market," forecast that Harris would receive 52 percent of the presidential election vote against the former president's 45 percent.  As of 5 a.m. ET on August 21, Trump had regained the lead, with 52 percent of support versus Harris's 47 percent.

Kamala Can't Win Without Extreme Election Interference And That's Exactly What's Happening.  Everyone invested in a Kamala Harris victory in November isn't making even the faintest attempt at taking her seriously as a presidential candidate.  She's not one because she has no reason to run for president, no vision, no interest in the job.  The whole point of this herculean, gravity-defying exercise we're in the midst of isn't to make Kamala president.  It's to deny Donald Trump the White House.  The only way that can happen is for election interference on behalf of Kamala in ways that were once unspeakable.  We're already seeing it with inexplicable poll numbers (literally, no one can explain them); a national news media that went from acknowledging Kamala as a perpetual screw-up to heralding her as a glamour queen; and an all-hands cleanup effort to remake her reputation from undeniably incapable to Barack Obama redux.  We're entering a new phase where Democrats and the media will not only pretend Kamala's last three embarrassing years in office never happened, but they will lie about anything and everything from here forward and to a degree in no way tethered to reality.

Kamala's "surging" poll numbers are a lot of hot air.  A close analysis of the data shows that Donald Trump continues to maintain a dominant position in this election.  After factoring in the systematic pro-Democrat bias in polling data, Trump comes out decisively in the lead.  As it stands now, Trump will likely win every swing state and the national popular vote.  Donald Trump has consistently outperformed his state-level polling by an enormous degree.  The pollsters have consistently and laughably underestimated his true support level.  The margin of error always cuts the same way!  The headlines saying Kamala is in the lead in the swing states are sheer propaganda.  It is not enough for Kamala to be "up" in these polls, she needs to be up by more than the systematic pro-Democrat polling bias to actually win the election.

Nothing is over until we decide it is!  The polls in June showed Trump breaking away from FJB, which conveniently gave Democrats a reason to dump Pedo Joe.  Now the polls show Kamala breaking away from Trump.  I doubt many people are buying this because years of abuse have made Limbaugh's belief so mainstream that Democrats now are pushing betting odds instead, using the conventional wisdom that bettors know the score better than we do because they have skin in the game.  If bettors were really smart, they would not bet because over time the house always wins. [...] Now when I say, the house over time wins, that does not mean the house is run by geniuses.  Just because they can make a living off the math challenged does not mean the bookies are a bunch of Einsteins. [...] But bear in mind the news is all an illusion now.  Maybe it always was.  The facts are there though, in plain sight.  This is not 2016. Kamala is a worse candidate than Hillary and Democrats are a house divided against itself.

CNN's Polling Expert Tells Democrats That Kamala May Be in More Trouble Than They Think.  Kamala Harris's honeymoon bounce in the polls has Democrats excited for the first time in a long time in this election.  Even with that surge of enthusiasm, she's still only managing to take a small lead within the margin of error in the RealClearPolitics average.  Nevertheless, her position appears to be much stronger than Joe Biden's but, CNN's Harry Enten is warning them that Harris doesn't have the election in the bag — not by a long shot.

The Remarkable Transformation of Kamala Harris.  Harris's lack of action on illegal immigration, her voting to increase inflation, her encouragement of criminal activities, her vicious and unwarranted attacks on Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, along with her close affiliation with the "Squad" prove she is a hard leftist ideologue, clearly opposed to American values and out of step with the voters.  When Harris's public demeanor, her cackling, and her meaningless word salads are added to her actions, Harris's unpopularity prior to July 21, 2024 becomes readily understandable.  How then to explain Harris's sudden transformation, with some polls saying Harris versus Trump 2024 is a "toss-up."  The latest poll, admittedly from the hyper-partisan New York Times, puts Harris ahead of Trump in three key battleground states.  How is this possible?

Who are the folks who show up at a Kamala Harris rally?  One has to wonder, who are those people who have come out of the woodwork, ostensibly to support the vacuous, inarticulate Kamala Harris?  She was very unpopular when she tried to run for president in 2020.  She was still unpopular when she was Biden's DEI hire as vice president; she fulfilled his promise to select a black woman.  Biden did so without regard for her merit or competency.  Everyone knows that.  So now, suddenly manufactured crowds appear at her rallies this past week and display what seems to be a hypnotized mob.  The obvious answer is they are so mind-numbed they will vote for anyone but Trump, but that is not believable.  His polls are as good as they were when Biden was still in the running.  Those media polls that say she is beating him are fake. [...] She has given the exact same speech at each rally which she reads from the teleprompter.  Without the teleprompter, she cannot put a coherent sentence together.
[Emphasis added.]

NYT: Polls Suggest that Kamala Harris Has Become 'Generic Democrat'.  Kamala Harris's rise in many polls since the vice president replaced President Joe Biden as the Democrats' candidate for 2024 is attributable to her becoming the so-called "generic" Democratic candidate, the New York Times reports.  Though the term "generic" can sound like a put-down, it is actually a coveted status, because "generic" candidates who simply reflect partisan loyalty often poll better than real candidates with real-world records and personalities.

Kamala Up?  What Do the Polls Really Say?  [Scroll down]  Remember that the Real Clear Politics polling average of a five-way race has Kamala up by just a fraction.  On this date in 2016, the RCP average had Hillary up by almost 7.  Trump's support in swing states appears to have declined.  But that would be expected, considering that Biden dropped out of the race and Trump's polling bumps from the convention and the attempted assassination are fading.  Let's take a look.  In Arizona, Trump is up by 2 in the RCP average, based on the strength of just two polls.  An Emerson poll had Trump up by 8 on Jul. 23, followed by Morning Consult five days later, with Harris up by 4.  I am not buying a 12-point swing in less than a week.

Don't be surprised if Kamala shoots ahead in the polls.  [Scroll down]  Vice President Harris will also get a big bump from the Democratic National Convention.  Most all the major Hollywood stars will be there.  I wouldn't be surprised if Taylor Swift showed up, wrote a song, and sang it before the whole country.  Harris will also get a bump when she chooses a vice president.  The press is already going gaga trying to figure out whom she will pick. [...] Another advantage Harris has is that her position as vice president might allow her to mitigate any responsibility for what happened during the Biden/Harris administration.  Trump will not let her get away with this, but the elites and the media will.  They will claim she has a completely spotless record since she didn't do it.  Biden did.  The eight million illegal aliens who came into this country by land, air, and sea are not because of anything Vice President Harris did, the press will claim.

Trump Campaign:  CBS Poll Skewed to Help Harris.  The Trump campaign on Sunday blasted a CBS News/YouGov poll, saying it manipulated its latest poll to inflate results that help Vice President Kamala Harris.  Poll results announced earlier Sunday showed former President Donald Trump and Harris, who are expected to oppose each other in the November election, are tied in key battleground states.  However, the CBS News/YouGov results showed Harris with a 1-point edge (50% to 49%) in a head-to-head matchup.  The Trump campaign said the poll's methodology and breakdown of respondents were changed from those used for a July 18 survey to benefit Harris.  For example, the share of participating liberal voters increased from 28.5% of the respondents on the July 18 poll to 30.2% in the Aug. 4 poll.  A lower share of moderates (31.8% on July 18 to 30.3% on Aug. 4) participated.  Also, self-identified conservatives comprised 36.7% of the 2,247 respondents for July 18 and just 35.5% of the 3,102 respondents for Aug. 4.

Kamala Harris polling better than Donald Trump?  In some polls, Vice President Kamala Harris now leads former President Donald Trump by a percentage point or two in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election.  How can this be?  Especially when considering:  The Biden administration locked up patriots who strolled through — or near — "The People's House" on Jan. 6, some of whom are still imprisoned, but has supported legislation that lets hardened criminals go free.  Moreover, it has made deals with countries that sponsor terrorists — and with terrorists themselves, when it is not actually paying them or gifting them advanced military equipment.  The Biden administration has let illegal aliens in by the umpteen millions and treats them better than it does American citizens.  Biden administration policies have caused rampant inflation that has eaten up a significant part of Americans' earnings and made home ownership for many young families virtually impossible.  Democrat and Democrat-appointed judges have thrown the book at Trump for imagined or comparatively trifling "crimes" while treating much more serious offenses committed by the likes of Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton with kid gloves.  And, apart from trying to remove Trump from ballots, and imprison him, it is sadly not out of the realm of possibility that they may have played a part in trying to assassinate him.  So, why would Harris apparently be running neck-and-neck with Trump, even though she received no support in her last run to be the Democrat nominee for president[,] and has failed in every endeavor as vice president?  How can this be?  Why would the American people allow this to happen?

How is Kamala doing? 12 days, zero votes, zero press conferences.  A dozen days into her coronation as the Democrat candidate for president, Kamala Harris has yet to hold a press conference.  She also has yet to have a single vote cast for her in actual voting this election season.  What has she done?  As a San Francisco-born, Canadian-bred individual, she tried out a phony southern accent during a rally in Georgia.  In greeting freed American hostages at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Thursday, she said:  "This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy."  Brought out the infamous cackle and referred to herself as "president" during the eulogy of Texas Democrat Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.  Yet, if you believe the polls, Harris is either neck-and-neck or leading former President Donald Trump.

Joe Rogan Almost Tricked Into Thinking That a Kamala Harris Victory Is Inevitable.  We know that the mainstream media is the PR wing of the Democrats.  The function of PR is to make their clients look good and to diminish their rivals.  Their Democrat bosses commanded the media to lead the operation to dethrone Joe Biden, despite him securing 15 million votes from regular Democrat primary voters.  Then, factual poll numbers revealed where Biden was lagging.  Next, Biden was forced into debating Trump and the usually Democrat-leaning moderators appeared fair.  Biden looked how he has always looked — cognitively and mentally impaired. [...] Now that Biden has been replaced by Kamala Harris though, they're back to their standard propaganda, claiming that following Biden's departure there is new enthusiasm among Democrats and that Harris is certain to win.  In the coming days, they will probably have polls that Harris leads by double digits in swing states.  Big tech is doing its bit by suppressing all news about Trump; they must be suppressing any news that makes Harris look bad.

Media Gaslighting Trump-Harris Polls.  [Scroll down]  Here is a Reuters headline, "Exclusive:  Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in US presidential race, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds."  This is a poll of "registered voters", names on the voter rolls.  A more accurate sample would be of "likely voters", the approach Rasmussen Reports takes in its political opinion polls.  Many registered voters rarely or never vote.  Likely voters are far more enthusiastic about voting, based on their past voting record.  More important are the political preferences of the survey sample.  In the Reuters/Ipsos survey, buried in the methodology, far from the headline, is this gem, "The sample includes 1,018 registered voters, 426 Democrats, 376 Republicans, and 341 Independents."  In percentages, their poll was 42% Democrat and 37% Republican, a 5-point difference, far more than Harris's 2-point edge in the poll.  Independents only represented 21% of the survey.  Why not poll the studio audience of The View or Jimmy Kimmel Live for an even more pro Harris sample and result?  Garbage in, garbage out.

The Biggest Gaslighting Scam Yet:  Kamala Isn't Winning.  She's Doing Worse Than Biden.  We have been gaslighted so badly, so many times in past few years, it's almost impossible to believe.  But none has been as absurd as what's happening right now with the fake news stories and fake polls about Kamala Harris.  Only a couple weeks ago, Democrat leaders were discussing how to dump Kamala from the ticket.  She was that big of an albatross.  The most unpopular, unlikeable Vice President in modern history was an anchor on the Democrat Party and yes, even "the Biden brand."

The Logistics Explain the Need for Manufactured Harris Enthusiasm.  Illegal aliens do not need to vote (per se), they only need to exist in a captured state database as physical persons.  Their personage is then shifted to voter rolls, that then generate ballots.  Any state or federal system that links a physical identity to the secretary of state voter rolls is good.  Any system, like the USPS postal change of address system, that would remove physical identities from the state voter rolls is not useful.  The goal is to maximize the number of systems that generate registration, that eventually generates ballots.  Beyond the Driver's License/State ID issue (motor-voter), it's everything.  Sign up for public assistance, get registered to vote.  Sign up for state benefits, get registered to vote.  Sign up for a state id, get registered to vote.  Sign up for state college, get registered to vote.  Sign up for a grant, get registered to vote.  Sign up for unemployment, get registered to vote.  Sign up for any state system and get registered to vote.

Democrats Must Rig Public Perception Of The 2024 Election First!  Are you dumb enough to believe that Kamala Harris is in a polling dead heat with Donald Trump? [...] How is it possible that the least popular politician in America will beat the most popular politician in America — you ask?  Well, it's called election fraud!  Rigging an election is easy — the tough part is getting people to believe the results.  If you understand that concept, then you understand:  the Biden regime doesn't have an "election" problem.  After all, the 2020 election was rigged and that system remains in place.  The Biden regime has an "optics" problem:  nobody really believes that Harris can beat Trump.  They must sell some lies before they rig the election.

Harris Narrows Gap Against Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds.  [Scroll down]  Overall, Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters in a head-to-head match.  That is a marked improvement for Democrats when compared to the Times/Siena poll in early July that showed Mr. Biden behind by six percentage points, in the aftermath of the poor debate performance that eventually drove him from the race.  Mr. Trump leads Ms. Harris 48 percent to 46 percent among registered voters.

The Editor says...
The poll discussed in the article above is simply not believable.  Practically nobody voted for Harris in the 2020 Democrat primary, so she ended up with zero delegates.  She is still immensely unpopular today.  She got her current job entirely because of her gender and skin color.  Those are her only qualifications.  On the other hand, Trump is a proven leader who has never been more popular.  An honest poll would probably show him ahead of Harris by a ratio of at least five-to-one.  But the news media makes more money if they present the election as a neck-and-neck horserace coming down to the wire.  And the lying, cheating socialist Democrats want the public to think the election is a toss-up so the public won't balk when tens of thousands of fraudulent votes are "found" about eight hours after the polls close.

Impossible:
Exclusive: Harris leads Trump 44% to 42% in US presidential race, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds.  Vice President Kamala Harris opened up a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and passed the torch to her, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.  That compares with a marginal two-point deficit Biden faced against Trump in last week's poll before his Sunday exit from the race.  The new poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, followed both the Republican National Convention where Trump on Thursday formally accepted the nomination and Biden's announcement on Sunday he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris.

July Polls:  Trump Crushes Harris in 13 National Surveys.  Former President Donald Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris in 13 national polls published in the month of July.  The surveys indicate Harris might not have any better chance of defeating Trump than President Joe Biden did.  Harris's favorability rating is one point less than Biden's, RealClearPolitics polling average found.  [Advertisement]  Harris will be an easier candidate to defeat in November than Biden, Trump said Sunday after Biden dropped out as the Democrat's de facto nominee.  [Advertisement]  The 13 polls also contradicts polling from former pollster for President Barack Obama, Fernand Amandi, who published an internal survey on July 9 that found Harris led Trump by one point.

How Is It Even Possible For A Poll To Show Biden-Trump Tie?  Many in the media, the donor class, and the Obama wing of the Democratic party are looking for President Joe Biden to step down, but they have one big problem.  The worst-case scenario for replacement advocates is for Biden to perform just well enough to justify staying in the race, but not well enough to actually win.  So they were probably as horrified as I was to see a new Washington Post poll show Biden tied evenly with Donald Trump, 46-46.  [Tweet]

The Editor says...
Who but the most incorrigible fifth-generation Democrat would vote for senile Joe Biden, now that he has been exposed as an empty shell?  If the polls were accurate and honest, they would probably show Trump at 75 percent and Biden at 20 percent, so you would then be very alarmed on the morning after Election Day — or Day Two of Election Week — when the TV reported that Biden pulled ahead at 3:00 a.m. — eight hours after the polls closed — and just barely won.  But if the polls are heavily biased and crooked, they will show Biden and Trump in a really tight horse race photo finish, regardless of the facts, so when the lying baby-killing communists steal the election, your objections will be dismissed because the outcome will be very close to what the polls indicated.  In other words, these tight poll numbers are lies designed to soften you up fot another stolen election.

Don't Overrely on National Presidential Polls.  Opinion polls are a snapshot of public sentiment and preferences.  In the case of presidential election polls, polls reflect the views of a hopefully representative sample of the U.S. voting population which when extrapolated, mirror the views of the entire country.  But are national polls truly relevant?  The president is not selected based on a national popular vote, despite efforts from the left to decide elections in this manner.  Otherwise, a handful of large Democrat-controlled cities could control the election outcome through votes and voter fraud.  What about the rest of the country?

Biden Claims the Polls Are Wrong.  He May Be Right.  It seems Joe Biden didn't like what recent polls were telling him.  So he and his staff started claiming they're fake.  Unfortunately for Biden sycophants, the most recent Rasmussen Poll had Trump up by a gob-smacking +12 in a five-way race.  Since it is tough to put a positive spin on something like that, and since there is no such thing as a silent Biden voter, this poll had to be wrong, too.  One of the most interesting things about this particular poll is that it is included in the Real Clear Politics polling average but not in the FiveThirtyEight polling average.  Why?  Because Rasmussen was banished from the FiveThirtyEight average in March of this year for supposedly being inaccurate, or perhaps it was too right-wing or too Trumpy to suit FiveThirtyEight's master, ABC News.  Speaking of accuracy, FiveThirtyEight is the same polling organization that had Joe Biden up by over 8 points in Wisconsin in 2020, which Joe won by less than a point.

How election cheating affects the trustworthiness of polls.  We all know that polls are biased, but the bias has reached a frenzy this year, with mainstream pollsters starting to pretend that Joe Biden is wildly popular when we all know it's not true.  Everyone, including the most hardcore progressives, knows he has fairly advanced dementia or Alzheimer's and is merely a puppet at this point, controlled by powerful Democrat operatives behind the scenes writing what he says on the teleprompter.  His support is manufactured.  Since pollsters are well aware of the cheating, we can expect them to sway their polls to show Biden leading as it gets closer to the election.  Currently, despite the "shock polls" that the formerly conservative DrudgeReport keeps highlighting with Biden bizarrely far in the lead, most of the regular polls show Trump ahead.  Notably, Trump is leading in almost all of the swing states, according to these polls.

Is Biden's Poll Surge for Real?  We are now roughly six and a half months from election day or election month, depending on your state's election laws.  Today, we'll focus on Joe Biden's recent polling surge, as shown in the Real Clear Politics Poll Average of Trump vs Biden.  You will note Trump is up over Biden by a whopping 0.4 percentage points.  If we remove the possible outlier Rasmussen survey from the average, showing Trump at +8, Joe Biden would be ahead by 0.4.  Republicans might be dismayed by this, and Democrats encouraged.  In January of this year, Trump was ahead of Biden by +4.  Since then, the poll average has tightened.  Is this real, or is there something else going on?

Why Biden Is Bleeding Non-White Voters.  For decades, the Democrats have depended on the overwhelming support of minority voters to keep their party electorally viable.  Even when they nominated candidates with spotty civil rights records, like Joe Biden, the Democrats could count on at least 90 percent of the Black vote and about 70 percent of the Latino vote.  Now, however, polls suggest that neither the President nor his party can take these votes for granted.  The latest New York Times/Siena College poll, for example, found that Biden's lead over former President Trump among non-white working class voters has plummeted to 6 points (47-41).  In 2020, Biden led Trump by nearly 50 points among these voters.

What did we learn from polling in 2016, 2020, and 2022?  A lot of polls missed Trump's upset in 2016.  Reliable polls looked promising for Trump in 2020.  Four years ago, though, Democrats and their henchmen used the pandemic to rig presidential elections, as in plenty of ballot hijinks.  Ahead of that, they busied themselves rewiring election systems — as in litigating to change laws, lying, censoring, and funneling lots of Mark Zuckerburg's dinero into blue county elections offices.  The latter juiced Democrat turnout.  Overall, it was a sophisticated effort that's become a machine.  D.C. lifer jackals, like Christopher Wray and William Barr, helped oil the gears on the inside and squelch investigations.  The Machine operates outside and inside government now, and we're smack up against it in 2024.

Biden's job approval drops to 38% as border worries rise.  President Joe Biden's approval rating declined in January as Americans worried about the economy and immigration while the Democrat ramps up his reelection campaign, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday.  Only 38% of poll respondents said they approved of Biden's performance as president, down from 40% in December.

Donald Trump Polling Higher Than Any GOP Candidate in 20 Years.  As of Monday, former President Donald Trump is polling better than ever before against His Fraudulency Joe Biden.  Trump is also polling better than his only remaining rival for the Republican primary, former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC).  In the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average poll of national polls, Trump tops Biden by an astounding 4.3 points.  This is not only his biggest lead yet, but get a load of this:  Trump is polling better today than any Republican presidential candidate has polled against a Democrat since 2004, when George W. Bush topped John Kerry by 6.4 points.  In 2008, the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) never earned a lead of more than 2.4 points over now-former President Obama, and those were very short-lived leads, more like statistical blips.

Polls Suddenly Looking Different Now That Trump Sealed the Deal?  One poll does not a trend make.  But this poll jumped off the page (screen) when I saw it.  [Tweet]  Yep.  Susquehanna shows President Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by more than 7 points, at least if the election were held today.  In 2020 the election was decided by 1 point, and that was before the past 3 years of failures have driven Joe Biden's approval rating into the toilet. [...] In general, the state polls are less rosy for Trump than national ones — indicating that Trump has gained support in many places where it doesn't matter — the electoral college votes aren't in play.  Or, perhaps, indicating that polling has been juiced — the national polls inflate Trump's support.  Who knows?  All I know is that the polls bear watching — if a bunch of implausible outliers start popping up that suggests that either the earlier polls were juiced, the current ones are, or both.  A massive shift in public opinion seems quite unlikely in such a short period of time.

Who paid £70,000 for the shock poll that predicts a Tory wipeout at the next election?  On Sunday evening, the Cabinet met for a dinner in No 10.  But while the smoked salmon was delicious, the beef stew hearty and everything was wrapped up by a rich chocolate torte, one item on the menu was more tricky to digest — a devastating YouGov poll published that night predicting a Tory wipeout.  In an upbeat presentation, strategist Isaac Levido, who masterminded Boris Johnson's 2019 election landslide, insisted there was a way to victory.  But to many, the poll's timing appeared curious.  The nation would learn of the Tory Party's woes only 24 hours before today's crucial Commons votes on the Rwanda deal.  I have established that work began on the poll on December 14, shortly after the Government announced the main 'committee stage' for the revised Rwanda deal would be held today.  The results were released in time to cause maximum impact.

This article is not credible:
Haley fares best against Biden as Republican contenders hold national leads.  While Republican primary voters think Donald Trump is their best shot in November, it's Nikki Haley who right now holds a bigger lead over Joe Biden than either Trump or Ron DeSantis in potential head-to-head match-ups.  In fact, as the GOP presidential nomination kicks off, Trump, Haley and DeSantis all have at least a slight national edge on President Biden right now, were they to emerge as his challenger.

This is more realistic:
Pollster says Nikki is on 'shaky ground' and lack of enthusiasm for her is 'on the edge of jaw-dropping'.  Ron DeSantis is gambling much of his campaign on a strong showing in Iowa while Nikki Haley is seeing her headline numbers grow.  But pollsters and analysts say neither of them can take comfort from the final survey before Republicans in Iowa pick their preferred candidate on Monday.  Once again, the real winner on Saturday night was former President Donald Trump, who maintains his iron grip on the nomination race despite slipping three points in the NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll.

A more realistic poll:
Trump Makes History With Largest Lead in Des Moines Register on the Eve of Iowa Caucus.  Former President Trump made history on Saturday night with the final Iowa Caucus poll showing he has a massive, commanding lead over his GOP opponents.  According to the final Des Moines Register/Mediacom/NBC News poll of likely Republican caucusgoers, Trump holds a 28 percent advantage over the nearest challenger.  The former president has a rating of 48 percent, compared to Former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at 20 percent support.  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sits at just 16 percent support.  The two Republicans have fought neck and neck for second place since announcing their candidacy.

Democrats say polling is 'useless' as Trump pulls ahead of Biden in surveys.  Democrats on Capitol Hill are publicly rejecting recent polls showing former President Donald Trump taking a lead over President Biden in the 2024 presidential election.  A Tuesday poll from the New York Times and Sienna College found that Trump had a 46% to 44% lead over the sitting president.  Trump's lead was even more drastic among younger voters, who favored Trump 49% to 43%.  That poll's findings echoed surveys in November as well.  Democrats, however, are remaining publicly unphased, according to reports.

The Polls For Joe Biden Might Even Be Worse Than You Think.  As President Joe Biden continues to poll behind former President Donald Trump for a potential head-to-head matchup in 2024, recent surveys indicate he is also faring much worse than the Republican on issues that are most important to voters.  Trump has been trending ahead of Biden in national and crucial battleground state polls a year out from a hypothetical rematch, and is currently up by 3.2 points in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average.  Additionally, Biden is down by double digits against Trump on questions of basic presidential competency, including the handling of voters' top issues and concerns over the Democrat's age, according to recent polling data.  "He should be worried, and Democrats more generally should be worried," Dr. Charles Bullock, elections expert and political science professor at the University of Georgia, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.  "The kinds of issues that Biden is trailing Trump on seem to be the issues that are foremost on most peoples' minds."

Biden Casts Doubt on Polls, Laying Groundwork To Delegitimize 2024 Election.  There's still a long way to go before Election Day in 2024, but President Joe Biden is already dismissing polls that show him losing to Donald Trump as inaccurate, raising the specter that if he loses next November he will argue the election was not legitimate. [...] The president is immensely unpopular.  Biden's job approval numbers are underwater even in deep-blue states such as California.  Just 39 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week.  This is dangerous.  Biden's refusal to accept the results of these polls — conducted in part by the esteemed and unassailable journalists at the New York Times — is a dog whistle to his extremist supporters that threatens the very principles on which our cherished democracy was founded.  Biden's strategy is clear:  Convince his base — comprising associate professors, multiple home owners, corporate lawyers, and suburban wine moms — that it is not possible for him to lose a fair and legitimate election in 2024.  Therefore, if he loses, it must be, by definition, illegitimate.

[The] president's approval rating sinks to record low of just 40%.  Kamala Harris is realistic about the prospects that she and President Joe Biden will need to 'earn' the nomination and their reelection campaign for 2024.  It comes amid new polling that shows Biden's approval has dropped to a new all-time-low of 40 percent and former President Donald Trump beating the incumbent by 2 percent.  The vice president flew to South Carolina on November 10 to file for her and Biden to appear on the state's Democratic primary election ballot as the President continues to brush-off concerns about his dismal polling.

The Editor says...
Forty percent is a record low?  Really?  What about Biden's 36.8 percent approval in a poll last year?  Also, what about that 31 percent "record low" last year?

It's Not November 2024.  Last week, over at "Just the News," the headline blared: "Trump leads Biden in 5 battleground states in New York Times poll."  Other than a feelgood rush, so what?  The official date for the '24 elections is November 5, though Election Day has become a nugget surrounded by gobs of ballot-stuffing and electronic hijinks.  November 5 is now less than a year hence.  Whatever the polls report today won't necessarily reflect outcomes then, even if they're honestly tallied.

Ignore Any Poll Showing Trump Beating Biden.  [Scroll down]  As to the accuracy of the Bloomberg/MorningConsult, Emerson and Times/Siena polls, you can probably flip a coin this morning and produce a 2024 prediction that comes as close to the actual outcome as they can manage.  It's difficult to model the electoral effect of the lawfare campaigns being waged against Donald Trump or the influence peddling (i.e. bribery) schemes of Joe Biden and his relatives.  Ignore the polls.  Just get out and vote.

Ohio Exit Poll on Abortion Way Out of Step With National Polling Data.  CNN has released the results of exit polling in today's vote on issue 1 and the polling data looks considerably skewed from national polling over the course of the last few years.  According to the CNN data, the electorate today supported abortion in what has been turning into more of a red state over the years — even though national polling data shows more Americans are pro-life than pro-abortion.

The Primary is Over.  Polls can't be fully trusted, but if all are showing similar figures it gives them at least some level of legitimacy.  Even in a field with a double-digit number of candidates, Trump has already secured the majority or close to it.  For reference, he entered the 2016 race with around 10-12% support and won the nomination with just 44% of the vote.  If anyone else had his current polls during any past primary in such a crowded field, there would be calls for all candidates to drop out to build as much party momentum as possible to defeat the Democrat nominee.  This makes Republicans challenging Trump pure hypocrites when they speak about "coming together," "party unity," and "winning the general," since they are attempting to beat the candidate who is already in the best position to achieve these things.

Stick a Fork in Biden — He's Done!  The latest polls should be a bucket of cold water on Biden's aspirations and the hopes and dreams of his enablers.  A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests the turkey in the oven is done, ready for carving.  Mind you, any political poll is merely a snapshot in time, the sentiments of voters, or whoever was surveyed, in late September 2023, more than a year from the next election.  The headline says it all, "Trump edges out Biden 51-42 in head-to-head matchup."  The normally Biden-worshiping ABC News doesn't hold back. [...] This reinforces the question that Trump and Republicans should be constantly asking, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?"  Clearly the answer is no.

A Way to Make Election Polling Worthwhile.  Statistics don't lie, but statisticians often do.  And sometimes they neglect or ignore, which is almost as harmful.  Modern polling, as a "discipline" — no matter how undisciplined it might actually be, with few formal regulations and a soiled reputation — is a relatively recent phenomenon.  It was called "scientific" polling in 1936, when the magazine Literary Digest famously called the presidential election for Alf Landon.  (The magazine went belly-up, but a fledgling market researcher named George Gallup predicted Franklin Roosevelt's victory.)  But polling quickly became the mother's milk of contemporary politics.  If there are intrinsic flaws in polls, it would seem that the bright sunshine of exposure would counter them.  The plethora of competing polls — and their aggregation, as per the statistics compiled by Real Clear Politics and other "watchdog" reporters — would suggest clarity, safety in numbers.  It is also a matter of outliers balancing the reasonably honest and accurate mainstream surveys, in effect canceling each other's bias.

Our institutions are encouraging Americans not to have children.  A recent Pew Research Center survey found only a third of their wide-ranging sample would categorize marriage and children as at least somewhat important to their feelings of personal fulfillment.  Of course, any Pew survey is a product of its times.  The underlying meaning of the questions was, "Who in their right mind would want children?"  The questionnaire phrased their questions so grossly that they gave away the game.

Biden poll freakout.  The political and media world fell into a mini-frenzy over the weekend with the release of not one but two polls showing President Joe Biden in dire political shape.  The most newsworthy of the polls came from the Washington Post and ABC News.  Biden's job approval rating in the new survey is 37%, with disapproval at 56%.  Approval of his handling of the economy is 30%.  Approval of his handling of the border crisis is 23%.  The survey found deep unhappiness about the state of the economy in general, energy prices, food prices, and the income of average workers.  Only 33% of Democrats said they want Biden to run for a second term, versus 62% who don't.

The View Panics Trump Leading ABC Poll, Claim Pollsters Were 'High'.  With ABC News sounding the alarm over their own poll showing former President Trump leading President Biden by 10 points in a hypothetical head-to-head rematch, the cast of ABC's The View were in a panic on Monday.  The fact that the network they worked for was the one who conducted the poll meant little as they all took to attacking the results; with faux conservative Ana Navarro openly suggesting the pollsters were all "high" on "edibles or somethings" when they were asking the questions.

The Politicization of the Administrative State.  This poll is pretty much what one might expect, except that the first chart is an outlier.  Just think about the fact that 82%, the vast majority of democrats, think that immigration should not be decreased? [...] How can one view the videos of the border, read the first hand accounts of the illegal immigration, see the images and not think that immigration in the USA should not be decreased?  That 82% of democrats evidently have no issues with illegal aliens pouring across the border is shocking.  All I can think is that they are getting their news from sources completely different than my own.

Polls say Biden and Trump are headed for a rematch — but history shows it's way too early to tell.  Current polls, pundits and politicos insist that the 2024 race is a sure rematch between former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden.  It may well turn out that way.  But in past election cycles, summer polls 15 months before the general election usually did not mean much.  In December 2003, the CBS poll headline blared, "Dean pulls away in Dem race."  Howard Dean would eventually be clobbered by nominee John Kerry.  In the Gallup Poll of late June 2007, Hillary Clinton still continued to enjoy her wide lead in the Democratic primary over eventual nominee and elected president Barack Obama.  On the Republican side, Gallup noted of its summer 2007 polls, "There has been little serious threat to the frontrunner, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani" — who bombed out early in the race.

It's the General Election, Stupid.  Currently the Republican primary voters are solely focused on meaningless polls that show Donald Trump running roughshod over Ron DeSantis and nine others who have declared themselves as candidates.  On the other hand, in the swing states that will determine the winner in November of 2024, equally meaningless polls reveal DeSantis easily beating Biden.  Polls fifteen months from the general election are nothing more than a snapshot of the sentiment of the groups surveyed at the time of polls themselves.  However, as the shadow of Donald Trump has loomed over both the 2020 presidential and 2022 mid-terms, an analysis of the voting electorate from the exit polling data gathered after both elections is a more meaningful predictor of 2024.  Exit polls, like every other type of survey, are subject to margins of error and a certain level of bias.

Political 'independence' is on the rise, and still phony.  This Independence Day, 49 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, say they are political independents — not Democrats, not Republicans.  If you believe those voters, independents are now America's biggest political party.  It also means I have a bridge to sell you, because this outbreak of political independence is the biggest joke in politics.  Those voters like to tell their friends and pollsters they are sick of Republicans and Democrats, but come Election Day, almost all of them are predictably Republicans or Democrats.

Living in a Media World.  Despite what may seem a failed presidential administration, most polls indicate that Biden and his possible Republican opponents are running more or less even.  According to Daily Mail's most recent poll, Biden would beat Trump by about two points and most of the rest of the Republican field by more.  (Sleepy Joe would defeat Chris Christie by as much as 11 points according to the same source.)  Although Biden, according to the Daily Mail would lose to DeSantis by several points, he would defeat him by 2.4 points in the latest Real Clear Politics poll.

I don't see how this is possible.
Poll: Trump, DeSantis Neck and Neck with Biden in Michigan.  A hypothetical 2024 poll shows that former President Donald Trump is tied with President Joe Biden in Michigan, a state the Republican won in 2016 but lost in 2020, in a hypothetical general election matchup.  The EPIC-MRA poll, released Friday morning, shows Biden and Trump in a dead heat in the Wolverine State at 44 percent apiece.  Another 12 percent are either undecided or refused to answer.  Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) performs slightly better in a hypothetical head-to-head with the 80-year-old Biden, leading 45 percent to 44 percent.  In that matchup, 11 percent of the poll participants are undecided.

Frank Luntz Needs to Retire.  Overrated political pollster Frank Luntz admitted last week that he was wrong to prematurely dismiss a Trump comeback.  "Not only can Donald Trump win the GOP primary again, but he can also win the presidency again," Luntz tweeted.  Luntz has always struck me as a pretend statistician whose real role is to shill for whatever the Republican side of the Uniparty needs voters to support.  He peddles Deep State lies to ordinary Americans as truth.

The Stupidity of Polls.  Polling has proven itself to be just this side of useless when it comes to electoral politics — remember President Hillary Clinton and the "Red Wave" that swept Congress last year?  But pollsters need to eat, and the media has an insatiable desire to create new[s] rather than do actual journalism, so polls are created, conducted and reported as if they are a reflection of anything other than the thoughts in that moment of random people who likely don't pay attention to anything.  And politicians will clownishly clamor to position themselves in front of whatever parade those polls claim to have discovered.

Teflon Trump!  Ex-president's polling numbers hit 61%.  Former President Donald Trump's poll numbers appear to be rocketing on the eve of his appearance in a Miami courtroom on criminal charges, scheduled for Tuesday.  Trump touched down in the Sunshine State on Monday to face federal criminal charges as his campaign team plans to use the indictment to crush Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential campaign once and for all, as his poll numbers soar.  Indeed, Trump's team are looking to harness the amount of attention being placed on the presidential candidate and are hoping to steer narrative of the legal drama in their favor, by any means possible.

Poll: Trump Edges Out Biden in Hypothetical 2024 Matchup.  Former President Donald Trump is edging out President Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential matchup, the latest survey from The Economist/YouGov found.  The survey asked respondents who they would support in an election between Trump and Biden and found the former president leading by two percent — 44 percent to 42 percent — among registered voters.

The Editor says...
I find it impossible to believe that 42 percent of registered voters are content with high gas prices, wide-open borders, disgusting sex perverts in cabinet-level positions, the corrupt FBI covering up Hunter Biden's money laundering and Joe Biden's graft, reparations for slavery (payable to people who were never slaves), vaccine mandates, banning natural gas appliances, and the government's willingness to crash the economy to "save the earth" from carbon dioxide.  It is also impossible to believe that 42 percent of registered voters are satisfied with senile Joe Biden's mental state.

Trump vs. DeSantis-Not Really an Option with TDS Surging.  The recent release of the Durham report that clearly exonerated Trump has actually not made any difference in the minds of the TDS cult.  They still hate him and the syndrome is still powerful and spreading on both sides of the aisle.  Now the Never-Trumpers and Rinos in the GOP are fomenting discord by seeming to back Florida governor DeSantis's candidacy for the 2024 presidential race.  Improbable candidates like Chris Christie are running apparently for the sheer purpose of financial opportunities rather than thinking they have a chance [...] of surviving a primary.  Conservative pundits are dealing with the challenge of choosing between two individuals they have previously supported.  There are so many fake polls out there that one wonders who is being polled.  The most ridiculous one claims that Biden is outpolling both Trump and DeSantis.  That one must have been taken at the White House conference room, the Oval office and Biden's Delaware bunker.

Biden would defeat Trump by an even BIGGER margin than in 2020 if election was held today, new poll claims.  President Biden would defeat former President Donald Trump by an even bigger margin than in 2020 if the election was held today, a new poll claims.  There were 1,571 registered voters polled between May 10-13, revealing that Biden would lead Trump 47 percent to 40 percent, according to the WPA Intelligence survey results shared with The New York Post.  WPA Intelligence CEO Chris Wilson is an advisor to the Ron DeSantis-aligned PAC Never Back Down, which is running ads ahead of his expected presidential announcement.

The Editor says...
It is difficult to imagine anyone who hates Donald Trump so much that they would vote to re-elect corrupt and senile Joe Biden and continue the systematic destruction of the United States, unless the same voters hate the U.S. itself as much as they hate Trump.  Yes, Trump has his flaws, but those flaws don't affect me as much as Biden's agenda does.  I find it hard to believe that anybody would vote for a socialist Democrat candidate for any office, and I really find it hard to believe that the socialist Democrats could win a fair and legitimate election (on paper ballots, on one Election Day, with valid identification required). -->

The Democrat Plan to Pump and Dump Trump.  It's clear that the Democrats and their corporate media partners believe President Biden's best chance of remaining in the White House after 2024 is to assure that his Republican opponent in the general election is former President Trump.  To that end, they have launched the political equivalent of the old "pump and dump" investment scam in which fraudsters disseminate false information to artificially drive up the price of a stock and suddenly sell off their own shares when its "value" peaks. [...] When all the Sturm und Drang associated with the Bragg indictment began to fade from the news, the corporate media did its best to keep pumping up Trump's stock.  Countless news outlets reported the "surprising resilience" of Trump's rebound in the polls.  This wave of stories culminated in the recent Washington Post/ABC News survey ostensibly showing Trump leading Biden by 6 points in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.

Our Profoundly Unserious Moment.  In April, the Gallup polling organization asked, as it does every month, "What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?"  It's an open-ended question, respondents can give whatever answer they want, and Gallup tries to put the collected off-the-cuff answers into several categories.  The single most common answer was "the government," or "poor leadership," at 18 percent.  Fourteen percent said the economy in general, and 9 percent said inflation or high cost of living. [...] I mention all of this because yesterday, in his first major speech of the week, President Biden chose to talk about ... airport delays and airline fees.

Poll: Donald Trump Leads Joe Biden by 7 Points in Hypothetical Match-Up.  Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden by seven points in a hypothetical general election match-up, according to a Rasmussen poll.  The poll, commissioned by Political Media and first reported by the Post Millenial, shows that 48 percent of likely voters prefer Trump, while 41 percent back Biden. [...] Moreover, the poll finds Trump's net favorability rating registers at plus 20 points, with 59 percent saying he is favorable, "including 37% with a Very Favorable impression," [...] Conversely, Biden's favorability rating is seven points underwater.

The Editor says...
I find it difficult to believe that senile Joe Biden has that much support.

Are people still using polls to determine Trump's electability?  The genesis of this discussion seems to be a poll of registered voters commissioned by the Wall Street Journal showing DeSantis leads Biden by 3 points, while Trump trails Biden by 3 points.  Ignoring the issue of registered voters rather than likely voters, those are some interesting poll results to some people.  At least some people seem to think it indicates something about Donald Trump's electability.  Those people must have short memories.  This is the same Donald Trump who polls said had no chance to win the 2016 presidential election.  The winner of the 2016 election was of course Donald Trump.  This is the same Donald Trump that polls said was going to be blown out in the 2020 presidential election.  That election was so tight the counting dragged on for days until Joe Biden was declared the winner 3 days after the election. Specifically, in 2016 the final Real Clear Politics average of polls had the Trump vote 3.9 percentage points lower than his final tally.  Similarly, in 2020 the final Real Clear Politics average of polls had the Trump vote 3.6 percentage points lower than the final total.

CNN Poll: One-third of Americans say Biden deserves to be reelected in 2024.  Just a third of Americans say President Joe Biden deserves to be reelected, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, as a majority in his party say they would like to see someone else as the Democratic nominee for president next year.  The survey fielded throughout the month of March and was completed almost entirely before a Manhattan grand jury voted to indict former President Donald Trump last week.  It cannot reflect any shifts in public opinion after news of that vote was revealed.  CNN polling released Monday, which was conducted after the vote to indict him, suggested that it had little effect on views of Trump himself.

The Editor says...
This poll seems incredible to me, as in not credible:  CNN claims that a third of the population says Joe Biden deserves to be re-elected.  The actual number, in my estimation, is near zero.  How many Joe Biden bumper stickers have you seen on the freeway in the last two years?  How many people do you know who vocally support Joe Biden, or will even admit that they voted for him?  I know only a few Trump-hating leftists who are at all satisfied with him and the mess he has made.

No Going Back.  Like most polls, Gallup polls are usually paid advertisements for whomever commissions them and therefore deserving of as little attention.  However, the indefatigable Sharyl Attkisson recently reported on the results of one such survey and that did draw my attention.  Evidently, 47 percent of Americans say life will never go back to pre-pandemic normal.  I was somewhat stunned!  How could 53 percent be thinking we could go back?  This led me to darker thoughts on the collateral damage of our recent foolishness.  At least 53 percent of Americans will be woefully unprepared for what is coming.  Due to their own unwillingness to bear witness to the reality around them, much less recognize the consequences, the unprepared will be the first to panic, and their panic will result in more bad behavior at a time when strength of character will be needed.  But there is worse yet:  33 percent of Americans say their lives are completely back to normal.  I had no idea that 33 percent of Americans lived in caves!

Real Reason Trump Surges and DeSantis Declines in Morning Consult Poll.  Like almost all polls, Morning Consult gets mixed reviews.  FiveThirtyEight gives it a "B-" while Media Bias/Fact Check anoints it with its "Least Biased" rating, deeming it "very high" in the factual reporting department.  Go figure.  Whatever the case, we can assume the poll you like is the one that shows you winning, especially winning big.  It should be no surprise then that former President Donald Trump, in his emails, is trumpeting the March 19 Morning Consult's Republican primary tracker, which links Paul Bedard's Washington Examiner article, "Trump surges to biggest 2024 lead yet, two times over DeSantis."  Actually, the lead is slightly more than that.  Trump leads by 54 percent to 26 percent, or by 28 points, over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the poll.  On Jan. 2, he held an 11-point lead in the Morning Consult — quite a jump.  What accounts for it?

Are These Really the Happiest Cities?  WalletHub's recently released rankings of the happiest cities seems to defy reality.  Then again, the psychologists who concocted the rankings seem to defy common sense.  The list was conjured by a bunch of homogeneous professors — by one measure, liberal professors outnumber conservatives by 12 to 1.  What's more, the professors behind this "happiest cities" ranking are all psychologists, in one form or another.  Perhaps one of the professions most dominated by liberal social activists, studies indicate that the ratio of liberals to conservatives in the field of psychology is 14 to 1.  That's not very diverse.  Not to unnecessarily cast aspersions, but given these forbidding ratios, it's still legitimate to question the motives of such an apparently intellectually incestuous group of psychologists — without one White male, in their unhappy, un-DEI group.

Majority of voters, plurality of Democrats say Biden is too old to run again.  First of all, it shouldn't be a surprise that many more people feel Biden would be too old in 2024 than that Trump would be too old.  Biden is four years older and we've seen him visibly struggle a number of times in the past two years while Trump has mostly been out of sight and out of mind.  When you get to the partisan results both sides are tap-dancing a bit.  Fifty-eight percent of Democrats say Trump, at age 78, is too old but only 48% say the same about Biden at 82.  That makes no sense as a response to a question about age.  Obviously they're dragging in other factors beyond age.

Only 16% of Gen-Z adults proud to be American.  First minor caveat:  this poll took place at least in part over the midterm elections.  Perhaps in gauzy memory, such events might provoke a nostalgic sense of patriotism, such as our selective memories of the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, which look a lot more enthusiastic in the rear-view mirror than the commercialized reality of them at that time.  For a generation just barely beginning to engage in the political process, that time frame may have generated a wee bit more cynicism than usual.  Second minor caveat: The polling sample is actually strong and therefore so is the margin-of-error level for the demos and subdemos.  But as with other polling lately, one has to wonder how much selection bias plays a role.  Who answers these calls, and who sits for this long to answer surveys of this depth?  For younger people especially, those motivated to complete these may be the most cynical or angry.

Why were the polls off so badly in this election?  I believe that the final polls were wrong simply because they underestimated the Democrat ballot-harvesting machine.  Almost every polling organization uses a turnout model that predicts what percentage of registered or likely voters will vote in any given election.  Unfortunately, the polls overestimated the number of Republican-leaning voters and/or failed to consider the Democrats' effort to get out their vote.  It is also possible some Republican-leaning voters stayed home.  Why?  Because almost every political pundit and writer, including yours truly, said a red wave was coming no matter what.  You could lay a little blame at the feet of Republican senator Lindsey Graham, too.  In September, Graham introduced a bill in the Senate to ban abortions nationwide at 15 weeks.  This came little more than two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.  The point of overturning Roe was to return this issue to the states.  Graham effectively gave the other side something to fight for right before the election.

Surprised by the Midterm Election Results?  Take a Look at the Data.  [Scroll down] Of course, polls could have been wrong all along.  However, that seems unlikely, given the consistency of the results in a number of polls, administered by many different polling organizations.  For the Lake-Hobbs contest, the results displayed by FiveThirtyEight came from 13 different polling organizations, as shown in Figure 2.  Only one (Marist) had Hobbs winning:  [Chart]  Did 12 out of 13 companies make the same error, and in the same direction?  We see the same pattern with the senatorial contests. [...] Perhaps I missed it, but it seems there was no last minute erosion of support for GOP candidates.  And polling error is unlikely, given that the GOP lead was shown by many different pollsters, in different states, and for different candidates.  Yet, the Democrat candidates consistently beat expectations by quite a lot.  Why was that?

The Sort of Red Wave We Got.  The media conduct opinion polls to inform the public.  Opinion polls "are an assessment of public opinion obtained by questioning a representative sample."  These polls are also used by the media to generate interest and fuel their narrative.  It is up to consumers to determine whether the information they are ingesting is relevant to ongoing events or entertainment produced to increase ratings and advertising revenue for media outlets.  The media were happy to push the red wave narrative to keep consumers engaged. [...] The last RealClearPolitics (RCP) polling average projected a pickup of three Senate seats for Republicans.  RCP picked Masters in Arizona (0.3% lead in the last poll), Laxalt in Nevada (3.4% lead), and Walker in Georgia (1.4% lead) to flip Democrat seats.  Walker may still win his seat in a runoff, but the other two candidates lost.  RCP also picked Oz to win the Senate seat in Pennsylvania.  Oz was up 0.4% in the last poll.  Excepting Laxalt, these candidates were within the polls' margin of error.  To pick them all was risky.  It is likely that employees of RCP were expecting these candidates to ride a red wave to victory because the polls were a little sketchy.

Can we finally stop listening to election pollsters?  A New York Times poll revealed that the Democratic candidate was leading the Republican candidate, 44 to 38.  Another New York Times poll, taken days before the election, showed the candidates were running about even nationally.  The results were horribly wrong.  For New York voters, the Republican candidate won 47 to 44.  Nationally, the candidates were far from even.  The Republican defeated the Democrat 51 to 41.  This wrong prediction was from 1980 and the presidential election between President Jimmy Carter and then-Republican nominee Ronald Reagan, and it's indicative of the unreliability of polling.  It mirrored the wrong predictions of the 2016 presidential election and last week's midterm elections.  It's a failure that has repeated itself many times over the years.  Yet, still, every election season we indulge in our political addiction and listen to the polls.

As Usual, I Was Wrong.  I'm what happens when a conservative believes the polls.  I had wrongly thought that the polls swinging toward the Republicans meant that the polls were undercounting Republican support, as they have from time immemorial.  I was wrong.  Terribly wrong.

What Are the Pollsters Missing?  The opinion polls all cite inflation and crime as the driving issues, but I've noticed some glaring omissions from the issue panels the pollsters have been using to identify the key movers of voter opinion:  the COVID school closure hangover, and the cultural issues involved in public education today (especially "gender fluidity" and related enthusiasms of the cultural left).  Virtually no poll asks any questions about these issues, even though they played a prominent role in the Virginia governor's race last year.

How to detect a [bad] poll.  I frequently comment on podcasts and elsewhere about some of the methodological problems with current opinion polling, but rather than get into the arcana of sampling difficulties, statistical weighting, question design, etc., let me suggest a simpler method of instantly detecting a [bad] poll:  see if it's from NBC News.  The latest NBC News poll just out finds that 45 percent of voters approve of Joe Biden's performance in office, while 47% of registered voters say they prefer Democrats to control Congress, while 46% want a Republican-controlled Congress.  The numbers tilt a bit closer to other polls showing much wider Republican margins when the domain moves from registered voters to likely voters, though the general conditions this year — and some of the "mood" numbers in this poll — make it hard to qualify "likely" voters.  But the real clue that this is a [bad] poll is the issue that the poll reports is the first choice for most important for midterm voters:  "Threats to democracy" (at 20 percent, just ahead of inflation at only 18 percent).  There are virtually no actual voters who volunteer this answer.

Polling lessons from Rush.  One of the core strengths of the late, great, sorely missed, Rush Limbaugh was his ability and willingness to constantly reground his listeners concerning basic truths.  We tend to forget basics in the heat of political battle, usually to the detriment of conservative causes and candidates.  An excellent current example of this has to do with polling.  I cannot believe how many conservative pundits, radio/podcast hosts and writers react to polls early in the season with dismay or even panic.  "Beto is within three points of Abbot!"  "Fetterman up seven over Oz?  How can that be?"  The answer is:  you're right, it can't be.  It isn't true.  Please stop getting suckered in.  Every election cycle Rush would re-educate us on how to correctly look at polling.  Up until the final four weeks before election day, the goal of mass-market pollsters is not to provide an accurate reflection of public opinion, it is to shape public opinion.  They will tweak their selection criteria and questions to produce a result that maximizes liberal engagement and depresses conservatives.  Most well-known national polling companies are joined at the hip with the leftist establishment and behave accordingly.  Nobody should believe any poll conducted more than a month out.

NBC Pushes Midterm Media Poll.  NBC's Mark Murray produces a midterm media poll to frame the 2022 election and claim a tight race for both Democrats and Republicans.  Despite collapsing economic numbers, widespread inflation and disapproval on every category, NBC finds the #1 issue for all voters is "The Threat to Democracy."  [Video clip]  71% of the country say we are on the wrong track (20% approve).  57% of the country disapproves of the job Biden is doing with the economy (38% approve).  50% of the country says things will get worse (20% think will improve).  But it's a close election?  And the #1 concern is "the threat to democracy?"

Where's the accountability in the polling industry?  Following all the polls in the run-up to Election Day has become something of a national pastime in recent years.  Keeping up with the various races — who's up and who's down on any given day — gives us a snapshot of what might happen on Election Day.  This year, however, we're seeing a constant and unprecedented deluge of polls in races all over the country.  I believe this oversaturation is continuing a dangerous practice that we witnessed in 2016 and 2020.  The sheer volume of polls being released and amplified by the biased liberal mainstream media — many that turn out to be dead wrong after the fact without any meaningful accountability — has created a new phenomenon in American politics.  It's the dark art of conducting surveys and releasing data in a strategic manner during our troublesome new monthslong voting process.  It's not done just to inform the public, but also to influence the outcome of elections.

The Polls are Lying: Dems [are] in Deep Trouble.  We go through this same dance every cycle where the polls miraculously start to shift towards the Republicans in the last month, as polling outfits grudgingly start moving towards something resembling reality to avoid copious amounts of eggs on their face.  But, even at that, the polls during this cycle are likely the worst we've ever seen and the fault lies more with the administration than the polling industry.  There is simply no way to accurately capture voting percentages when broad swaths of the country are hiding their views.  The alignment of the Democrat media, academia, the leftist government bureaucracy, social media, and entertainment industry into a cultural Death Star aimed at Republicans birthed the concept of the "shy" voters.  In 2016, this phenomenon helped to explain how Republicans, to include President Trump, overperformed their polls.  But a lot has changed since 2016.  Where voters might have once had concerns about how they would be perceived, they now know that the government and its cultural flying monkey minions view them as the enemy.

Those Believing Polls Showing Democrats Winning Get a Frightening Dose of Reality.  Polls infamously don't tell the whole story regarding an election.  They're effectively using a sample of people to gauge the voting population's mood before they head to the voting booth to pull the lever.  One trusted pollster who tends to get it right more than others is sounding the alarm that polls during the midterm election season are a bit off and is warning Democrats, in particular, that their leads in many polls aren't as strong as they may think.  According to the Daily Wire, Trafalgar group founder and senior strategist Robert Cahaly sat down with the site's new show "Election Wire," where Cahaly noted that Republicans are being severely underrepresented and the Democrats don't have the numbers most polls are telling them they do.

Why Are Pollsters Disagreeing About the 2022 Midterms?  There are several reasons fears about polling accuracy are strong right now.  First, 2022 is a midterm election where very small changes in the results could yield big consequences, thanks to the dead-even Senate and the tiny Democratic margin of control in the House (there are also many potential 2024 presidential battlegrounds where partisan control of the election machinery is up for grabs this year).  Second, there is a bit of residual trauma in the political commentariat about pro-Democratic polling errors in the two elections that produced the astonishing victory of Donald Trump in 2016 and his near-reelection (echoed by strong House gains by Republicans) in 2020.  Pro-Republican errors in 2012, and the mostly accurate 2018 surveys, have been all but forgotten.  Pro-Republican polling errors in 2022 special elections have all but been ignored or minimized.

Remember: Leftist Media Polls Are Often Wrong.  The usual election spin has begun. "Biden's not really so bad.  Democrats will retain the House and Senate.  Newsom will step in for the '24 presidential election.  Dems will win everything..."  Only it's worse this time.  The spin began the moment Trump won in 2016, and it has never stopped.  It began with the Russia-gate hoax, then the two false impeachments, the Jan. 6 committee, the raid on Mar-a-Lago, and now it culminates with the confident predictions that Dems will retain the Senate and the House. [...] Don't believe it.  The midterm elections are only three weeks away.  In almost every midterm election since 1934, the party out of power gains seats, and in times of dissatisfaction, they gain a lot of seats.  Barring a miracle, Republicans will take the House, and the Senate is up for grabs.  Biden's popularity is low, and dissatisfaction with the Democrat-controlled Congress is greater than ever (60% have an unfavorable opinion of Nancy Pelosi).  The media will try to cover it up, but the public is angry.  The events of Jan. 6 were a symptom of that anger, and things have gotten worse since then.  Inflation is not going away, the border is out of control, and foreign policy is a disaster.

Democrats See Red After Latest Major Poll Flips the Narrative.  As an election watcher, the last several months have been mind-numbing to live through.  Despite every historical fundamental pointing to a Republican win in November, the predominant narrative has been that Democrats are resurgent due to Dobbs.  Election modelers have even started adding scam PAC polls into their averages just to toss an extra bit of absurdity on top.  It's truly been garbage in, garbage out, as most major pollsters continue to use registered voter screens instead of likely voter screens, something that leads to a projection of a positive Democrat environment.

Joe Biden Is Toast.  I have been saying all along that Joe Biden's job approval numbers are inflated.  There is no way that anything like 40 percent of voters observe what has happened over the last two years and say, "Great job, Joe!"  I think his approval numbers are buoyed by Democrats who know he is a lousy president, but stick up for their party when a pollster calls.  This ABC News/Washington Post poll supports that hypothesis.  It finds that only 35% of Democrats want Biden to be their party's nominee in 2024.

Media midterm games at border.  If you're trying to understand why Democrats are making a comeback in polls despite President Biden's many failures, look no further than the political firestorm over the crisis at the southern border.  The battle offers a case study of how the media shapes public opinion by magnifying left-wing talking points, ignoring key facts and distorting conservative criticism.

Democrats Are Scared.  Corporate media polls are giving Nate Cohn, the New York Times poll-parser, the willies.  Cohn is well aware of polls' flaws.  He just sounded a blue alert for Democrats.  Via MEDIAite, September 12:  ["]Democratic Senate candidates are outrunning expectations in the same places where the polls overestimated Mr. Biden in 2020 and Mrs. Clinton in 2016.["]  That's a polite way of saying that big media polls are skewed.  Cohn cites a failure to make "significant methodological changes," which, translated, means, in part, a lot of polls oversample Democrats.  Even with slanted polls, Democrats are struggling.  Republicans are positioned to rack up a whole heap of wins come November.  Democrat consultants are well aware of that bleak prospect.  Of course, to win, Republican campaigns can't be vapid.  They must be tough, issues-driven enterprises.  Serving up tapioca to voters is a sure way to squander opportunities.

Progressives, Journalists Worry: Are Polls Once Again Overestimating Democrats?  Polling errors have not been unusual or infrequent in recent cycles, with most of the misses inflating Democrats' standing, compared to their actual vote share performance when the votes were counted.  Some of the more infamous examples in the last few years were Florida's statewide polling in 2018 (both Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis were projected to lose, then both Republicans won), and Maine's 2020 Senate race:  [Tweet]  The final ten public polls of the race averaged out to a lead of more than five percentage points for Susan Collins' Democratic challenger.  Collins then won re-election by nearly nine percentage points.  The polling average misfired by about 14 points.  That's scandalously bad.  The last six public polls in the South Carolina Senate race two years ago showed Lindsey Graham leading his opponent by less than two points, on average.  In late September, one poll showed an exact tie; another showed Graham clinging to a one-point lead.  Graham won his race by more than ten points.  Similar patterns played out elsewhere.

The New York Times Is Warning Democrats Recent Polling May Be Too Good to Be True.  There have been many critiques of polling errors in recent years, especially after the 2016 presidential election.  However, polling has always tended to skew toward the Democrats, and the results in several races in the last decade have been very surprising for some politicos.  If you pay attention to the polling right now, however, there are some signs that the same errors that have overinflated Democrats' confidence in the past might be doing so again.

Another Reason Why It's Hard to Trust Polling.  I have written many an article about various polls taken on a myriad of issues.  But even when looking at a poll whose results reflect what I believe, I still have to take it with a grain of salt.  However, when it comes to polling regarding American attitudes towards specific policies or legislation, I take these surveys with an entire vat of salt.  Why?  Because most of these studies do not adequately explain the proposed legislation or policy to the respondents in a way that enables them to have a full understanding of the issue.  Let's take President Joe Biden's decision to cancel $10,000 of student loan debt, a step designed to curry favor with the far-left crowd.  Polling shows that Americans are supposedly overwhelmingly supportive of the move.  But the Cato Institute recently conducted a study showing that when participants actually understand the consequences of the measure, they are not exactly jumping up and down with joy at the prospect.

Trends in COVID Anxiety.  Today the New York Times published the results (and interpretation) of its latest COVID poll.  While the interpretation is full of the typical unsubstantiated false claims supporting the approved narrative, which we have come to expect from corporate media, the poll itself is well worth examining.  Examples illustrating my point regarding the approved narrative include the following gems, beginning with the now obligatory blaming of President Trump and unnamed "Republicans" for the mass formation hypnosis which a large fraction of the country has been suffering.  In short, this argument seems to be "the other side made us go crazy".

Before the October Surprise comes the August-September PSYOP polls.  For every election cycle, a few months prior to voting day, pollsters release surveys that show Democrats leading with wide margins.  The media gleefully amplify these polls.  This isn't a recent phenomenon.  Back in 1980, Reagan was trailing Carter trailing by 8% even in some mid-October polls.  Reagan ended up winning the 1980 general election in a landslide.  In 2016, pollsters said with certitude that Hillary Clinton would be the next president.  The New York Times proclaimed she has a 91 percent chance of winning.  Trump won that election by a respectable margin in the electoral college.  In 2020, Trump was supposed to lose to Biden by a landslide.  In reality, Trump secured 10 million more votes than in 2016, despite the media onslaught for four years, Democrat electoral malpractice, and suppression of all anti Biden stories.  Trump received 7 million more votes than any sitting president in American history.  We are months before an election and various Democrat mouthpieces are doing the very same thing.

The Democratic Momentum Mirage.  As Sean Trende wrote earlier this year in an article for the American Enterprise Institute, "In our increasingly polarized and nationalized politics, the single most determinative factor in midterm outcomes is the president's job approval."  At the time of this writing, the RealClearPolitics average shows President Joe Biden with a dismal 41.9 approval rating.  As Gallup pointed out during the last midterm cycle, this means disaster.

Ignore the trash talk.  Democrats and their friends in the media are engaging in their own form of trash talk when it comes to the midterm elections.  They wave around some meaningless poll or quote an "expert" who would have us believe that Republican Senate candidates are weak, President Joe Biden has had some great successes, the Democrats' fundraising numbers give them a huge advantage, and Republicans can't possibly win back the Senate.  None of this is true.  It's nothing more than an intimidation tactic designed to scare conservative donors away, suppress Republican enthusiasm, and discourage Republican candidates and voters.

The media myth of Democratic momentum.  According to NBC News, Joe Biden is polling at 42 percent approval and 57 disapproval, which is unchanged from May.  Reuters has the president at 38 percent approval and 57 percent disapproval.  His RealClearPolitics average is hovering around 40 percent approval.  But how can that be?  The Inflation Reduction Act was given a big thumbs-up by more than a few news outlets and journalists who called it a "health care and climate bill" that would reduce not just inflation but prescription drug prices, too, while saving the world from the impending doom of climate-induced destruction.

No Matter How Many Times Biden Denies It, The U.S. Is Being Invaded.  A new poll finds that more than half of Americans think the U.S. is being invaded by illegal aliens flooding into the country.  And they are right, no matter what President Joe Biden claims, or how diligently the mainstream press tries to cover it up.  "More than half (54%) of Americans think it's at least somewhat true that we're experiencing an invasion at the southern border," according to the NPR/Ipsos poll.  That is a shocking finding, given the denials from the administration that there is a crisis at all, and the fact that the mainstream media will cover anything but the flood of illegal immigrants under Biden.  Of course, NPR tries to put a lefty spin on the results, casting them as the result of right-wing lies.

Monmouth Poll Compiles Top 22 Priorities of American People, Ukraine v Russia and J6 Committee Outcome Does Not Appear on List.  Monmouth University conducted another political poll of U.S respondents.  In addition to the plummeting approval of Joe Biden, the worst yet approval at 36% according to the survey, the respondents were asked to list their top concerns (Question #7).  The responses were recorded but did not come from a list presented by Monmouth.  They just compiled the results.  As stated, "what is the biggest concern facing your family right now?"  The results show the top priorities of Americans and the disconnect between the priorities of congress and the American people are stark.

The Great Crackup Continues.  People don't always mean what they say to pollsters.  Sometimes they are sticking up for their party (e.g., the 40% or so who claim to think Joe Biden is doing a good job), sometimes they are trying to make a point.  I think the latter is going on here.

Why Democrat Poll Numbers Are Worse Than You Think.  Before the 2020 presidential election, I became curious about political polls claiming that Joe Biden had a ten-percentage-point lead over Donald Trump.  At that time, Trump was addressing crowds in the thousands.  When he was not barricaded in his basement, Biden was lucky to draw a crowd of a hundred.  That did not seem right.  So I did some research and concluded that the polls were undercounting Republicans.  In one of the articles, which you can read [elsew]here, I predicted the silent Trump vote to be north of two percent of the electorate.  I was not the first to consider this, but I was one of the first to make a prediction.  Polling organizations would not admit their polls were biased against Republicans.  However, it turned out my estimate was too low by half.  In fact, the polling error for the 2020 election was roughly 4% nationwide, the largest in the last 40 years.

Poll:  Most Americans have eyes, and can add 2 + 2.
Poll: Most Believe Biden Admin Allowing Gas Prices to Rise to Get Americans off Fossil Fuels.  Most voters believe the Biden administration is allowing gas prices to rise to force Americans to use less fossil fuel, a Convention of States Action/Trafalgar Group survey released Friday [6/10/2022] found.  The survey asked, "Do you believe the Biden Administration is intentionally letting gas prices rise to make Americans use less fossil fuels?"  Most, 53 percent, said "yes," they believe the Biden administration is allowing it to happen purposely to force Americans to use less fossil fuel.  Another 39.6 percent, however, do not believe that is the case, and 7.4 percent are unsure.

Democrats Are Fooling Themselves On Guns.  Did you know that 76 percent of voters support the Democrat's "Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2022?" What kind of depraved fascist wouldn't want to prevent domestic terrorism or the prosecution of domestic terrorists, right?  Now, how many of those voters would support the bill if they knew the FBI had recently investigated law-abiding parents as "domestic terrorists" for protesting against identitarian curriculums and lockdowns in their schools?  I suspect the numbers might look quite different.  Time and time again we see the same process play out.  First, legacy media adopts the Democratic Party's favored euphemisms or language to mislead the public — think, "Don't Say Gay."  Pollsters then wrap their questions in ambiguous, disingenuous, or misleading terms to get the answers they seek from voters.  Once pollsters reinforce their priors, the media reports on the results.  After their rhetoric has been laundered, Democrats claim their agenda is widely popular and thus, democracy is being undermined by those who won't support these preferred policies.

Beware of Fake Polls and Paid Endorsements.  Most probably remember the absurd ABC/Washington Post poll a few days before the 2020 elections showing Joe Biden winning Wisconsin by 17 points.  A few days later, Biden was declared to have won the state, though by just over 20,000 votes total, or 0.63 percent.  This figure, of course, discounts lingering questions about Mark Zuckerberg's Center for Technology and Civic Life's work in retirement homes, among other irregularities.  In other words, the ABC/Washington Post pollsters were either terrible at polling, which is quite possible.  Or (and?) perhaps something else was at play: polls being used as more of a psyop intended to suppress Republican turnout.  Indeed, fake polls masquerading as reality are actually meant to project an illusion perceived as reality to influence and manipulate behavior.

CNN Abortion Poll Backfires, Ultimately No Opinions Moved by SCOTUS Leak.  CNN contracted for an urgent poll of voters to gauge the anticipated enthusiasm bump that Democrats were expecting for the mid-term elections.  However, unfortunately for the wide-eyed narrative engineers expecting the stratospheric shift in support[,] the results show no one really cares.  The results from the poll show despite about a 50/50 split in response to the question about have you heard of the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v Wade, there was almost no statistical change in voter opinion from prior polling.  More depressingly for the leftists in media, when it comes to enthusiasm about voting in the mid-terms because of this issue, the enthusiastic crowd is the pro-life happy people.

Polls are inaccurate because the respondents are poorly educated and badly misinformed.
Ignorance And Apathy.  According to [a recent YouGov] poll, transgender individuals make up just 1 percent of the U.S. population, yet people believe the estimated proportion is 21 percent.  Only about 1 percent of U.S. households earn more than $500,000 a year, but the survey shows respondents believe 26 percent earn more than that amount.  Three percent of the U.S. population identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, but the survey shows people think the figure is 30 percent.  The Black population of the country is 12 percent, but people surveyed think it is 41 percent.  Hispanic?  The actual number is 17 percent, while the perception is 39 percent.  It is the same for atheists:  3 percent (actual) vs. 33 percent (perception).  What accounts for this vast disparity between perception and reality?  It can only be the news and entertainment media and what they choose to highlight, as well as the bias they bring to subjects and issues they seek to promote, denigrate, or ignore.

The Editor says...
It is no surprise that the general public is poorly informed.  If all you know about the U.S. is what you see on television — especially the commercials — you would think that the U.S. is about 8 percent black, 80 percent female, and almost all of us deliriously happy.  You would think that mixed-race couples and families are the norm, and grown men — never the same race — spend their time sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a sofa watching television and reacting like three-year-olds (slinging food everywhere) whenever the TV shows a touchdown or a slam dunk.  You'd also think that everybody's house has a huge all-white kitchen with sunshine beaming in and no clutter anywhere, and that Mom is having a wonderful life with her two or three kids, and no man in sight.  Almost all television programming is propaganda, in one way or another.  The commercial breaks are the worst part of it.  Similarly, if the only music you ever hear is the "background" music at the grocery store, you would think that almost all musicians are black, and the few remaining white singers are all effeminate, non-threatening men.  That, of course, is because the target audience for grocery store music is women 18 to 49 years of age.

Quinnipiac poll shows Biden approval at -37 among young adults.  These numbers are so gruesome that some professional pollsters simply refuse to believe them.  "Young people simply did not get 40 points more Republican relative to the nation as a whole over the span of 2 years," tweeted G. Elliott Morris about the new Quinnipiac survey, pointing to the fact that Biden is -37 here among young adults but +2 among senior citizens.

Joe Biden's Presidency Continues to Be a Dumpster Fire.  During the first week of March, RedState reported on a claim by CNN that Joe Biden was on the comeback trail following his disastrously irrelevant State of the Union address. [...] We heard similar suggestions of a comeback following Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, with the idea that Biden would present himself as a world leader and garner a "rally around the flag" bump.  That never really materialized.  Now, we finally have a poll that measured Biden's numbers just before Ukraine was invaded as well as nearly a month later, covering a highly relevant time period that confirms the president's woes have not subsided.  Monmouth's latest survey has the president's approval unchanged at 39 percent from their pre-Ukraine invasion survey, i.e. the last month's events provided him zero bounce.

Politico/Morning Consult poll shows majority support for Florida sex-ed limits.  So what happened in that ABC-Ipsos poll this week?  That one supposedly showed Americans in widespread opposition to the Florida legislation, but it smelled bad from the start.  ABC and Ipsos acknowledged that they had oversampled LGBTQ respondents in a 622-person sample, a very strange outcome for a supposedly scientific poll of randomly surveyed Americans (not registered voters).  As I suggested on Monday, this looks like a cooked sample that intended to deliver an editorial narrative rather than tell the truth: ["]Are we to believe that it's a coincidence that ABC/Ipsos just so happened to oversample this community on a polling question that directly relates to them?  Especially given the smaller sample size for a national poll (622 adults, not registered voters), it would appear that the pollster focused on specific localities where one would normally find a greater-than-usual percentage of LGBTQ respondents.  If the calls were made mostly in urban areas, and perhaps especially in urban areas known for a more robust LGBTQ culture, then it would not only explain the oversample but also the results from non-LGBTQ-identifying adult respondents.["]

Google Attacks Us For Reporting On Our Own Poll — Calls It 'Harmful lnformation'.  The other day we received a notice from Google's AdSense ad network that one of our articles violated its policies and, as a result, they wouldn't allow any of their network's ads to appear on that article until we "fixed" the violation.  What was the violation?  According to Google, the article contained "unreliable and harmful information."  What does that mean?  Dig deeper and here's how Google describes this particular violation:  "We do not allow content that:
  •   makes claims that are demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process.
  •   promotes harmful health claims or relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative scientific consensus.
  •   contradicts authoritative scientific consensus on climate change."
Previously, we noted in this space that Google had stripped ads from two of our editorials about global warming, and we pointed out that this was likely part of a new post-COVID censorship campaign by the left.

How Low Are the Democrats' Standards?  [A recent] Morning Consult/Politico poll has Joe Biden at 45% approval, 51% disapproval, with a plurality of 39% strongly disapproving.  That is pretty typical of recent polling.  What is interesting is how respondents answered the other questions about Biden.  When asked whether they agree with the statement that Biden is a weak leader, 54% said yes and 39% said no.  That means that a fair number of people claim to approve of Biden's job performance even though they think he is weak.

Corrupt Media Pollsters Are Using Dishonest Tactics To Drag America Into War.  You may have heard over the weekend that Americans now "broadly support" imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine.  "A broad bipartisan majority of Americans think the United States should ... work with NATO to set up 'no-fly zones' to protect Ukraine from Russian air strikes," insisted a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday, noting that 74 percent of respondents supported the aggressive move.  The same poll, however, showed that only 39 percent of Americans want to see American troops sent to Ukraine, with fully 61 percent opposed — a statistic that was conveniently left out of the Reuters write-up (the report only mentioned vague "majorities" opposing boots on the ground).  That gaping disconnect indicates two things:  Most Americans cheering a no-fly zone don't know what that would entail, and the warmongering media is using that ignorance to the advantage of its agenda.

Why polls may be underestimating Republicans.  Most polls you're looking at right now are likely underestimating Republicans' position heading into the midterm election cycle.  It's not that the polls are "wrong."  Rather, it's that most polls at this point are asking all registered voters who they're going to vote for in November, when it's likely only a distinct subset of voters who will cast a ballot.  The voters who will actually turn out for the fall election are likely going to be disproportionately Republican based on current polling data and history.

Is Trump The One For 2024?  Generally speaking, I am not a fan of polls.  For one, I've never been polled by anyone.  For another, the number of people being polled often strikes me as too small a sample from which to draw broad conclusions.  Also, those samples more often than not tend to oversample one group, Democrats, let's say, over another group, which again leads to questions of accuracy.  Bottom line, I don't trust 'em and tend to ignore them in preference to the only poll that actually counts, the election itself.  I've often asked myself, what would I do if I were to be contacted to participate in a poll.  Not sure how I'd answer.

CBS Outlines Collapsed Support for Biden Regime, But Purposefully Ignore One Central Component of Their Own Poll.  CBS conducted a poll of the collapsed support for Joe Biden and then outlined their findings earlier today [1/16/2022].  However, keeping up with their need to ignore things, they skip over how the vaccination mandate is opposed within their responses.  Margaret Brennan and Anthony Salvanto, CBS News' director of elections and surveys, discuss how inflation and the economy are the two central issues at the top of concern.  However, Joe Biden's handling of COVID, and specifically the vaccination mandate, are also driving opposition to the regime intent.  [Video clip]  The people behind Biden have boxed him in on the economic consequences.  Inflation is an outcome of economic policy that cannot be reversed without completely refuting their own policy and reversing course.  As a consequence, there's nothing Biden can do to stop this negative outcome.

A CBS News poll has just devastating results for Biden and his team.  With Biden hiding in his basement in 2020, the press got him elected because it created a mythical candidate unrelated to Joe Biden.  The mythic Biden was wise, kind, even grandfatherly.  He loved all people and dreamed of a time when America was a safe, normal place.  Then the real Joe Biden took the oath of office and, despite the media's relentless shilling for him, plummeted in approval.  CBS News, a Biden-friendly "news" outlet, joined with YouGov to poll Americans regarding the Biden presidency.  The news was grim (for Biden and his administration), and there was no way to spin it to make it better. [...] (As I go through these numbers, keep in mind that if the press were as hostile to Biden as it had been to Trump and if the Deep State and the opposing party launched utterly baseless charges of foreign conspiracies against him, his numbers would be in the single digits, if that high.  All these pathetic numbers come about despite non-stop press and Deep State support.)

So did Gallup scrap its annual 'most admired' poll because Trump kept winning it?  Sore losers don't like being sore losers, and for those who can't take it, the sorest will pick up their marbles and go home.  That brings us to Gallup, whose left-wing pollsters had a problem on their hands as of 2020:  President Trump was winning their annual "most admired" poll, which they had conducted since 1946.  According to NewsBusters, they didn't do that poll this year.

Did Gallup End 'Most Admired' 74-Year Polling Tradition to Avoid Trump Placing First?  Frequent consumers of news may be aware of Gallup's annual poll measuring the "most admired man" in America which is typically announced a few days before New Year's.  The poll was done yearly from 1946 through 2020, with 1976 the only year that was skipped.  NewsBusters pointed out a year ago that liberal news media lost interest in the annual poll after Donald Trump started edging out Barack Obama for first place, whereas the networks previously enjoyed using the survey to embarrassing Trump as sitting President failing to come in first place.  This year, a Google search conspicuously shows no sign that Gallup conducted such a poll for the past year, possibly because they couldn't stand that thought having to report what likely would have been Trump coming in first again this year — after the January 6 riot.

Biden's Approval Ratings Are Inflated.  There has been a lot of publicity around Joe Biden's poor approval ratings, but I think his actual standing with the electorate is worse than they indicate.  Take, for example, the Rasmussen survey, which I think is valuable because 1) unlike other polls, it samples likely voters, and 2) it polls constantly, publishing a three-day rolling average.  Thus, whether the numbers are "right" or not, they are a good indicator of trends.  In Joe Biden's case, the trend has been obvious:  his approval rating quickly dropped to around 42%, and there it sits.  But I don't believe that 40+% of voters, surveying the wreckage of the last year, actually think that Biden is doing a good job.  Some of them are lying to the pollster, out of party loyalty.  We saw the same thing during the Obama administration.  It is more revealing to see how voters assess a president's performance on specific issues.

British Newspaper Cancels 'Person Of The Year' Poll After J.K. Rowling Runs Away With Top Spot.  Readers of the British newspaper, The Guardian, are accusing the outlet of deactivating an online poll that asked readers to vote on "Person of the Year" after it became apparent that J.K. Rowling would handily win.  "Tell us: who is your 2021 person of the year?" ran the headline, posted on Dec. 15, with the subtitle, "Time Magazine chose billionaire Tesla boss Elon Musk — but who would be your choice?"  A short time later, when Rowling was far and away in the lead, the voting form disappeared, as did the results.  A message in small print stated, "This form has been deactivated and is closed to any further submissions."  Rowling has been at the center of numerous cancel culture storms this year for her refusal to deny the reality of biological sex.  Earlier this month she stirred up controversy by mocking Scotland's law enforcement policy that allows accused rapists to self-identify as female.

Guardian 'Person of the Year' Poll Deactivated After J.K. Rowling Takes Lead.  An online poll conducted by the staunchly left Guardian newspaper seeking nominations for "Person of the Year" has been turned off, sparking speculation it was shut down when author J.K. Rowling took the lead.  The poll was launched on December 15 and posed a simple question:  "Who would be your 2021 person of the year, and why?"

Sorry Santa, you're too white, straight and male.  Santa Claus is too white, too straight and too male for most young people in the UK today, according to a poll.  The modern depiction of Father Christmas as an old white man with a big bushy beard who wears a red and white suit was made globally famous by Coca Cola's adverts of the 1930s.

The Editor says...
The rest of the article is not "family friendly" enough to be quoted here.  Here's a synopsis:  Perverts are in favor of spreading perversion.  Feminists spread feminism wherever they can.  Communists are in favor of destroying all traditions.  One might easily wonder if the "poll" cited in the article above was really just an incitement, to get all the left-wing fruitcakes to offer up their favorite suggestions.

A massive enthusiasm gap:
I&I/TIPP Poll: 60% Of Republicans Want Trump To Run In 2024; Just 37% Of Dems Want Biden To.  When it comes to the 2024 presidential election, Republicans are far more enthusiastic about former President Trump running again than Democrats are about President Biden gaining a second term, new data from the December I&I/TIPP Poll show.  It's yet another sign that, a mere 11 months into his term, Biden's support remains surprisingly weak within his own party.  The I&I/TIPP Poll gave respondents the names of Trump and 15 other possible Republican candidates, asking "Who do you want to see run for president on the Republican ticket in 2024?"  We asked the same question for the Democrats.  We wrote about those results last week here and here.  In our poll, 24% of those queried in whatever party said they wanted President Trump to run again, while 22% said they wanted Biden to do so.

Multiple Polls Show Trump with an Edge Against Biden for 2024.  It's been covered for months, and it's a trend that doesn't look to be changing any time soon.  Former President Donald Trump, should he run again in 2024, continues to have an edge against President Joe Biden.  While Trump has not yet announced any formal plans, he has increasingly been teasing that a run is likely.  Other people also think he will run in 2024.  A poll released on Thursday by Redfield & Wilton Strategies shows Trump with a plurality of support over Biden.  Forty two percent of voters would vote for Trump in 2024, while just 38 percent would vote for Biden.  Both candidates are down in support, with Trump down 2 percent and Biden 1 percent.  The amount of undecided voters is up from 9 to 16 percent.

TV show deletes poll after 89% oppose mandatory vaccination.  ITV breakfast television show 'Good Morning Britain' received backlash on social media after deleting a poll which showed a vast majority of respondents opposed mandatory Covid-19 vaccination.  The poll, which asked viewers whether it was "time to make vaccines mandatory" in response to the spread of the Covid-19 Omicron variant, was posted to Twitter on Tuesday and soon received more than 42,000 votes.  A whopping 89% of those who voted opposed any scheme to make vaccination mandatory, with just 11% in favor.  After the poll went viral, however, social media users noticed that it had been deleted by the Good Morning Britain Twitter account, and critics accused the program of trying to cover up the public consensus.

Please notice the conflict between the next two polls.  Poll #1:
New polling for Biden shows him neck-in-neck with Trump in hypothetical 2024 rematch.  President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are virtually tied in a hypothetical 2024 rematch in a new Wall Street Journal poll that showed dismal approval ratings for Biden and wide dissatisfaction with the direction of the US.  The poll, the first under the Journal's new polling operation led by Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2020, and Democratic pollster John Anzalone, who worked for Biden, surveyed 1,500 registered voters on their views of Biden and the state of the country from November 16 to 22.

Poll #2:
Poll: Just 22% want Biden to run again.  You wouldn't expect an incumbent president to be much higher than 50 percent on this metric since voters in the other party will almost universally say no, they don't want him back on the ballot — if only to avoid having to face a candidate who's beaten them once before.  You would expect an incumbent president to be higher than — hoo boy — 22 percent.  Then again, we've never had a president who'll be in his 80s if he runs for reelection.

The Editor says...
There's only one way to synchronize these two polls:  Maybe only 22 percent of the voters want Trump to run again.  But something tells me that's not the case.

Democrats' Climate Change Predictions May Not Materialize, but Their Taxes Undoubtedly Will.  [Scroll down]  I have "a lot" of interest — and am "strongly" interested — in five million dollars.  I have "some" interest — and am "somewhat" interested — in five dollars.  Lumping these two groups together is a lie.  The actual breakout reveals the hugeness of the lie.  43% of all voters say energy companies have "a lot" of responsibility.  The rest (34%) say "some responsibility."  So in fact a strong majority of voters agree that fossil fuel companies bear no — or a little — responsibility for the fake premise that is "climate change."  And the "a lot" alarmist number is almost entirely made up of Democrats.  They're at 62% — compared to 39% of independents and 24% of Republicans.  So the entire presentation of this poll is a lie.  Of course, Big Media does nothing in a vacuum.  Everything they do is in support of everything other Leftists-Democrats are doing.

Rasmussen Reports confronts CNN over 'deceptive' poll on Trump's future in the Party.  Rasmussen Reports, which has a reputation for being a highly accurate polling firm, took CNN to task over what it called a "deceptive" recent survey regarding what "most Republicans" think about a potential 2024 run by former President Donald Trump.  The polling firm was responding to the findings contained in a story headlined, "Most Republicans want Trump as the GOP's leader but are divided about whether he'd help them retake the White House," which was published Sunday [9/12/2021].

Can Americans still beat Democrat voter fraud?  [Scroll down]  The reality is that you can't trust the polls.  Any person of common sense understands that the purpose of opinion polls is to encourage the voters of the voter fraud party and to discourage the voters who might not vote for the candidate of the voter fraud party.  But the most important effect of opinion polling is to provide cover for voter fraud at polling places.  Americans wouldn't walk across the street to attend a Biden rally, but fraudulent opinion polling gives the voter fraud party and its mainstream media propaganda wing talking points to "explain" the outcome of fraudulent elections whenever necessary.

What Biden doesn't understand.  This week, President Joe Biden made a dark political bet that Americans would forget a 20-year war.  Biden and his aides, many of whom have lived and worked inside the bubble of Washington for most of their adult lives, believed the political fallout would be limited because people were war-weary.  Their exit strategy was based on internal and public polling that showed the Afghanistan withdrawal was popular, even though the same polls showed it was not something people were paying attention to.  In short, it was all about what made Biden popular with voters.

Ignoring for the moment the fact that Trump also won the last two elections...
New poll suggests Trump would WIN the election today because women and black voters regret their choice and 14% would choose another candidate.  Former President Donald Trump would beat President Joe Biden in the next presidential race if it were held today, a new poll finds.  In the latest sign of Americans' growing disapproval of Biden just 37 percent of likely US voters would back him in an election right now.  Trump would score 43 percent of the vote, and 14 percent of people would pick 'some other candidate' — but the survey doesn't specify which.

Why Don't They Believe Us?  Imagine you're a normal person.  The year is 2016.  Rightly or wrongly, you believe most of what you see in the media.  You believe polls are broadly reflective of public opinion.  You believe doctors and scientists are trustworthy and independent.  You're a decent, reasonable person who follows the rules and trusts the authorities.  Imagine your shock, then, when Brexit, which you were assured couldn't happen because it was a fringe movement led by racists for racists, happens.  The polls, which widely predicted it wouldn't happen, were wrong.  The experts and pundits who told you day after day that it wouldn't happen were also wrong.  "Oh well," you say, "these things happen."  Imagine that soon after Brexit, Donald Trump is running for president.  You are told by the most trustworthy media outlets that he is going to lose.  Some experts say his opponent has a 99% chance of winning.  Imagine waking up the morning after the election to discover that the pollsters, experts, and politicians you still trusted were wrong again.

In England:  Government 'spent taxpayers' money for political polling on opposition leaders.  The Government spent taxpayers' money on conducting political polling during the coronavirus pandemic, newly uncovered emails suggest.  The Good Law Project is in the process of a legal challenge against the Government over a decision to award a contract to what the group described as 'associates' of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings at the Hanbury Strategy consultancy firm.  Documents unearthed as part of the legal proceedings and published by the group today suggest that Hanbury was instructed by the Cabinet Office to carry out polling on opposition figures including Sir Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.

Dear GOP: Stop Using Frank Luntz.  [Scroll down]  This was a global pandemic, which made many of us keenly interested in learning what was happening in other countries.  Israel, the Netherlands, and Taiwan kept copious, detailed data sets that the United States seemed incapable of producing.  And why should we trust medical journals after seeing the Lancet retraction debacle and watching studies that went against the preferred narrative being retracted, denounced, or ignored?  That just increased our suspicion that the "consensus" was not as broad as the CDC and NIH wanted us to believe.  So, nice try, Frank Luntz.  Your tut-tutting is insulting and seems to praise Democrats who view these institutions as infallible.  Money and staff from Big Pharma permeate the FDA and clinical trials run by the NIH.  The NIH holds the purse strings for our research institutions.  Big Pharma spends tons of advertising dollars with the corporate media channels.

Pollsters Studying Why 2020 Predictions Were So Wrong Decide to Blame President Trump Saying Mean Things About Them.  The 2020 polls featured polling error of an unusual magnitude:  It was the highest in 40 years for the national popular vote and the highest in at least 20 years for state-level estimates of the vote in presidential, senatorial, and gubernatorial contests.  Among polls conducted in the final two weeks, the average error on the margin in either direction was 4.5 points for national popular vote polls and 5.1 points for state-level presidential polls.  The polling error was much more likely to favor Biden over Trump.  Among polls conducted in the last two weeks before the election, the average signed error on the vote margin was too favorable for Biden by 3.9 percentage points in the national polls and by 4.3 percentage points in statewide presidential polls.  In short, as a group, the polls were very wrong, and they were wrong in the same direction.

2020 polls badly understated support for GOP candidates, review finds, and nobody's sure why.  The 2020 polls were off by an "unusual magnitude," missing the national results by the biggest margin in 40 years and erring in state surveys by the greatest amount in at least 20 years, according to a new study released Monday by the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR).  "There was a systematic error that was found in terms of the overstatement for Democratic support across the board," said Vanderbilt University political scientist Josh Clinton, chair of the 19-member task force.  "It didn't matter what type of poll you were doing, whether you're interviewing by phone or internet or whatever.  And it didn't matter what type of race, whether President Trump was on the ballot or was not on the ballot."  The task force reviewed 2,858 presidential polls and found they were off by 3.9 percentage points nationally and 4.3 percent at the state level.

The 2020 polling disaster.  As the last presidential election approached, you could probably sense that something was wrong with the polls.  The race felt tighter than the polls indicated, and specifically, Joe Biden's solid lead in the polls felt less solid than surveys suggested.  (Just look at this report on the "hidden" Trump vote in Pennsylvania on the eve of the election.)  As they had in 2016, it appeared pollsters were on their way to underestimating the vote for Donald Trump.  Now it turns out that feeling was right.  And the polls were not only wrong but more wrong than they had been in decades, including their dismal performance in 2016.  A new report from the American Association for Public Opinion Research found that national election polls overstated Biden's lead over Trump by 3.9 percentage points.  And state-level polls were even worse, overstating Biden's lead by 4.3 points.

Poll-dancing: Is Biden really at 49 percent approval?  Here are the biased numbers for the recent Economist-YouGov poll that gives Joe Biden a 49% approval rating.  A first-year reporter could retrieve this information with ease, unless he were incompetent, lazy, or most likely biased.  I guess most Dems are accustomed to living in such willful ignorance.  They will swallow and pass along any talking point from the media elites if they are slanted against conservatives. [...] It is not hard to get the results you want if the polls are assembled in this way, and this is always the method with these polls.

Support for Biden erodes among Democrats as U.S. looks past pandemic.  U.S. President Joe Biden has seen an erosion in support since April, mainly from fellow Democrats, as his administration wrestles with Congress to make good on campaign promises and more Americans worry about an uneven economic recovery, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.  A June 11-17 national opinion poll shows Biden is still more popular than his Republican predecessor Donald Trump ever was:  55% of adults approve of Biden's performance in office and 65% like his response to the coronavirus pandemic.  At this point four years ago, about 36% of adults approved of Trump's job performance.

The Editor says...
If the press treated Joe Biden the way they treated Donald Trump, which is to say, if the press exposed every real and imaginary flaw in Joe Biden's character and job performance, using information from anonymous Deep State sources, Joe Biden's approval rating would be near zero.

CNN Fails to Disclose Poll Was Funded by Silicon Valley Billionaire.  CNN failed to disclose in a story published last week that the "nonpartisan" group that funded polls released last Thursday which purport to show "just how far Republicans were willing to go to support then-President Donald Trump's unprecedented efforts to subvert the 2020 election," is also the parent organization of an obscure nonprofit that helped the Mark Zuckerberg-funded Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) recruit local election officials to accept controversial private funding of election administration.

Is a poll really necessary to know this?
Majority thinks Washington ignores the will of the people, says poll.  The people don't believe Washington looks out for their interests — and it doesn't make much difference whether "the people" are Republicans, Democrats or independents.  According to a survey released Wednesday, more than three-fifths of all voters, including three-fourths of Republicans and a majority of Democrats, think that "the will of the people is no longer a consideration to leaders in D.C. when making policy or legislative decisions."  The exact numbers were 62.4% of likely voters in the 2022 midterm elections, including 76.4% of Republicans, 50.4% of Democrats and 59% of "no party / other" voters believed that Washington ignores the popular will.

This poll may be right on target:
Trouble for Dems in Battleground States.  Earlier this month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Governors' Association employed OnMessage Inc. to conduct a poll of 26 states where important Senate and gubernatorial races are shaping up in 2022. The poll included 1,200 likely voters, but it is not clear how those voters were distributed among the 26 states. [...] Voters in these battleground states think the U.S. is on the wrong track by 59% to 34%, a finding that bodes ill for the party in power.  Strikingly, Independents think we are on the wrong track by a huge 62%-28% margin.  This poll tested the general images of the parties with voters.  It found the Republican party at a net -1, 46% favorable and 47% unfavorable (but +2 with Independents).  The Democrats were deeply underwater at a net -13, 41% favorable and 54% unfavorable.  Significantly, the Democrats are net -22 with Independents.

Dems Will Flip Over New Poll With Great News for Trump, Not So Much for Kamala.  There's a new survey out about 2024, and it has great news for President Donald Trump.  Even after being shut down on social media and having his primary avenue of communication — Twitter — cut off, turns out the Republican base still wants Trump to run for president again. [...] Meanwhile, what about the Democrats in 2024? 64% thought that Biden was not likely to serve out his term.  Even 51% of Biden voters thought that.  That doesn't look great for Biden, although Biden has suggested he would likely try to run again.  Keeping that in mind, the poll asked how a Democratic 2024 primary would stack up without Biden:  Kamala led with 35%, Michelle Obama at 16%, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at 7%, and Pete Buttigieg at 6%.

Trouble ahead for Democrats?  Joe Biden's average approval rating is 54 percent.  That's not bad, though it lags behind the 100-day numbers of every post-World War II president except Donald Trump.  But our friend Michael Barone looks behind that number and sees worrying signs for Democrats.  For one thing, Biden's 41.6 percent disapproval number is about equal to Trump's.  And Biden's real numbers may be worse than what the poll average shows because, as The Cook Political Report's Amy Walter suggests, polls seem to be under-sampling Republican voters.

Fake News Still Gaslighting America with Phony Polls.  Opinion polls are a well-known and effective method of shaping opinion.  These methods have been well described and include sampling whoever answers the phone versus likely voters, the latter being a practice of Rasmussen Reports in their high accurate presidential opinion polls.  Oversampling Democrats is another fraudulent way to produce a poll result favoring the DNC media agenda. [...] Perhaps the woke leftists in Hollywood and the White House are not as popular as CNN believes they are.  Back to the poll, commissioned by CNN, conducted by SSRS Opinion Panel:  The sample was 589 respondents, only slightly more than the size of the U.S. Congress.  Of those surveyed, 45 percent identified as Democrat compared to 23 percent as Republican, a two-fold difference.  Is it any wonder that seven out of 10 gave the speech a thumbs up?  They should have saved money and just surveyed the CNN newsroom, getting the same or an even more favorable result.

Even Snopes Calls Out Bogus CBS Poll Showing 85 Percent Approval Of Biden Speech.  The media has already firmly established that there is no degree to which it won't go when it comes to protecting Joe Biden.  However, the latest fake poll by CBS was too much for some, including the intrepid "fact checker' Snopes.  Biden was trotted out to give a scaled-down State Of The Union speech to a sparsely attended "joint session" of Congress on Wednesday.  CBS conducted a survey that night that was thoroughly dishonest even by their own abysmal standards.

When it comes to GOP failings, Tucker Carlson names a name.  Tucker Carlson opened Friday night's show with rather unique information.  The rhetorical question was why the Republican leadership is so disconnected from Republican voters.  One of the reasons, he said, is Frank Luntz.  For decades, Luntz has been giving the GOP leadership its talking points.  The problem is that Luntz is not a conservative; he is a corporate servant and his points always align with corporate America — and lately, corporate America has been aligning with the woke left. [...] Frank Luntz is a man who has no loyalty, yet the Republican party leadership is incredibly loyal to him.  He's the one who tells them that Republican voters love illegal immigration, want amnesty, and think it's a great idea for the government to take their weapons.

Finding a way to present Joe Biden's tax-and-spend speech as a hit with the public.  Joe Biden's quasi state-of-the-union speech the other night was a miserable affair.  With a void of new ideas, Biden shilled a leftist tax-and-spend scheme writ large, with an ugly side of wokesterism.  One problem:  The voting public despises this [stuff].  So out trots the media to put the spin on it, bolstering the old foof, and hammer, hammer, hammering home the lie that Biden's speech was somehow popular. [...] The problem of course, is that the CBS/YouGov poll sampled an audience that was hugely skewed Democrat.  Fifty-four percent of the audience was Democrat, while only 34% of American voters identify as Democrats, as CBS noted lower, way lower, down in the story.  A president's political base is always going to have a positive response to their leader.  If they don't, then it becomes actual news.  Biden's leftist base loves him is the story here, although they didn't put it that way.  What exactly was news about this?

Americans [Doubt] CBS Poll Claiming 85% Approve of Biden Speech.  Democrats are all rabidly promoting a CBS poll about the reaction to Joe Biden's speech before Congress tonight.  The poll claimed that 85% of the viewers they surveyed approved of Biden's speech. [...] Now, we can say a lot about polls, but 85% is North Korea level propaganda.  It's so high you know that there's a problem.  This is basically CBS trying to shill for the Democrats.  They tried to sell that Americans saw Biden as "unifying" and "inspirational." This is Joe Biden, guys, you can't sell that here.  Listen as CBS tells us they spoke to a "representative" sample of Americans to reach those numbers.  Except then as they explain more, the problem comes out.  As they continue, that sample was anything but "representative."  [Video clip]

Amid spin, Joe Biden's polling indicators are crumbling.  The press is hailing Joe Biden's approval numbers as he reaches the first 100 days in office. [...] The short answer to all this gushing is that the press is biased and spinning for Biden.  The innards of these polls actually show a lot of trouble.  For one thing, independent support for Biden is falling.  RedState points out that the big weak spot for Biden among independents is his atrocious handling of the border.  The Fox News poll's question about whether security is better or worse or the same at the border showed that 46% of voters felt that border security in 2021 is worse than two years ago, a sharp spike from the 17% who said that in 2018.  Independents accounted for much of that fall.  For another, these pollsters oversampled Democrats.  Most showed large margins of registered Democrats sampled that didn't coincide with the percentages of voters who voted from both parties in 2020.  That breakdown should have been 36% registered Republicans and 37% registered Democrats.  It wasn't.  The pollsters polled as if Democrats amounted to as much as 50% of the majority.

Climate change, racism and social justice concerns affecting Gen Z's physical and mental health.  As Earth Day is celebrated, Generation Z is grappling with the health of the planet and racism and social justice, according to a new survey.  More than eight out of 10 young Americans say they are concerned about the health of the planet, according to the Blue Shield of California NextGen Climate Survey which polled participants between the ages of 14 [and] 24.  When asked about which issue concerned them the most, the environment and climate change had the second-highest percentage at 47%, behind racism and social justice at 62%.

The Editor says...
Nobody needs to "grappl[e] with the health of the planet."  The planet is not unhealthy, and there is no global warming, climate crisis, or climate emergency, regardless of what these young people have been told in the public schools.  These young people have heard only one side of any important issue; therefore their opinions are worthless — just like Earth Day.  Nobody under 18 can legally vote, so what difference does their opinion make anyway?

'Solid Approval Ratings' Really?  Nonsense, Here's Why Americans Have Had Enough of Biden.  There is a "yuuge" disconnect between Joe Biden's alleged poll numbers and "solid approval ratings" the liberal lapdog media continues to try to push down the throat of America, and the widespread dissatisfaction with his near-daily decisions and the radical agenda he is hellbent on enacting.  And that disconnect has existed from day one. [...] Addled Joe Biden — who first ran for president in 1988, 33 years ago in a campaign that crashed and burned before it got off the ground, in large part due to his plagiarization of an entire speech by UK Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock — finally made it to the Oval Office.  But the reality is when he finally made it, Corn Pop's pal was instantly reduced to little more than a not-Trump placeholder for the Democrat Party.  To the rest of us, Biden is little more than a mindless bot whose strings are pulled by radical leftists who purposely seek to destroy America as we know it.

A New Poll Shows the Pollsters Aren't Even Trying Anymore.  You've probably noticed a barrage of approval rating polls being released in the past month or so, and nearly all of them show Joe Biden as a president for the ages.  We've seen such high numbers as 60% approval in some surveys.  Perhaps Biden is just that much of a unifier, despite pushing the most radical, divisive agenda in modern history?  Or perhaps there's something else going on with these polls.  Yeah, it's the latter.  Random thought, but if your sample is coming out to a raw D+31 sample, perhaps there's something wrong with your pool that you are originally drawing from?  Are they just calling people in blue states?  Further, if you look at the internals, they only weight the poll to D+9, while the 2020 election was Biden +4.  The margin was even smaller in the vote totals for the House, for example.  In other words, the country much more evenly divided than shown here, but according to these pollsters, we are in a new era of peace and unity.  The purpose of this is clear: to push a narrative of inevitability going into 2022 for Democrats.

Democrat-run institutions are cheating to prop up the Biden administration.  In three months, Joe Biden has exffectively erased all American norms.  Worse, he's done so by executive fiat rather than the legislative process.  It's likely that only Democrats (and not even all Democrats) support him.  Nevertheless, a Pew poll, which the media is shilling, assures us that he's got a 59% approval rating.  Dig into the poll, though, and it's a lie [...].  In other words, we are being sold a narrative that has nothing to do with the truth.  First, about that poll. [...] It turns out that, as to some of those things, we know that most Americans oppose Biden's policies.  On Court-packing, an October poll that the New York Times conducted showed that 58% of likely voters oppose it.  Americans feel even more strongly about voter ID:  75% of them support it.  Americans also disapprove of Biden's border policy, with 55% of them saying he's doing a bad job and only 29% saying he's doing a good job.

Dem pollsters acknowledge 'major errors' in 2020 polling.  A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday [4/13/2021] acknowledging "major errors" in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November.  In an unusual move, five of the party's biggest polling firms have spent the past few months working together to explore what went wrong last year and how it can be fixed.  It's part of an effort to understand why — despite data showing Joe Biden well ahead of former President Donald Trump, and Democrats poised to increase their House majority — the party won the presidency, the Senate and House by extremely narrow margins.

The Editor says...
Propaganda alert:  To believe this story, you have to first believe that the election was not stolen, and that the candidate who stayed home and didn't campaign at all got 80 million legitimate votes.

Dem pollsters admit 'major errors' as they struggle to survive evidence that polls now are worthless.  Political polling has always been of questionable value in my eyes, yet until recently it's been highly prized (and pollsters well compensated). When performed for media outlets, polling often is done to advance an agenda (so-called "push polling"), phrasing questions in a manner designed to produce results that would convince the public that a certain issue or candidate is what the cool kids favor.  But even when done for a candidate seeking to discover where he or she stands in the public eye, the potential for abuse is high.  Candidates re-packaging themselves to appeal to a broader group rather than deciding issues on the merits, resorting to misleading language to hide their real positions, and outright pandering are just some of the problems.  But now that the media and pollsters have earned well-deserved scorn from a very large share of the public, so many people either refuse to speak with pollsters or outright lie to them in order to confound their ability to be useful, I think they have outlived their effectiveness for anybody.

White House Claims Bills Are 'Bipartisan' Even If No Republican Votes For Them.  Joe Biden is going to get "unity."  He will get it even if he has to just make stuff up.  Case in point:  bills proposed by a Democratic president, rammed through Congress by Democratic lawmakers, and voted on exclusively by Democrats are actually "bipartisan" according to the White House.  Biden campaigned and took office as the "unity" president.  A noble aspiration, to be sure.  The only problem is that no Republicans have actually voted for any of his grandiose schemes.  The trillions of dollars of debt he is adding to the balance sheet is Democratic Party debt.  But the White House believes that Biden's giveaways are popular and that many Republicans love getting government goodies just as much as Democrats.  How does the White House know this?  Polls, of course.

Biden Owes His 'Popularity' to Trump's Success With COVID. Here's Why.  Joe Biden can't always speak in full, coherent sentences.  He has trouble with stairs.  Half the time, I'm not sure if he knows what office he holds, yet, he has a 53.4% average approval rating, according to RealClearPolitics. [...] Biden has a whopping 75% approval for COVID vaccine distribution.  It just so happens that's the very thing the Biden administration has been lying about repeatedly by claiming the Trump administration hadn't given them a vaccine distribution plan and saying they had to start from scratch.  Not only did Dr. Fauci dismiss that claim, but, according to Dr. Moncef Slaoui, the former head of Operation Warp Speed, the Biden administration is still using the same vaccine distribution model developed by Operation Warp Speed under President Trump.  Joe Biden's Department of Defense also doesn't dispute that the distribution plan is the same as it was under Trump.

Biden's approval rating remains bizarrely high.  If you ever need proof that Americans are living in two different realities, you can find it in the latest Hill/Harris X poll showing that Biden has a 59% job approval rating two months into his presidency.  For more than half of Americans, the mainstream media, even though people claim to distrust it, is still powerfully driving public perceptions about American presidents.  According to the poll, which queried 2,818 registered voters and claims a margin of error of only 1.85 percentage points, ["]Roughly six in 10 voters approve of Joe Biden's performance as president, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.  Fifty-nine percent of registered voters in the March 12-14 survey said they approve of Biden's job in the White House, a one point tick up from last week's poll.["]

Day 49: Half the nation worried Biden not 'physically and mentally up to the job'.  It doesn't take much for the nation's voters to become concerned that President Biden, the oldest new chief executive at 78 years old, might not be up for the job.  The latest proof:  His resistance to holding a full-blown press conference now 49 days into his presidency has half the country worried.  In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of likely voters, 50% said they are not confident that "Joe Biden is physically and mentally up to the job of being president of the United States."  Another 48% have confidence in Biden, though only 34% were "very confident" that he was up to the job.

Majority Believes One Of The Past Two Presidents [was] "Illegitimately Put Into Office".  On the plus side, it looks like all of the hard work members of both parties have put into undermining confidence in America's vote has really paid off.  Between "stop the steal" and Russia-collusion claims, a majority of Americans think we've gotten the outcome of the presidential election wrong at least once over the past four-plus years, Scott Rasmussen writes about his latest findings.

What Do the People Think?  I'm looking over the 189-page results of a recent Harvard-Harris poll of 1,778 voters conducted last week, and there are some interesting findings to pass along: [...]

New Poll:  Here's How The 2024 GOP Field Looks Without Trump In The Mix.  While it is unknown whether former President Donald J. Trump will mount another White House run, he would likely be the runaway favorite if he does.  However, any GOP candidate will likely have massive support given the Biden-Harris's regime's growing unpopularity.  According to polling data put together by analytics firm Echelon Insights, Trump would indeed be the top choice among Republicans if he chooses to launch a comeback bid with 41 percent of Republican-leaning voters backing him if the primary were held today[.]  If Trump doesn't run, then the polling shows that former Vice President Mike Pence is currently in the lead with 21 percent, doubling that of Senator Ted Cruz who clocks in at 10 percent although criticism over his trip to Cancun during the Texas power crisis could cut into that.  Coming in third, it's a tie between Donald Trump Jr. and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The Editor says...
The phrase if the election were held today is ridiculous and trite, because everybody knows when the next election will be, and it isn't today.  But if a surprise election were to be held today, without any prior notice, you can be sure that hundreds of mail-in ballots would arrive next week and they'd be counted!

Rigged impeachment, contempt for due process.  With the Senate "trial" on the House impeachment of former President Trump just underway, CBS News has come in with a poll asserting that 56 percent of Americans favor conviction, with 44 percent opposed.

How to Steal an Election in Four Steps.  [Scroll down]  Step two of the plan was nurturing the idea that Biden had an excellent chance to win, accomplished mostly via fake polls.  (The pollsters are more shameless than the media, no mean feat.)  Biden was far behind, so they claimed he was leading — to inspire Biden supporters — but they had another reason to overstate his chances.  If the polls had been honest, if they'd showed Biden had little chance, and then he won, even Democrats might suspect something.  To lend credence to their later claim that Biden had won the election fairly they had to establish that he could win, so that when he was declared the winner, only the Republicans would suspect fraud, to be blamed on sour grapes.  Consequently, the polls had Biden up by ten to twenty points even in states Trump had won against Hillary Clinton in 2016, like Michigan and Wisconsin, laughable claims to anyone who'd seen videos of the crowds each man was drawing.

Poll: Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock Leading GOP Incumbents in Battleground Georgia.  Democrat Senate candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are leading GOP incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) in battleground Georgia less than a week from the January 5 runoff elections, according to a JMC Analytics and Polling survey released this week.  The survey, taken December 28-29, among 500 registered voters in the state, asked respondents, "In the Senate runoff race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue, which candidate do you support?"  Fifty percent chose Ossoff, 43 percent chose Perdue, and seven percent indicated that they remain undecided.  According to the survey, Ossoff also has an edge among undecided voters, 53 percent to the incumbent senator's 45 percent.

Georgia Poll:  Raphael Warnock, Jon Ossoff Lead GOP Incumbents.  Both Democrat Senate hopefuls Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are leading the Republican incumbents in Georgia's upcoming runoff, a SurveyUSA election poll released this week found.  This week's survey showed Ossoff increasing his lead over Sen. David Perdue from an identical survey taken three weeks ago, jumping from a two-point lead to a five-point lead, or 51 percent to 46 percent.

Poll: Dead Heat in Georgia Senate Runoff.  Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are trailing their respective Democrat challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff but remain statistically tied just weeks ahead of the January 5 runoff, an RMG Research survey released Monday [12/21/2020] revealed.  The survey, taken December 8-14 among 1,417 likely voters in Georgia, showed both Warnock and Ossoff edging out the Republican incumbents, though both of their leads are within the survey's +/- 2.6 percent margin of error.

The New Oligarchs Will Not Tolerate Secession.  Pollsters did not use the wrong methodology in conducting polls; almost certainly they misreported results on purpose to suppress turnout.  The media was uniformly against him, suppressing news — which the FBI said was credible but not worth investigating — about Hunter Biden's corrupt dealings, trading on his father's connections with Russia, China, and Ukraine.  The role of the Dominion Voting system, an easily manipulated system that can change results in real time without a trace, may be revealed in the future.  But it is clear that the election was in fact stolen from Trump by the oligarchy he dared oppose.  The likelihood that there will ever be another free election in America is remote.

Pollster Says Joe Biden Didn't Win Presidential Election:  "The Numbers Just Don't Add Up".  Pollster Patrick Basham explained during an interview with Fox News's Mark Levin why he believes Joe Biden's supposed election victory, while "not statistically impossible," is "statistically implausible."  Basham said during the interview that aired Sunday [12/6/2020] that he looked at numerous "non-polling metrics," which have a "100 percent accuracy rate in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election," to come to his conclusion.  "Something very strange has happened because the numbers just don't add up," he said referring to the election results.  Some of the "dozen or more" metrics include "party registration trends, how the candidates did in their respective presidential primaries, the number of individual donations, [and] how much enthusiasm each candidate generated in the opinion polls."  He said these metrics pointed to a Trump victory in 2016 and "that was again the case in 2020."  "So if we are to accept that Biden won against the trend of all these non-polling metrics, it not only means that one of these metrics was inaccurate ... for the first time ever, it means that each one of these metrics was wrong for the first time and at the same time as all of the others," Basham explained.  The founding director of the Democracy Institute said if 100 observers were only shown the "vote breakdown by demographic group" on election night, 99 "would say, well, obviously, Trump."

The Polls Are Trash, Stop Citing Them for the Georgia Run-Offs.  Have we actually learned anything after another epic polling failure in the 2020 election?  Perhaps, though there's still a tendency to take the polls seriously simply because they represent a data point, and people crave data in political situations. [...] I've often cited polls in the past.  But 2020 broke me for good in that respect.  I simply do not care what these mostly garbage polling outfits throw out there.  That's even more true given they seem to never learn from their mistakes.

Pre-Election Polling Undermines Democracy.  Pollsters recently suffered another well-deserved humiliation.  Republican candidates for Senate and House did much better than polls predicted and some states predicted to support Joe Biden didn't.  But if we only criticize polls for their inaccuracy we are missing far more fundamental problems with them.  Inaccurate polling is nothing new.  We all remember 2016.  But problems go back much further.  The infamous 1936 Literary Digest poll predicted a landslide victory for Republican candidate Alf Landon.  The actual landslide was for Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won all but two states. [...] Pollsters always vow to become more accurate.  But the basic problem is not with polling inaccuracy but with polling itself.  Increased accuracy could make polls even more troublesome.  What does polling contribute to our public discourse and democratic decision-making?  What benefit is there to knowing an election's outcome before people have even voted?  What's the hurry?

Polls, Polls, Everywhere Polls, Mostly Wrong As It Turns Out.  Businesses, non-profits and political groups routinely seek information from target audiences.  To this end they can use polling, surveys and focus groups to gather data.  Results can be used objectively or used to promote an agenda.  Intentionally flawed methods will generate meaningless data that in turn can be used to lend an air of legitimacy to virtually any position.  In this piece I'll outline how to manufacture both types.  If you are not already, you will likely be skeptical of polls by the end of the article.  Corporations have every incentive to collect accurate data, especially in the area of product development.  Poor research can lead to weak product demand and financial loss.  When developing a consumer survey it is therefore essential to pose unbiased questions and to associate a cost with each feature or action described.  This is true for opinion gathering in both the public and private sectors, more of which later.

Polling: The Gateway Political Drug to Misinformation, Mistakes and Malfeasance.  I don't need to go through a long list of reasons why nobody should take pollsters seriously anymore, but a few data points are instructive.  FiveThirtyEight aggregated a number of polls that misinformed Americans into believing that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was about to be tossed out of the Senate by the voters.  The polls just before Election Day had Sara Gideon winning.  Change Research had Gideon up by 8%, Emerson College had her up by 2%, and FiveThirtyEight forecasted that Gideon had a 59% chance of winning that Maine Senate seat.  That would not be a big problem if the pollsters had not botched so many other races.  They didn't merely miss the Maine Senate race, they seemed to miss all the elections nationwide.  Sen. Thom Tillis, who won, was given a 32% chance of victory by FiveThirtyEight just before Election Day.

Lots of Takeaways From November 2020.  [Scroll down]  Senate seats that were said to be in jeopardy — Susan Collins in Maine, Steve Daines in Montana, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, John Cornyn in Texas, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, Mitch McConnell in Kentucky — all were huge and easy wins, typically by spreads of approximately 10 points or more.  The false polls wreaked havoc by giving Democrat millionaires and billionaires false hopes of winning unwinnable seats, thus inducing them to pump tens of millions and hundreds of millions they would not have donated if they knew the real numbers underlying voter sentiment.  So the phony polls made the non-competitive races "competitive" by motivating money to be pumped in.  Even so, the GOP blew them off down ticket, even with major wins in state houses.

Establishment Media's Real Concern: How Did Trump Manage to Do So Well?  The establishment media's preferred answer to how the polls failed to detect millions of Trump voters is that the error was stupid, not sinister.  "Whoops, we just missed them" — despite this being pollsters' business, their assurance that they had "fixed" their polls' problems from 2016, and the mistake being of incredible size.  As results show, 2020's error is greater than 2016's.  The establishment media has readily blamed the pollsters, essentially exonerating itself by saying that it was just reporting what it was told.  Yet neglected is the fact that the polls' results were confirming the establishment media's own bias.  This bias has been repeatedly cited for decades and has never been clearer than over the last four years.

How Republicans crashed Nancy Pelosi's party.  Not long before Election Day, the Associated Press ran a story headlined "House already won?  Pelosi thinks so, and reaches for more." The article said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so confident about keeping control of the House that she was preparing for an expanded Democratic majority.  "Pelosi notes experts have suggested Democrats will pick up between five and 15 House seats," the outlet reported.

Are Pollsters and Prognosticators 'Experts' Anymore When They Get So Much Wrong?  So much for experts, at least until the next election in a couple of years.  We can all be assured they'll be back with their polls, which all oversample Democrats as they do year after year, and all ignore the effect that the credible threat of politically-motivated violence by leftists against everyone else has on polling and on local races.  They won't poll the effects of rising crime, of the threat of overseas war Biden (if he prevails) is sure to bring back to the fore, economic uncertainty thanks to leftist anti-energy and other policies, or anything else that real people really care about.  The "experts" have little time for your petty concerns, peasant.  All of this also ought to make one wonder, in an election in which Republicans did so well and defied the "experts" at every level, what really happened at the top of the ticket?

Most and Least Accurate Polls From Presidential Election.  The Investor's Business Daily/TIPP poll defended its title as the most accurate pollster for predicting presidential outcomes.  The pollsters take the No. 1 spot for the fifth presidential cycle in a row, a Newsmax review reveals.  Among the worst polls were those from CNN and Quinnipiac.  One of only two polls to predict President Donald Trump's 2016 win, the IBD/TIPP poll came closest to predicting the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.  The Hill-HarrisX poll also predicted election results with the same accuracy, according to American Research Group, Inc.

'Experts' Listed 27 House Races As Toss-Ups.  Republicans Won All 27.  On Monday [11/16/2020], Burgess Owens, a former NFL player and vocal critic of Colin Kaepernick, was declared the winner of Utah's 4th Congressional District.  Despite running against an incumbent and trailing by 11% in final polling, Owens prevailed in a race deemed a "toss-up" by Cook Political Report, a "nonpartisan" election and campaign analysis group popular among legacy media outlets.  Ahead of the 2020 election, Cook listed 27 races as "toss-ups," meaning they were too close to predict one way or the other.  Republicans won all 27.  That's not a typo.  Despite being assured by that conservatism was about to drown beneath an impending "blue wave," Republicans won every single close race.  Republicans also won all 26 races deemed "leaning or likely Republican," and even picked up 7 of the 36 seats listed as "leaning or likely Democrat."

Democrat-leaning polls have skewed results since 2014.  The news media's Democrat-favoring election polls did not begin with the Donald Trump era, an examination by The Washington Times shows.  The 2014 and 2018 off-year elections were also mistake-filled, as surveyors undercounted the Republican vote in key contested races.  Republicans say it matters because anti-GOP polls can suppress votes, hurt fundraising and lead to news media reporting that the Republican candidate has little chance.

Stalin said it's not important who votes but how they are counted.  How did pollsters miss five million new Trump voters?  They refused to accept the Shy Trump voter was real in 2016.  So, they didn't look for them in 2020.  We knew they were real, and we found far more of them this year.  This time, Shy Trump voters were disproportionately Black males in urban areas and suburban White women.  This data confirmed the significant movement of Black voters towards Trump — and the movement of a segment of suburban White women back to Trump.  As a result, we predicted his higher Black vote to the actual percentage point.  We also identified, due to Trump's pro-law and order stance, that he'd suffer only minor, rather than seismic, losses among suburban women.

What the Polls Say About David Perdue vs Jon Ossoff in Georgia Senate Runoff.  Republican Senator David Perdue and Democratic rival Jon Ossoff are locked in a tight head-to-head race with less than two months until the Georgia runoff election, according to a new poll from a national Republican-leaning pollster.  Remington Research Group's poll found incumbent Perdue at 50 percent among likely voters surveyed to Ossoff's 46 percent, with a 2.6-point margin of error and 3 percent still undecided — nearly matching the results in their tight race just last week.  The survey of 1,450 likely voters from November 8-9 was first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Red Wave No One Saw Coming.  Had you spent any time in this northern suburb of Pittsburgh listening to voters, finding out what matters to them when it comes to schools, community growth, economic prosperity and the emotional impact of the COVID-19 lockdowns, you would have at least been skeptical of the media narrative and the polls that claimed suburban voters here are no longer center-right.  Not Republican per se, just center-right.  Most reporters certainly didn't take the time to do so.  Instead, they relied on the scolding of our cultural curators in sports, media and Hollywood as an indicator of how these affluent, college-educated voters would vote.  Surely, reporters thought, these suburbs had fully embraced "wokeism" and rejected center-right values and principles.  They thought they would cave under the cultural pressure, push left and send a blue shock wave across the country with their votes.

Frank Luntz urges pollsters to seek new profession after Trump outperforms polls: 'Sell real estate'.  Republican pollster Frank Luntz told Fox News' "Media Buzz" on Sunday that the credibility of his profession has been irreversibly damaged after President Trump outperformed polls for a second straight presidential election.  The Veteran pollster told host Howard Krutz that that public opinion surveys significantly underestimated Trump's support again, and urged those responsible for botching back-to-back presidential elections to seek a new profession.  "I think what is happening is accountability in action," Luntz argued, "and if you got it wrong this time, you got it wrong twice in a row, you shouldn't be working in the business.  There are other things you can do.  You can sell real estate.  You can sell stocks," he said.  "Stop selling polls."

The Fight is Now.  The results last night revealed conclusively that our supposed experts lied to the nation throughout 2020's election season with deceptive polls, statistics, and percentages about Trump's chances.  This is no surprise — we already know our ruling class has lied non-stop to the American people about President Trump for four years.  Now we are asked to simply trust corrupt Democratic political machines in one-party cities to count the vote honestly.  We will not.  Instead, Republicans must aggressively investigate and prosecute any and all wrongdoing in the attempt to steal this election.  The reason the Democratic Party just broke all the norms related to voting in America is because they are trying to fend off a loss.  They hastily changed the rules midstream by means of hundreds of lawsuits, using COVID as an excuse, and a stream of stories of troubling irregularities is now flowing out of the remaining disputed states.  The question upon which everything now depends is whether or not Republicans are willing to stop them.

Trump's strong Hispanic support befuddles Democrats, activists.  Hispanic activists had promised that President Trump's immigration policy, insulting rhetoric and handling of the coronavirus pandemic — with a disproportionate impact on Hispanics — would earn him the lowest share of their votes in modern American history.  They were wrong.  The main news media consortium's exit polling showed Mr. Trump expanding his share of the Hispanic vote from 28% in 2016 to 32% this year.  A separate exit poll for The Associated Press and Fox News showed Mr. Trump winning 35%, which would be the second-best performance for any Republican since Ronald Reagan.  That success has set off a round of soul-searching among those who insisted that Hispanics would punish this president.

Hemingway: Polling Isn't The Problem, Intentionally False Media Polls Are The Problem.  The media once again failed in their election coverage by intentionally amplifying corrupt polls and preconceived narratives, while ignoring the few pollsters who did accurately predict the electorate's support for President Donald Trump, noted Federalist Senior Editor Mollie Hemingway on Wednesday [11/4/2020].  "These polls were off by such a great amount, but not all polls.  There were a few pollsters who actually got things right, which shows that it was possible to look at this race accurately," Hemingway said on Fox News' "The Ingraham Angle" Wednesday night.  "But the media narrative — that this was an impossible win for Donald Trump, that the Senate was going to the Democrats, that Democrats would gain more seats in the House — every single part of that was wrong, and demonstrably wrong."  RealClearPolitics Co-Founder Tom Bevan joined Hemingway in noting that some polling groups like Trafalgar and Susquehanna did accurately predict a close race for President Trump, but said corporate media only amplified their preferred polls predicting a Joe Biden win.

The Other Winners and Losers.  [For example,] The Pollsters:  You know, in the world we normal people dwell in, when you consistently fail, you get fired.  But, as in so many of our garbage establishment institutions, when you're a pollster there is no accountability.  You keep failing and failing and failing and your dumb clients and the dumb media keep citing your garbage surveys.  It's really remarkable.  You would think they would have a little pride in themselves and not want to look like idiots, but no.

Ditch the Real Clear Politics Average.  Real Clear Politics needs to dump its average of polls because the average is based on untrustworthy polls.  The average is most popular feature at the site, but staking its reputation on garbage polls is, in hindsight, a quick way to lose credibility.

House Democrats Suffer a Catastrophe that Will Blow Up Their Party.  House Democrats went into Election Day supremely confident that they were going to put another nail in the Republicans' coffin.  They had outraised and outspent Republican candidates across the board.  They felt the issues of the pandemic response and Obamacare favored them. [...] But the polls were wrong.  They were very wrong.

All the ways pollsters and the media were wrong, wrong, wrong.  They blew it again.  After muffing it spectacularly in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to cruise to easy victory over Donald Trump, pollsters and the media should be ashamed by how wrong they got this year's election.  Even after their cross-their-hearts-and-hope-to-die promises to fix flaws in their methodology — which always errs in their preferred, liberal direction.  Like Clinton, Joe Biden was supposed to be a sure winner — possibly in a landslide victory over President Trump.  Polling "guru" Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a whopping 89 percent chance of winning.  RealClearPolitics' compilation of polls showed Biden with an average 7.2 percentage-point national lead; some polls had the spread in the double digits at various times.  In the top battleground states, Biden averaged a 2.3-point lead, according to RCP.

What Kind of Sore-Losing Idiot Would Suspect the Democrats of Voter Fraud?  The whole election system, from top to bottom, is rife with corruption and stinks.  For example, ABC-TV and the Washington Post published a poll near election day that Trump would lose Wisconsin by 17 points.  Seventeen points.  Many such polls were aimed at achieving voter suppression.  There is a reason that even the corrupt leftist media agree not to announce actual voting results on Election Day until a respective state's polls have closed.  They know that any slight announcement can result in voter suppression because many will not bother voting if they believe their candidate's chances are impossible.  We were inundated with weeks of polls in battleground states placing Trump and Republican Senate candidates behind by seven, eight, even 10 or more points — even though the races actually proved to be neck-and-neck.

The Steal Is On.  While Donald Trump amassed huge, seemingly insurmountable leads in key states across the country, Democratic officials went quiet in their cities, releasing no results until it was clear exactly how many they would need to win.  And then, like a cascade, they poured out the numbers on Wednesday morning, claiming staggering early-vote margins that washed away the president's lead in state after state.  Democrats have terrible policies for America, but give them credit for one thing:  They know when to count their ballots. [...] The con was in the works long before Election Day.  For months beforehand, the press bombarded the public with bogus polls showing huge leads for Biden in almost every swing state.  On election night, these worthless polls were exposed, but they were still used by the press to justify not calling states for Trump.  Now, they will be used to justify dramatic last-second swings into the Democratic column.

We already know who lost the election:  MSM pollsters.  It may be uncertain who will win, what with Democrats shutting vote counting overnight in Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, in order to determine how many votes the need to "discover" so as to hand their Electoral College votes to Biden, but the mainstream pollsters were all wrong.  Hilariously so, in some cases.  The Real Clear Politics average of presidential polls had Biden ahead in the popular vote by 7.2%.  With votes yet to be counted, the margin favoring Biden is 1.6%, a difference of 5.8%.  Whatever the final vote is, there is no "blue wave," no Biden landslide, and the call by Nate Silver of a 90% chance of a Biden victory looks overstated.

Graham To Pollsters:  "You Have No Idea What You're Doing".  "This is the worst return on investment in the history of American politics," Lindsey Graham quipped in his upbeat victory speech overnight.  Graham meant the hundreds of millions of dollars that "all the liberals in California and New York" spent on Senate races in South Carolina, Kentucky, and North Carolina, among others.  The same can be said about all of the effort and money poured into polling this cycle.  Graham also took a shot at pollsters in the same breath, telling them, "You have no idea what you're doing."  Fact check:  mostly true.

Last Call for the Pollsters?  As Americans make their way to the voting booths, only one thing is certain:  someone is very wrong about this election.  According to big media polls, Joe Biden is set for either a modest win over President Trump, or an Obama-besting landslide and total refutation of President Trump's four years in the White House.  A divide never greater.  And the polls agree.  One pollster embodies both sides of this divide.  The USC Dornsife Daybreak tracking poll has Joe Biden 11 points ahead of President Trump with 53 percent of the vote.  That poll also finds President Trump within either three or 0.4 percentage points of Joe Biden and on course for an Electoral College victory.  How?  Researchers ask two additional and separate questions alongside the main poll question.

Election-Eve Positivity.  We are at the point where polls are pretty much meaningless, but I don't think it is coincidental that 2020 is just about a carbon copy of 2016.  Most "mainstream" pollsters gave Biden a big lead early, I think for the purpose of aiding Democratic fundraising and discouraging Republicans, and then, in the last days before the election, they show the race tightening to within the margin of error — I suspect because they have changed their weighting of responses — so that no matter what happens, they can't be "wrong."

Seeing Past The Narratives — Two Election Points to Remember.  [Scroll down]  All exit polling is pushed by media in their effort to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The election year media polling is already skewed with manipulated outcomes; they do the same thing with the exit polling, only they do it on election day in rapid succession.  Again, just a brief reminder:  if the media are willing to set up planted audience members to the benefit of Joe Biden (they have); and if the media are willingly and purposefully going to manipulate debate moderators, debate questions and non-questions, and town-hall audience scripts to undermine President Trump (again, they have); then what do you think those same media outlets are doing with their polling?  Put another way:  If the media are willing to create intentionally false impressions for broadcast what are they doing with the polling they are paying for?

Tag team:  Polls, media join forces to close in on Trump.  Fast and furious:  That is how the polls are arriving at the moment, cascading into news coverage as Election Day looms large.  In the past 48 hours, horse race polls were released by NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CBS News, CNN, ABC/Washington Post, The New York Times/Siena College and Emerson College.  More are on the way.  These surveys are intricate and often embellished with findings that gauge voter enthusiasm, push Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden's lead in swing states, or compare his personality traits with those of President Trump.  Such findings often make their way into headlines that produce bad optics for Mr. Trump and conflicting or mixed messages for voters.

Trump will win again, then comes the hard part.  The polls are wrong again, and this time we have advance evidence beyond Trump's say-so.  Polling has always been an inexact science, and now it's harder than ever.  It's hard to get a representative sampling of actual voters by making random telephone calls to people whose willingness to participate and trust of media pollsters are skewed politically.  In addition, pollsters have shifted from honest reporters to dishonest campaign tools.  They deliberately slant their polls toward their favored candidates on the theory that people are more likely to vote for the candidate who's winning.  That's why we have a poll from the New York Times reporting that Trump is trailing by four points in Texas.  Have they ever been to Texas?

Former journalist receives AP survey, laughs out loud at huge bias in questions.  [Scroll down]  The poll goes on to ask many questions that are intentionally, manipulatively inaccurate, and others that are structured to allow the AP to interpret to suit its predetermined goal.  For example, in attempting to gauge the respondent's primary issues of importance, one question asked if the "economic downturn" would factor into his selection process.  The possible answers to that question range from "very likely" to "not at all."  The obvious question is what economic downturn, but the poll does not allow one to ask.  Essentially, the poll attempts to subconsciously plant the idea that some undisputed "economic downturn" is taking place.  Was the question referencing the economic downturn in Democrat-run, riot- and looting-ridden cities that have shut down and forbidden life outside liberal rabble-rousing?  If so, it should clearly state such.  That is not what the poll's intention is, though.  It is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to imply that the economy is not improving under President Donald Trump — something categorically false, deceptive, and intentional on the part of the AP.

The Electoral College Prediction That Will Leave the Left 'Terribly Shocked'.  We're either right or wrong.  There is no in-between here concerning the polls.  These liberal outlets are oversampling Democrats, ignoring Trump Democrats, not accounting for fewer young voters turning out, and including way too many college-educated voters to craft a narrative that this country holds a D+15 electorate.  It's just not true.  Trump Democrats are being ignored.  Rural Republicans are being bypassed.  The suburban cohort of the GOP — sure.  They're the squishiest and most vocally anti-Trump of the group.  At Trump's rallies, around 25 percent of the attendees didn't vote in 2016.  Some firms haven't even moved off from registered voter samples.  It's a trainwreck.  Biden is supposedly ahead by double-digits, which his camp says is not true.  They're admitting the polls are inflated, which could also be a ploy to keep their base anxious and ready to vote.

Yes, [the] Media Are Rigging [the] Election Against Half The Country.  Here's How.  [Scroll down]  Another way corporate media have been rigging the election has been through their polling narratives.  For months, the media have been relentlessly pushing a narrative that Trump can not win the 2020 election.  They almost seem to be in a contest to see who can make the most outrageous claim about a given state.  In 2016, the Real Clear Politics average of polls of Wisconsin showed that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump by 6.5 points.  In fact, she lost that state to Trump, narrowly.  You would think that this result, and the result in general, might produce some humility on the part of media pollsters.  In its final 2016 poll, Marquette reported that Clinton would win by six points.  This week, that same pollster reported Biden would win by five points.  By comparison, the Washington Post and ABC News dropped a poll claiming that Biden was going to win by 17 points.  Even their previous poll gave Biden "only" a six-point lead.  Marquette's previous poll advantage was the same as their more recent advantage.  Guess which poll got massive media coverage.

Can We Trust Pennsylvania's Polls?  Polls show Mr. Biden leading by five to 13 points, but I grew up around here and am dubious.  This place — the land of hoagies and Bradley Cooper and Rocky Balboa worship and Tina Fey's "Cousin Karen" accent — has transmogrified into Trumplandia.  "He has so much more support than in 2016, because it's been four years of accomplishments," said Darinna Thompson, 49, a homemaker who was talking with a group of women outside the Trump Store.  They were part of a caravan that had just encircled the Democrats' rally "to say bye-bye to Biden" and let his supporters know they were outnumbered.

Don't believe the polls — Trump is winning.  While the majority of the polls suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is leading, or at best that it's close, those polls suffer from at least three problems.  First, the tone of the questions.  There is significant evidence from behavioral psychology that suggests that the way a question is framed predetermines the range of potential answers.  In fact, Gallup has found that respondents can answer very differently to questions with the same topic even in the same survey based on the language that's used.  And the use of metaphors can even dwarf the importance of preexisting differences between Republicans and Democrats.  One of the reasons respondents do that is because of a tendency to give socially desirable answers, which was the case especially during the 2016 election.

USC Poll Counts Shy Voters and Donald Trump Wins.  USC Dornlife published a poll Monday that shows President Trump could upset the world again next week.  USC's normal, tracking poll shows Biden up nationally 53 to 43 percent, a full ten points.  Something USC Dornlife was curious about, though, were those shy Trump voters who either lie to pollsters out of contempt for the establishment media or due to a legitimate fear of expressing a preference for Trump in a country where you can lose your job, have your property vandalized, or find yourself physically assaulted for doing so.

Prediction Markets and the Elections.  [Scroll down]  In a prediction market, purchasable shares have binary outcomes of paying either $1 if an event occurs, or zero if it does not.  Share prices reflect in cents adding up to $1 the designated probabilities of opposed outcomes.  For example, Polymarket shares for the question "Will Trump win the 2020 U.S. presidential election?" recently traded at "Yes" $.36 and "No" $.64, reflecting an estimation that President Donald Trump has a 36 percent chance of reelection, while Augur gives Trump a 55% chance.

There Is Still Hope in the Heartland.  If you believe the polls, Joe Biden is neck-and-neck with Trump in Ohio. [...] But nobody believes the polls, especially when the numbers are starkly contradicted by on-the-ground evidence like the proliferation of roadside Trump signs.  There is an unmistakable enthusiasm gap between the two presidential campaigns — Trump drawing tens of thousands of cheering supporters to his rallies, while only dozens show up for the rare events when Biden ventures out of his Delaware basement.

No One Tells You About Polls that Project a Big Win for Trump.  Most election polls include a question that pollsters rarely talk about: whom do you expect to win.  Yet, the answer to this question is more accurate than any other election forecasting tool.  By a lot.  Finding the answers to this question is tricky.  You have to get hold of the raw datasets and do the math yourself.  Pollsters do not publish expectation data.

Trump's Best Presidential Debate Ever.  Like so many others, I have no idea how sharply accurate or wildly inaccurate the polls are.  Unlike people polled about anything else, the one polling topic that is dangerous for many is to say that one supports Trump for President.  You might get suspended from your job.  You might get fired.  There may be a Twitter storm aimed at destroying you.  You may get thrown off Facebook or Instagram or even from LinkedIn.  Pollsters never before have conducted polls under Stalinist Russia circumstances, where people are terrified even to whisper "I back ... Trump" or to wear a red MAGA hat or to affix a bumper sticker.  Indeed, one of the best (or worst) ways to hurt someone you hate is to put a "Make America Great Again" bumper sticker on their car — and then to look at the smashed windshield and other vandalism a few hours later.  So it is impossible to know what the polls mean.

Why the Polls May be Wrong Again.  Polls and pundits were wrong across the board prior to the 2016 presidential election.  Indeed, the anti-Trump spin was so universal with pollsters and journalists in the last presidential election, that even three and a half years later, it's hard to believe that there wasn't a conspiracy to cook the books to discourage Trump voters.  With another election pending, pollsters seem to be having hot flashes of déjà vu.  Donald Trump is again universally cast as the dark horse.  But this year there is some clear evidence to explain why polls and media alike may be misreading or misrepresenting the numbers.

The Impresario President Will Get an Encore.  For anyone with any perspective on American elections, it is clear that the polls do not entitle us to predict with any confidence the outcome of the current campaign.  Many of the polls included in the average of polls on aggregator sites are really just the products of Democratic Party front organizations, such as Vox, Politico, Quinnipiac, Monmouth, and others whose chief function is to facilitate the Democratic media locker room cry that they've already won and the counting of the votes is practically superfluous.  Open the beer kegs!  The Trump tyranny is already over.  Trafalgar, the only poll that showed Trump winning four years ago, shows him winning again this year.  And the next most accurate of polls that covered the 2016 campaign and are doing so again is Rasmussen, which has fluctuated and briefly joined the ranks of the Biden victory celebration squad two weeks ago but now has Trump's approval rating back at 48 percent.

Pennsylvania Poll:  Joe Biden's Lead Narrows to Just 1.1%.  Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden and President Donald Trump are statistically tied in Pennsylvania, a Restoration PAC/Trafalgar Group survey released Monday — nearly two weeks out from the presidential election — revealed.  The survey, taken October 13-15 among 1,041 likely voters, showed Trump narrowing the gap in Pennsylvania, with Biden leading by just 1.1 percent — 47.5 percent to the president's 46.4 percent.  As has been the emerging theme in several recent surveys in key Rust Belt states, Biden's lead is within the margin of error, which is +/- 2.96 percent.

Obama Headed to Philadephia, and the Reason Is in the Numbers — Bad Numbers for Joe Biden.  The media is attempting to capture the public's attention with poll numbers in the hope that Trump partisans will become despondent about a looming loss, and then not take the trouble to vote.  Four years ago the conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton's massive organizational advantages when combined with incumbency of the Democrat Obama Administration, validated the near-universal view of pollsters that Clinton was going to cruise to an easy victory.  But the combination of "conservatism," "nationalism", and "populism" that Trump combined together, and then took directly to the electorate over the heads of media produced an "electorate" remarkably different from the one predicted by the pollsters in their models.  But polling is polling, it's an art, not a science.  One thing not factored into the model changes from 2016 to 2020 is how changes in party registration alter the composition of the electorate that shows up at the polls.

Are the FakeNews Polls a Setup for Post-Election Chaos?  [Scroll down]  If the polls are correct, a ticket of two unlikeable and corrupt candidates, with resumes of no accomplishment other than self-enrichment through financial or sexual services, are about to win an historic blowout election.  What if they are wrong?  If the perky weathergirl on the morning news predicts sunny skies in the mid-70s all day and you look outside and see snow flurries, what are you going to believe?  If one tunes out the polls and looks at the real world, a far different picture emerges.  President Trump is holding rallies again, sometimes several in one day, each one drawing tens of thousands of people, including many Democrats and previous nonvoters.  When Harris or Biden hold a rally, attendees measure in the few dozens at best, most of those being reporters or Secret Service.

The Unapologetic Bias of the American Left.  [Scroll down]  Pollsters used to highlight moderate liberal leads to jack up enthusiasm.  But in the final few days of a race, they began offering more realistic numbers to ensure that if the vote went south, they would not go down with the ship.  Not now.  At a time when the Zogby, Trafalgar, Democracy Institute, or Rasmussen polls show Trump's favorability climbing, and the race tightening in the last three weeks, we are to believe YouGov, Reuters, or Politico that the president fights a 10-15 percent negative favorability gap.  Perhaps.  But one wonders why, in the context of 2016, we never saw a symmetrical split, half of the polls believing Trump would lose sizably in the Electoral College, and half winning by a substantial number.

Looking on the bright side: 15 reasons the polls may be wrong.  When people ask me to predict whether Trump or Biden will win the election, I like to say that I don't predict elections; I just worry about them.  However, as a worrier, I'm always on the lookout for signs that will ease my worries.  With the election only 17 days away, there are a surprising number of signs that Biden's allegedly spectacular polling lead is illusory.  Before beginning this post about identifying positive trends, it's important to remember that the polls — both state-by-state and national — are still showing Biden in the lead.

Trafalgar pollster:  I predict a Trump win in the mid-270s.  A change of pace for you from all the polling doom and gloom lately.  Most readers know the name "Trafalgar" at this point, but for the few who don't:  They're the firm that called Trump's wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania four years ago when nearly every other pollster was predicting Clinton victories, some by blowout margins.  (Trafalgar was the only outfit to find Trump ahead in Michigan in any survey taken that year.)  Two years later, with the rest of the field polling field expecting an Andrew Gillum victory in Florida, Trafalgar's final poll found Ron DeSantis ahead.  Again, they were right, everyone else was wrong.  Their secret is that they try to adjust for "social desirability bias," the reluctance of some people to tell pollsters the truth about their preferences for fear of being judged disapprovingly.

The real reason most polls in this election are not trustworthy.  [Scroll down]  Most polls today are conducted by phone.  During election seasons the number of these polls has skyrocketed in recent years, so that a registered and likely voter such as myself and my wife might get five to ten such calls every single day.  At some point this becomes simple harassment.  You simply want them all to "go away," as my wife said.  You don't have the time or inclination to talk to them.  And you don't refuse because you are afraid to tell them you are a Trump voter (my readers will know I certainly am not afraid of telling anyone this fact) but because they have become a nuisance you simply want nothing to do with.  I therefore think none of the poll results today are trustworthy because too many people, from all political perspectives, are simply tired of being harassed by pollsters.  They are refusing to talk, and thus the pollsters are only getting a very limited slice of opinions, from a few people who likely don't represent the general population.  The only polls that might produce reliable results would be those conducted door-to-door, but few today are conducted in this manner.

Shy Trump Voters, Pollsters, and the Appeal to Ignorance.  In October 2015 the most venerable name in public opinion polling, Gallup, announced that it would no longer conduct horse-race election surveys or predict the outcomes of presidential contests.  Gallup had been the gold standard for such polling since the 1930s, but, after calling the wrong winner in 2012, the organization's leadership decided that capturing a representative voter sample during the final volatile phase of a national election had become all but impossible.  Gallup was thus spared the humiliation endured by many pollsters in 2016.  Most of its counterparts, however, remain in denial about the limitations of their obsolete methodology and are consequently producing wildly inaccurate 2020 results.

Voter-registration patterns give Trump an edge invisible to polls:  JPMorgan.  The 2020 presidential race may be closer than the polls suggest, according to an analysis of voter registration trends by JPMorgan Chase.  Changes in the number of voters registered to each of the major parties have proven to be a significant variable in election outcomes in the past, according to strategists at the New York-based bank, which analyzed trends in some of the battleground states that will be crucial to an electoral college victory.  Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 9.2 points nationally, according to an average of polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, but his lead is at a tighter 4.9 points in hotly contested states.

Poll-inspired cockiness and its hazards.  More so than his colleagues, [Warren] Mitofsky was a student of the history of survey research.  In speeches, he was known to refer to such pioneers of the field as George Gallup and Elmo Roper.  Mitofsky kept displayed on a wall the famous photograph of President Harry Truman in victory, holding aloft the front page of the Chicago Tribune that erroneously declared he'd lost the 1948 presidential election to Republican Thomas E. Dewey.  "There's still a lot of room for humility in polling," Mitofsky said in an interview at the 50th anniversary of the 1948 polling debacle.  "Every time you get cocky, you lose."

Contra Media Poll Narrative, Trump Tracking Just Fine In Electoral College.  [Scroll down]  The media like to use polls to set very powerful narratives during a campaign.  The narrative is frequently that the race is not winnable for the Republican.  The polls get more reasonable closer to election day, regardless of who wins, and the false narrative gets forgotten.  Throughout 2016, the narrative put forth day in and day out by the media was that Donald Trump simply couldn't win.  Sure, the final polls weren't off as dramatically as that narrative was, but the narrative is pushed at least in part because it advances the political agenda of the media.  The wish frequently becomes reality.  The media have pushed the same narrative this time as well, if a bit more angrily.  Four years ago, pundits said the race was over because of how Trump was polling.  According to those same polls in the same key battleground states, he's doing a bit better than he was doing four years ago.

Beneath the Top Line Poll Numbers.  The first thing to understand about the Democratic Party today is that its shift to the left has occurred chiefly among white Democrats.  This may be the hidden weakness that delivers the election to Trump.  Let's start with a new chart from Zach Goldberg, who notes survey data from the spring about Democratic voters in Arizona, California, Colorado, and Texas.  What it shows is revealing:  white Democrats are the most hostile group to increased security along the U.S.-Mexico border, while black Democrats favor increased security more than white Democrats by a two-to-one margin.  Even hispanic Democrats favor stronger border security than white Democrats do.

North Carolina's Registration and Polling Suggests Democrats Overestimate Their 2020 Chances.  Over the past week, I have been analyzing registration numbers for several of the battleground states.  Each of them has the little idiosyncrasies that make them a unique story, but North Carolina's story is extremely interesting in that current polling shows a lead for Biden, despite other data suggesting that a small lead is likely a tie to a 2-3 point lead for Trump.  Thus far, of the polls that I have seen, sampling has been wrong, either in the age groups which they poll (one poll had like 32% of the electorate being 18-24) and/or the ideological spread for voters, with the party distribution being quasi-accurate and then realizing they polled very few solid conservatives and a lot of moderates.  I started by looking at registration statistics for the Tarheel State, which tells a much different story than the Dem-shift that we are hearing in the media.

An Erie feeling about this election.  [In 2016,] President Trump took Erie County 57,168 to 54,820, a 2-point win, which was a point better than his statewide 1-point win.  If Biden were ahead by 7, then he would be ahead by 6 in Erie, which is a bellwether of sorts for the state.  I mean, Obama got 57% of Erie County's vote in 2012, which was 5 points better than his statewide total of 52%.  Perhaps it is possible to be down in Erie but up statewide.  But the last time Erie got it wrong was in 1988 when it went for Dukakis and the rest of the state went for Bush.  The last time before that was 1944, when it went for Dewey instead of FDR.  I will take a county that was right about how its state voted in 95% of the last 20 elections.  Democrats sweating Erie is an indication that gee, maybe, that 7-point lead is as believable as an email from a Nigerian prince.

Fake-Poll Alert:  Proof Biden Is Not Winning.  Back in 2016, I played Paul Revere, except my announcement was "The Trump victory is coming! the Trump victory is coming!"  I made over 1,500 TV and radio appearances to deliver the message that the polls were all wrong.  I told Donald Trump supporters again and again to ignore the "fake news" and the fake polls.  Tens of thousands of Trump voters emailed me to thank me for giving them hope when all seemed lost.  Hundreds of conservative radio and TV hosts thanked me for keeping up the spirits of the "Trump Army" when Trump voters were at their darkest and lowest points.  For better or worse, that's my best talent in life:  seeing through the faulty math, lies, fraud and propaganda of pollsters and the mainstream media in order to keep Trump voters excited, motivated, focused and in the game.

Biden-Harris Have Only 3% of President Trump's Online Viewership.  The 2020 campaign is shaping up to become one of the most lopsided elections in history.  The media wants us to believe Biden is ahead in the polls but the President Trump is crushing Biden in events and viewership, in person and online.  The Democrats and their media continue to force their garbage polls down Americans' throats.  But the reason we know their polls are garbage is by looking at the data.

Big Three Censor Poll Showing Majority Say They're Better Off Now than 4 Years Ago.  It turns out the ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows won't show you polls that show the majority of the American voters feeling better off now under President Donald Trump's economy than under former President Barack Obama's economy.  But they do love parading around questionable polls showing Trump losing the election by double digits.  Gallup released a jaw-dropping news released Tuesday, the day of the vice presidential debate.  A new poll, taken between September 14 [and] September 28, showed that 56 percent of registered voters said that "they are better off now than they were four years ago, while 32% said they are worse off."  That's a 24 percent disparity.

Poll: 56% Americans Say They Are Better Off Now Under Trump Than Four Years Ago Under Obama-Biden.  A solid majority of 56 percent of Americans say they are better off now than they were four years ago, a new Gallup survey reveals.  Only 32 percent say they are worse off than four years ago.  The number is, as Fox News's Laura Ingraham noted on Thursday night, "the highest Gallup has ever recorded." [...] While the 56 percent number is impressive indeed — again the highest ever recorded this close to an election — it was even higher before the coronavirus pandemic swept across the United States.

The Editor says...
The news media won't mention this poll, because if it is accurate, then the polls showing Joe Biden with a substantial lead over President Trump can't be right.  The MSM, on Joe Biden's behalf, is suppressing the poll that's most likely to be accurate.

Why the public, even liberals, should want Amy Coney Barrett.  The Washington Examiner/YouGov poll published on Wednesday reveals a public passionate about, and deeply split on, the Supreme Court.  Perhaps surprisingly, given this, it also reveals a public averse to extremes.  For fully 79%, the appointment of a new justice will weigh heavily when they vote in the presidential election, with 58% regarding it as "very important."  But agreement here doesn't imply concurrence over how the matter should be handled; 51% say the nomination should wait until after the election and 42% want it done now.  The poll's 3.6% margin of error means that split could be as close as 47%-46%.

Biden poll map
Presidential Opinion Polls — Déjà vu All Over Again?  A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 showed Joe Biden with a 14-point lead over President Trump, 53 to 39 percent, up from an 8 point lead a week earlier.  That's it then, game over.  Time for Biden to start packing for his move from his basement to the White House.  [Screenshot]  Who was polled to give Biden such a commanding lead?  Looking at the poll internals, something the media prefers to hide, reveals that registered, not likely, voters were surveyed, one strike against the poll.  As elections move closer to election date, that calls the sample into question.  Given that voter turnout for presidential elections is typically just over 50 percent, half of those surveyed won't vote, regardless of their opinions.  Of the 800 registered voters surveyed, Democrats were oversampled by 9 points, 45 to 36 percent, explaining much of Joe's supposed 14 point advantage.


The Left's 'Mostly Peaceful' Revolution/Coup.  Since the advent of the Trump presidency, the left engaged their greatest minds in planning the "Russia Hoax Coup" and then the impeachment farce.  Having failed miserably at both, they are now carrying out an information operation to sell maundering Joe Biden as inevitable in his attempt to win the coming Presidential Election.  They insist that Joseph Biden is leading Trump in the polls by an insurmountable 16%. [...] Joe Biden is not winning.  It does not matter what the polls say.  It is preposterous to believe that people would vote for someone in such obvious mental decline for the most important (and dangerous) job on the planet.  The man almost never leaves his basement and when he meets with voters, he can barely fill a room, whereas Trump packs stadiums and their environs with many thousands of screaming, enthusiastic supporters.

Why Doesn't It Feel Like Biden is Winning?  [Scroll down]  As we approach the next election, the polls again show an insurmountably persistent Trump deficit in the popular vote and even in key battleground states.  Poll aggregator Nate Silver estimates Trump's approval to be below Obama, Clinton, and Reagan at similar points in their presidencies.  Silver fixes the chance of a Biden victory at 81 percent as of his writing on October 5th.  The betting markets show a recent collapse in confidence that Trump will be reelected.  So why doesn't it feel like Biden is winning?  If we had no polls, betting markets, or professional pontificators, what outcome would we predict from the things that we can observe with our own eyes and ears?

Finally, an accurate poll?  Everyone remembers the wildly inaccurate predictions of a Hillary Clinton landslide right up through the morning of Election Day 2016.  The New York Times confidently predicted Clinton with an 85-percent chance of winning.  Reuters gave Clinton a 90-percent chance, and ABC News gave her a 95-percent chance of being elected president.  I suspect that the polls were biased, in part, and their methodology was obsolete.  Also, there may have been some trickery at work with Trump voters deliberately deceiving pollsters.  With this in mind, we are now being told that Joe Biden has opened up a double-digit lead over President Trump in the latest 2020 presidential election polling data.  I submit that many Trump voters are being less than candid with pollsters, even more so than they were in 2016.

Trump turnaround:  Biden lead cut to 49%-47% as coronavirus, debate don't hurt president.  In the first post poll since President Trump announced that he had COVID-19, his chances of reelection surged, a sign that his infection and raucous debate performance didn't hurt his chances for reelection.  The new John Zogby Strategies/EMI Research Solutions survey shared with [The Washington Examiner] showed Biden up 49% to 47%, his smallest lead yet in their polls.

New Poll Bucks Media Narrative, Shows Trump Closing the Gap After COVID Diagnosis.  A new poll released on Saturday showed that President Trump has not lost favor or popularity with the American people after a raucous debate night on Tuesday and hospitalization for COVID-19 on Friday [10/2/2020].  The poll came from John Zogby Strategies and shows that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden now leads the president by only two points, well within the margin of error.  The new numbers show a reduction of five full points after their previous July sampling.

This one is hard to believe:
Biden holds sizable lead over Trump among Latino voters in NBC/WSJ/Telemundo poll.  Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 62 percent to 26 percent among Latino registered voters nationally, but his lead trails Hillary Clinton's advantage with this voting bloc at the same stage in 2016, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Telemundo poll released Sunday [9/20/2020].  The poll's respondents see Biden as better at addressing concerns of the Latino community, at 59 percent to 18 percent, and the candidates are nearly even on who is better at dealing with the economy, with 41 percent saying Biden and 39 percent choosing Trump.  Biden's 36-point lead in the presidential contest shows that Democrats still have strong backing in the community, which could help Biden in some states where the race is tight.

Ignore the Polling on Who Should Replace Ginsburg.  Not even 24 hours after Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, multiple media outlets were telling us that on the question of whom they prefer to replace Ginsburg on the U.S. Supreme Court, voters prefer Joe Biden to President Trump.  The Fox News headline Saturday afternoon declared that "52% trust Biden over Trump on Supreme Court picks."  [Other examples omitted for brevity.]  All of this is meant to discourage President Trump, Senate Republicans, and their supporters from moving forward with a nomination to replace Ginsburg prior to the November elections.  In other words, these polls are like most every other election-related poll in this modern drive-by media era.  They are meant to shape opinions instead of merely reporting on them.

Caution:  Newsweek magazine.
Fox News Poll Shows Americans Saying Biden Is More Mentally Sound Than Trump to Serve as President.  More Americans say former Vice President Joe Biden has the mental clarity to be president versus Donald Trump, according to the latest Fox News poll released Sunday [9/13/2020].  Despite the Trump campaign and the president himself repeatedly questioning the mental acuity of Biden, a larger percentage of U.S. adults say they believe the Democratic presidential candidate has the traits best suited for the job.  A slight majority of likely voters — 51 percent — told Fox News they believe Biden, 77, has the "mental soundness" to be president, compared to 47 percent who say the same about Trump, 74.

Many Trump voters staying silent again, duping media and pollsters.  Just like in 2016, many of President Trump's strongest supporters are staying quiet about their Election Day pick, likely misleading pollsters and the media about the state of the presidential race.  In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey of the silent supporters, the pollster said, "Trump voters appear to be hiding their vote again this election cycle."  The report said that 17% of likely voters who "strongly approve" of Trump "are less likely to let others know how they intend to vote in the upcoming election."

Your Definitive Guide to Understanding Polling (and Why Most Polls Are Garbage).  When reviewing polls in 2016, I came across bad poll after bad poll as a result of oversampling problems as well as push-poll lines of questions or questions that are framed in a way to influence the way someone answers.  For instance, if a polling firm asked a question "Do you agree with Joe Biden's call for all Americans to unite?", it doesn't leave any room for someone saying they disagree with the premise of the question, that is, Joe Biden even having that ability in the first place.  Another example of a push poll question is "Do you support Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric?"  Maybe the respondent doesn't believe Trump's rhetoric is divisive.  Maybe the respondent thinks the Democrats' rhetoric is divisive.  Either way, a respondent is less likely to respond in the affirmative to supporting divisive rhetoric and therefore would lead to a skewing of the results.

Is Joe Really Up by 10 Points over Trump?  It has been said that numbers never lie, but statistics do.  A political poll is a relative handful of numbers statistically analyzed and adjusted to yield, hopefully, simple results.  On their best days, polls are educated guesses.  On bad days, polls are outright lies.  The Real Clear Politics National Poll Average has both. [...] Now let's look at the oft cited Real Clear Politics National Poll Average, shown below, which has Joe Biden at 7.1 percentage points over Donald Trump.  Is this an accurate reflection of the presidential race?  Probably not.

Shy Trump Voters Are Real, And They Could Decide The Election.  A recent IBD/TIPP poll found something that appears to confirm the idea that there are lots of Trump supporters out there who won't admit it to pollsters.  "Overall, 20% of registered voters say they're uncomfortable revealing their preferred candidate, but that rises to 28% among independents," it found.

Desperately Derailing Donald.  [Scroll down]  No one knows the exact state of the presidential race.  The polls are all over the place and many are weaponized.  Scan Emerson, Rasmussen, Trafalgar, and Zogby polls, and Trump is near dead even or even ahead in some key states.  Read the surveys discredited after 2016 like Reuters and Politico, and Biden is winning across the board.  But all pollsters seem to concede something is terribly wrong with this increasingly discredited institution.  How can IBD/TPP assure us that in his favorability ratings Trump is down by 16 points even as Emerson shows us he is up by two and Rasmussen by four?  Something is rotten.  Either the pollsters are abjectly incompetent, or deliberately selecting flawed demographics that they know will reflect their own biases, and they do so to add momentum to their preferred candidate.  Or their subordinates who gather the data are massaging the numbers to reflect their own choices.  Or the respondents are deliberately misleading their questioners either out of fear or from spite.

Yes.  Liberals think you're stupid.

The Media Are Lying About The Election Again.  Election 2020 is shaping up to be déjà vu all over again for the news media.  In an effort to help push Joe Biden over the finish line, the Washington establishment is going all-in on the easily refuted idea that there has been no change in the presidential race over the last three weeks. [...] Incredibly, both NBC News and the Cook Political Report continue to rate Florida as "Lean Democrat" according to their "experts."  No offense, but do they think people are stupid?

Drain the Swamp, Or Be Drowned By It.  President Trump's approval rating has ticked up from 41 percent to 45 percent, while his disapproval rating has fallen from 56.5 percent to 53 percent.  And these are averaging some clearly stale and dated polls, a number of which effectively are the products of Democratic-front organizations because of the unrepresentative echelon of voters that they canvass.  Taking the most recent and reliable polls, the margin is significantly closer than that.  Knowledgeable Democratic strategists, such as former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on Fox News Wednesday night, agree that approximately three points should always be added to Trump's totals to account for the reticence of many of his supporters when speaking with pollsters.  Nor will all those who disapprove of Trump necessarily vote against him, as that fact by itself does not necessarily imply that they have a higher opinion of Joe Biden.

Rasmussen Reports noticed something very fishy about polling.  Rasmussen published a series of tweets on Monday [8/31/2020] openly snarking at its competitors for their silence.  Moreover, whoever is writing Rasmussen's tweets was not shy about identifying a reason for the other polling outfits' unusual reticence: the narrative up until the conventions was that Biden was unstoppable; it's now quite possible that he's been stopped.

New Poll:  Trump Pulling Away In Texas.  As other polls show that President Trump is climbing back into the race and threatening prospective Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's lead, a new poll conducted by YouGov finds that Trump has opened a 7-point lead over Biden in the state of Texas.  "The YouGov poll, commissioned by Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, surveyed 846 registered voters in Texas from August 4-13. Trump had a 7-point lead over Biden, 47.5% to 40.5%, among all voters surveyed and a 5-point lead among most-likely voters, 49.4% to 44.1%," KXAN reported, adding, "Before the release of the most recent YouGov poll, Biden had topped Trump in four of the last five statewide polls in Texas."

Polls are wrong, Trump will beat Biden:  Billionaire fund manager Gundlach.  Billionaire bond fund manager Jeffrey Gundlach believes the polls are wrong and that President Trump will win a second term in the White House.  "Will Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in November?  I don't think so," Gundlach, CEO and chief investment officer of Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital, which has $148 billion in assets under management, said in a webcast on Tuesday evening, according to Bloomberg.  He added that a "highly toxic political environment" makes the polls "very, very squishy."

The Tide Turns Toward Trump.  The polls have improved not just for Trump but for the Republicans running downticket too, not that we should put great store in the polls.  Keep in mind that the polls were literally the only indicator showing Biden and the Dems were winning.  There's no other manifestation of a blue wave out there.  Do you see any Biden signs?  There's just one in my neighborhood, which is all LA suburban woke wine women, and that's in a creepy house that the children fear.  No, there are no Trump signs either, but then that would invite a hassle.

Polls and Debates — Summertime Blues for Democrats.  Polls are breaking Trump's way.  I don't mean the litany of polls showing a double-digit lead for Biden, just as they did for Hillary Clinton four years ago, oversampling Democrats and polling whoever answers the phone rather than likely voters.  The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll is the first big media poll to show Trump with a lead over Biden, by 48 to 46 percent.  More importantly they note, ["]Crucially, President Trump has a lead of 48 percent to 43 percent in the swing states Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin which would put him back in the White House with an electoral college tally of 309 to Biden's 229.["]  What happened to those polls predicting another Democrat landslide electoral victory?  Where are these Trump supporters coming from?

The Shadow of Dukakis Looms Over Biden.  At this point in the 1988 presidential cycle, it was taken for granted among pundits and professional prognosticators that Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis would defeat Vice President George H. W. Bush by a comfortable margin.  Moreover, public opinion seemed to confirm the conventional wisdom.  At the end of July, two major polls, Gallup and Harris, had published voter surveys showing Dukakis ahead of Bush by 17 and 18 points, respectively.  Meanwhile, the media consistently portrayed the vice president as a dull-witted wimp and represented the Massachusetts governor as a hyper-competent technocrat.  Just over 90 days later Bush won the popular vote by seven points and the Electoral College 426-111.

CNN Piece on What Critical Swing Voters Are Thinking Now.  If you just listened to the liberal media, pretty much all you would hear is polls show that Joe Biden is ahead.  We saw how well that worked for them when they predicted Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.  That's why it's incredibly important to hear what real people are thinking.  So listen to what Rich Thau, a focus group moderator, the moderator of the Swing Voter Project, has to say.  He says he's hearing strong support for President Trump from critical swing voters that could turn the election.

Are Fake News Polls Hiding a Potential Trump Landslide?  Listen to network or cable news and you will hear that the November election is over.  Joe Biden has a growing double-digit lead over President Trump, despite the election being over three months away and the issues that may decide the election largely unknown at present.  What do the polls say?  Biden's campaign manager, also known as CNN, has their "poll of polls" described as, "the five most recent national telephone polls measuring the view of registered voters."  Considering that only 58 percent of eligible voters went to the polls in 2016, CNN's "poll of polls" may not be particularly representative of the electorate.  CNN's headline screams déjà vu, "Biden maintains a double-digit lead over Trump nationally."  That's it then, the election is over.  Trump supporters may as well pack it up and stay home.  At least that is what they want you to believe.

Ignore the Battleground Polls.  It seems that President Trump is trailing in the polls again.  In other "shocking" news, it seems that only women menstruate; "green energy" is a massive scam; Trump-Russia collusion was a massive hoax; media leftists hate America; and on everything from masks to guns to lives that matter, liberals are hypocrites.  Americans — especially Trump supporters — should pay little to no attention to the national polls on the 2020 U.S. presidential election.  Such polls are usually not designed to inform us — as they should — but rather to form public opinion.  This is true of the polls in the so-called "battleground" states as well.  Twenty sixteen provides the valuable lesson here.

Why Aren't the Media Polling and Reporting in-Depth on the Riots?  Up until a few weeks ago, late June or early July, media constantly polled Americans' attitudes toward the ongoing street protests over the death of George Floyd.  Those polls consistently found that Americans generally supported the protests.  But if you Google "poll Americans reactions to city violence" you'll see something interesting.  The media appears to have stopped polling about the protests/riots. [...] Sometime in late June or early July the polling on the riots and what to do about them appears to have stopped.  Or, at least, the reporting on the polling stopped.  Insert the thinking emoji here.  Why would media stop polling on an ongoing issue that is affecting the entire national mood and discourse, the function of some of our largest cities, how we see and depict our history, and, by the way, the upcoming presidential election?  What if the media didn't stop polling about this?  They just stopped reporting on their polls.  Now, why would they do that?  Insert that thinking emoji again.

Poll from 10 Battleground States:  Reports of Trump's Defeat 'Greatly Exaggerated'.  Poll results released Wednesday [7/22/2020] by American Principles Project (APP) and SPRY Strategies found that President Donald Trump leads Joe Biden in seven of ten battleground states, with a narrow lead in four of them.

He's back:  Trump gains on Biden to near tie in new Rasmussen poll.  Has Trump finally turned a corner?  Sure looks like it, with a sizable rebound in the polls.  According to Rasmussen, one of the most reliable pollsters, Trump is running neck and neck with Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Polling in America Badly Needs a Service Check.  One doesn't have to be a pollster to appreciate that an improper sample size, an over-represented subgroup, confusingly-worded questions, or a number of other factors can skew poll results one way or the other.  And that's if the pollster is honestly trying to reflect reality.  The higher the stakes, the greater the temptation to make the gauge produce the desired reading.  Of course, pollsters will complain about the mass movement to cell phones, or the trend for people to let it go to voice mail, or even people lying to just get those annoying survey-takers off their phone.  All of these undoubtedly complicate accurate polling.  But, honestly, a disturbing percentage of poll results nowadays just don't ring true.  They don't pass the smell test.

Old Joe's In a Pickle — Young People Are Not Getting Behind Senile Septuagenarian Joe Biden.  The left has been using polls since before Ann Coulter wrote her masterpiece "Slander" in 2002.  In the book where she shows the many liberal lies against the American right, Coulter points out how polls are used by Democrats to discourage conservatives, bias and steal elections.  We certainly say how Democrats and their Mainstream Media (MSM) used dishonest polls in the last election.  Day after day we were told how Hillary was going to run away with the election.  Then came the election — they were all wrong — Hillary was steamrolled with outsider Trump winning more than 30 states (30 states plus one delegate in Maine) and crushing Hillary in the electoral college with a 3 to 2 margin.

Trump Has Already Won the 2020 Election.  Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot — and maybe I am.  (I've been called worse.)  But I can't help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they're printed on, digital or otherwise, they're about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler.  No one sensible is talking about their political allegiance these days in public — especially to an anonymous pollster.  Instead, they're buying guns, in record numbers.

Mike Pence: 'I Think Polling Is Broken in America'.  Vice President Mike Pence dismissed recent polling showing President Donald Trump behind former Vice President Joe Biden by as much as double digits in the 2020 presidential race.  "I think polling is broken in America," he told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Air Force 2, returning from a campaign trip to Wisconsin.  "I didn't believe the polls in 2016, and I don't believe the polls in 2020."

Why We Shouldn't Believe Polling About Trump.  Many conservatives are concerned about polling results regarding conservative issues, especially about President Trump.  For example, the latest CNN poll found that 51% of voters believe the president should be impeached.  How much credence should conservatives give these polls? [...] One of the pervasive [...] lies people take for granted is the results of political polls, especially in the Trump era.  Most polls show him behind several of the myriad candidates vying to represent Democrats in the 2020 election.  But the American Association for Public Opinion Research confirms that "national polls in 2016 tended to under-estimate Trump's support significantly more than Clinton's."  We are inundated with the latest polling on President Trump's approval rating and how people are likely to vote in the 2020 election.  Both bode poorly for the president, but he doesn't believe them and neither should we.

NBC Poll:  Joe Biden at 'Abysmal' 26 Percent Approval Among Young Voters.  As 2020 presidential election polls continue to show Joe Biden trouncing President Donald Trump, a recent survey should spook the campaign of the Democratic candidate.  The Meet the Press politics team flagged that Biden has surprisingly bad numbers with young voters in an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week.  Biden's favorability among voters aged 18 to 34 is 26 percent positive, 44 negative.  That means the former vice president is 18 points underwater.  Meet the Press described those numbers as "abysmal."

Democrats Don't Have the Winning Hand.  The Democrats and their media toadies have used polls for the last two months to create the illusion of an inevitable Biden victory on November 3.  CNN's aptly named Don Lemon, that pillar of impartiality, tells us Trump's "number's up."  The political analysis operation FiveThirtyEight breathlessly advised last week that Biden was on the verge of opening up a "landslide" lead.  These are standard partisan political tactics.  The fact that Trump is now returning upwards in key polls illustrates again that no matter what is thrown at him he is practically indestructible.

Why the Polls Predict Trump Will Win.  Lately, pollsters and pundits have been nervously pondering the following question:  "If Trump is behind in the polls, why do most voters say, in the same surveys, that he will win the upcoming election?" As Harry Enten recently noted at CNN, "An average of recent polls finds that a majority of voters (about 55%) believe that Trump will defeat Biden in the election.  Trump's edge on this question has remained fairly consistent over time."  This is far more than mere statistical curiosity by number nerds.  Several peer-reviewed studies have shown that surveys of voter expectations are far more predictive of election outcomes than polls of voter intentions.  The polls that appear to portend a one-term presidency for Trump actually predict that the president will trounce Biden badly this November.

Biden opens up 11-point national lead over Trump in NBC News/WSJ poll.  Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a double-digit lead nationally over President Donald Trump, with 7 in 10 voters saying the country is on the wrong track, and majorities disapproving of the president's handling of the coronavirus and race relations.

Democrats don't believe Joe Biden's polling numbers.  Since the beginning of the 2020 campaign season, Donald Trump has been behind in almost every single poll.  When there were 16 Democrats running, America was presented with polls showing that he'd lose to almost every single one of them — and now that the nominee is former Vice President Joe Biden, we are shown polls weekly that have Mr. Biden ahead by more than 10 points, as well as winning every battleground state.  Those numbers seem not only illogical, but unbelievable — because they are — and the behavior of Democrats backs that up.  Democrats are acting with the same grasping-for-straws panic that they have been since 2016. After Hillary Clinton lost, there were excuses — then they blamed Russian collusion, James Comey, obstruction of justice, something about a phone call to Ukraine ... the list goes on and on.  It was a manic cacophony of noise with evidence ranging from anonymous sources all the way to people who cashed in on their government service by selling anti-Trump books.  Surely, a political party with such a commanding lead wouldn't need to do any of this, right?

Why I ignore the polls.  It was 29th November 2015, election results day in Bihar, one of the most populous states in India.  Almost every poll, including exit polls, had predicted a landslide victory for the challenger the National Democratic Alliance, i.e.  NDA. [...] The NDA lead began to wane, in an hour then the current government had a slim lead.  The lead grew bigger and bigger, by mid-day, it was clear that they were re-elected.  Some news personnel offered perfunctory apologies, others blamed the people for lying to the pollsters, and some refrained from talking about the polls and proceeded as if nothing had happened.  This isn't the first time and it most certainly won't be the last time that polls got it so appallingly wrong.  The big question is why do these polling agencies that consistently committed calamitous mistakes continue to be treated with the utmost reverence and reverence by news organizations?

Polls Look A Lot Like 2016, Take 'With a Grain of Salt' Experts Say.  Polls indicate Joe Biden is the favorite to win in November — but 2016 sends a different message.  An overwhelming majority of polls four years ago also indicated Donald Trump would lose, tempering voters confidence in the latest round of surveys in key battleground states, according to USA Today.  And just as they did in 2016, polls in 2020 once again show Trump losing in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  The director of the Marquette Law School poll said 2016 is "a reason to be very cautious."

Poll Shows Trump on Track to Win Reelection.  A new poll conducted by the Washington based Democracy Institute for the Sunday Express shows President Trump tied with his rival Joe Biden at 47 percent, but surpassing him in the electoral college 309 to 229.  These positive results for Trump come amid a constant drumbeat of negative media coverage in recent weeks that paints his electoral chances in November as virtually nil.  According to the shock poll, Trump is "on course to win the crucial swing states including Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin where he outpolls Vice President Biden by 48 percent to 44 percent."

It's unclear if the polls about Trump currently mean anything.  The polls have been in the news lately because Democrats are celebrating the lead Biden appears to hold while Republicans are worried that the Wuhan virus lockdowns and Black Lives Matters riots will harm Trump.  Three news items, however, illustrate just how meaningless polls are in modern politics.

What If It's All A Lie?  [Scroll down]  Didn't there arise in your mind, that agonizing Wednesday morning after Mrs. Clinton's ruination, just the faintest notion that you had been lied to?  You tracked the polls, and you reviewed the percentages — most hovering above 90% — that assured you that the glass ceiling was in for an epic shattering.  And yet, no shattering was forthcoming.  Whether expressly or by omission, you were lied to.  And it is happening again.

Media Learned Nothing after their 2016 Polling Disaster.  Harken back four years ago and recall how the media confidently predicted a Hillary Clinton landslide electoral victory over Donald Trump.  They held firm to this prediction even when the election was all but over.  At 10:20 PM ET on November 8, 2016, election night, the New York Times confidently proclaimed, in the manner of Baghdad Bob, that Hillary Clinton had an 85 percent chance of winning the election.  Long faces and tears graced cable news election night coverage shows by then and Hillary probably was on her second bottle of chardonnay, drowning her sorrows over a coronation that was not meant to be.  Yet the "paper of record" continued to push the big lie.

The Democrats Indulge in a Death Wish.  Joe Biden's present lead in the polls is a levitation.  These are the dangling entrails of the panic that the national political media, which are unofficially conducting the Democratic campaign in the unheroic absence of the putative nominee, have sown about the coronavirus and the impression, desperately promoted, identifying Trump with the recent chaos.  A public opinion climate worn down by lengthy social confinement, arrested economic activity, and high unemployment is especially vulnerable to disgruntlement about its leaders.  Given the pandemic, the recession, and the worst rioting in America in over fifty years, Trump has done well to maintain his approval rating in the mid-forties.

Joe Biden Only Wins 57% of Democrat Voters in Kentucky — And He's Supposed to be 10 Points Ahead of Trump?  The Kentucky primary was held this week.  As of Wednesday night [6/24/2020] Joe Biden won the Democrat primary but only with 57% of the vote.  Bernie Sanders, who dropped out months ago, received 19% of the vote.  Even Pocahontas received 2.6% of the Democratic vote. [...] President Trump won the GOP primary with 94% of the vote and over 94,000 votes.

Polls Are Getting Worse for Trump, Which Probably Means He Wins in a Landslide.  A CNN poll at the beginning of the month had Trump behind Biden by 14 and a new Fox News poll has him down by 12.  My instinctive response to those numbers is: on what planet can the drooling moron Biden be leading a presidential race by that much?  That's what makes me doubt the polls even more so than the fact that they were so spectacularly wrong in 2016.

The Polls Put Democrats in a Trap of Their Own Making.  Remember the heady days of June 2016, when Hillary Clinton led Donald Trump in every one of twelve major polls — by a margin of 10 points, according to ABC and the Washington Post?  Or August 2016, after the Khan imbroglio, when Clinton was beating Trump by 7 points, according to USA Today/Suffolk?  It was hardly an outlier. [...] In 2016, I predicted that Trump could lose the popular vote by as much as 4% and still win the Electoral College.  This is because roughly 4,000,000 Democrat voters in California, New York, and Illinois are in excess of the plurality needed to win those states.  The difference between winning California by 50.0001% and winning it by 99% is meaningless in a presidential election.  In fact, Trump lost the popular vote by 2.1% in 2016 but won the Electoral College, 304 to 227.

Trump Campaign Calls CNN's Brian Stelter 'Sexist' for Attack on Jenna Ellis.  President Donald Trump's re-election campaign accused CNN media reporter Brian Stelter of sexism on Sunday [8/14/2020] for telling campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis that her children and grandchildren would be ashamed of her one day.  In what Mediaite called a "trainwreck" interview on Stelter's show, Reliable Sources, the host quizzed Ellis about the campaign's threat to sue CNN over a poll last week that showed former Vice President Joe Biden fourteen points ahead.

Reports: Deep State working to humiliate, suppress GOP voters with fake polls and fake media reports.  According to new reports, Democrat bosses may be weaponizing opinion polls, coronavirus fears and the national unrest to suppress the Republican vote in November.  [Video clip]

Fake polls destroy media credibility.  The purveyors of fake news at CNN are convinced, just as they were four years ago, that they have this presidential election in the bag.  Donald Trump is done, and Joe Biden is headed for a landslide, just like Hillary Clinton was.  At this point, they have zero credibility left.  As before, CNN's confidence is severely misplaced — and we're going to prove it.  The best evidence they can present are polls that suffer from exactly the same flaws as the ones that indicated a landslide victory for Clinton in 2016.

In 2020, be more skeptical than ever of polls.  A recent spate of mostly bad polls for President Trump has driven a narrative that he's on his way out.  Pundits have declared his reelection in "deep trouble," and they have highlighted polls showing him "hemorrhaging older voters."  Even Republicans in swing states have raised alarms about how vulnerable Trump is to defeat.  But in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic rips through the world, the uncertainty is so great that it's sillier than ever to read so much into polls this far out from the election.

The 2020 Election Will Be a Landslide For Biden.  Unless Trump Wins.  Today's edition of "Fun With Polls" has one survey showing Joe Biden winning in a landslide over Donald Trump in the November presidential election because the economy is so bad.  Oxford Economics developed a model that is predicting a "historic" Biden sweep. [...] Meanwhile, others see a very real chance that Trump wins.  Perhaps losing the popular vote, but strong enough in battleground states to carry off a win. [...] That Oxford model is a load of malarkey, to be sure.  Basing a model on past performance by the American electorate in 2020 is borderline insane.

Media in Panic Mode over Latest Presidential Polls.  CNN, in their dogged and unending quest to overturn the 2016 presidential election and drive President Trump from office, is in full-on campaign mode.  Just as in the last presidential election cycle, opinion polls are a campaign staple of the media and the Democrat party.  Polls are not being used as they should, to reflect public opinion, but instead to shape opinion, a form of political propaganda.

The Teflon Campaign.  Between March 11, when the coronavirus prompted the NBA to suspend its season, and May 14, some 84,000 Americans died of coronavirus, more than 36 million lost their jobs, and Congress appropriated $3.6 trillion in new spending.  It is not foolish to suppose that these world-shaking events would affect the presidential election.  On the contrary:  One would expect a dramatic swing toward either the incumbent or the challenger.  But look at the polls.  Not only has there been no big shift.  There has been no shift.

CNN Poll Shows Trump Crushing Biden in Battleground States.  A CNN poll of 15 crucial battleground states shows President Trump crushing Joe Biden by seven full points, 52 to 45 percent.  The poll covered the expected swing states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  In its national poll, the fake news outlet shows Burisma Biden beating Trump 51 to 46 percent, but the presidency is not a national race, it is a race in each of the 50 states.

Despite Polling, Cell Phone Data Shows Americans Are Going Out Again.  Over the past two weeks, a slew of polling has come out showing that Americans overwhelmingly support the coronavirus lockdown measures throughout much of the country.  A recent poll in Massachusetts had 85 percent supporting the extension of restrictions through May 18.  Nationally, according to a Forbes poll in late April, 87 percent of Americans favor continuing the lockdown.  But cell phone tracking data is telling a different story.  Apple looked at changes in routing requests on its phones and found that beginning in mid-March their users' mobility began dropping, hitting a nadir of -60 percent of the baseline in April.  By May 4, that number had jumped up to -20 percent of the baseline.  That's a 40 percent increase in travel.

The Editor says...
Actually that's a 100 percent increase.  The number went from Baseline x 0.4 to Baseline x 0.8.

Trump's Prospects in November.  Right now all the best polls show Trump trailing Joe Biden by significant margins.  Why is it no one seems to believe them?  Past experience, no doubt:  Trump in 2016 ran ahead of his polls in most of the Republican primaries, and then again in November.  True, the nationwide polls had Hillary's popular vote margin over Trump about right, but that accuracy depended on the lumpy Democratic vote mostly in just two states — California and New York.  The state-by-state polls were mostly wrong, especially in the key swing states.

Trump Supporters:  Fear Not Those Discouraging Polls.  What are we to make of the dire predictions of President Donald Trump's political doom — that he doesn't stand a chance for reelection in November?  I've read numerous mainstream media reports gloating over polls that show presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden surging and Trump plummeting.  I'm not one to casually dismiss polls, but I view them skeptically, especially given their poor track record in more recent elections, and pollsters' brazen manipulation of them to sway public opinion.  Don't the wildly failed polls forecasting a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016 warrant our skepticism?  Preelection polling was uniformly wrong, but so were Election Day exit polls.

Don't Expect Losers of Shutdown to Sit Idly by Forever.  Public opinion polls are not, nor should they ever be, the sine qua non of republican government.  Public opinion is influenced by the government at least as often as it influences the government.  That is probably the case here.  For weeks, public health authorities have been warning the people that these quarantines are necessary and prudent.  Without disputing their proclamations, it is hardly controversial to say polling respondents are mainly repeating this back to the pollsters.

Joe Biden Is Cooked.  Despite polls showing that he leads President Trump in key states and in the country overall, there remains something seriously missing and not credible in the putative presidential nomination of Joe Biden.  The polls are never accurate with Trump, and there is both a reticence by his supporters to identify themselves and some sampling errors by the main polling organizations because of the unusually high numbers of people this president draws to the polls in his support who are not otherwise frequent voters.

Why Biden's Polling Lead vs.  Trump Isn't as Solid as It Looks.  President Trump and Joe Biden begin the general election campaign locked in a highly competitive contest that remains fought along the lines of the 2016 presidential election, according to national and battleground state polls.  If anyone holds the early edge, it is Mr. Biden.  He leads by an average of six points in national live-interview polls of registered voters.  But the election will be decided by voters in the battleground states, not registered voters nationwide, and there the story is not nearly so clear or rosy for Mr. Biden.

Poll finds Biden with 11-point national lead on Trump.  Former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Trump by 11 points in a new national survey released by CNN on Thursday [4/9/2020].  The poll finds Biden with 53 percent support against 42 percent support for Trump.  That's the largest margin for any poll released this month.  A Monmouth University survey released on Thursday [4/9/2020] found Biden with a 4-point national lead.  Most other recent surveys put Biden's advantage between 3 points and 8 points.

Cohen Hired IT Firm to Rig Early CNBC, Drudge Polls to Favor Trump.  In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump's personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss's favor before the presidential campaign.  In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him both a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, [...]

The Editor says...
Interesting, but at that point, you'll hit the WSJ pay wall.  To me, it's not that interesting.

Fox News Poll Shows Biden Defeating Trump By 9 Percent.  Fox News released a new poll on Friday [3/27/2020] that seems to have some bad news for President Donald Trump.  However, there might be more to these numbers than it appears.  According to the poll, which was conducted between March 21 [and] 24 revealed that if the presidential election were held today, former Vice President Joe Biden would defeat Trump by nine percentage points. [...] The poll revealed that 49% of participants indicated that they would cast their votes for Biden while 40% said they would vote for Trump.

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Here's what a Sanders-Trump map could look like.  With Bernie Sanders looking more and more like the potential Democratic presidential nominee, the good people at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia have released their first take on what the electoral map might look like in a matchup between the senator from Vermont and President Donald Trump.


Biden Says He Can Beat Trump Because an NBC Poll Says So.  "In terms of who can beat Donald Trump, NBC did a poll yesterday," Biden said.  ["]It says Joe Biden is best equipped to beat Donald Trump.  That's what your poll said.  It says I can beat him in those toss-up states, too, the states we have to win.["]

Why the 2020 presidential campaign polls are misleading.  [Scroll down]  It is obvious that the vast majority of Democrats simply want to know who the best person for that job is, but through very little fault of their own, they are not being given the proper information with which to make that critical determination.  Part of the blame goes to a gutless and compromised news media that, for various reasons, has no self-interest in harshly vetting candidates like Bernie Sanders (he has a cult who will be [angry] at them), Pete Buttigieg (he is gay and, therefore, it is not in the DNA of the liberal elements of the news media to be able to criticize him unless there is no other choice), and Mike Bloomberg (he is literally paying their salaries right now by spending millions in media advertising).  But I mostly blame the pollsters who have been remarkably unimaginative and, frankly, overly politically correct in their methods, which have provided voters with mostly meaningless and deceiving data.

New Hampshire Takeaways the Mainstream Media Missed.  [#1] Polls Do Not Matter Until the Last Few Weeks of an Election.  New Hampshire proves something about polling that I have been writing for years: polls do not matter until elections are within four or fewer weeks.  The average person has no idea what in the world is going on. [...] Because most people are utterly ignorant but are ashamed to confess their ignorance to pollsters, polls are relatively meaningless until four or fewer weeks before elections because people start to pay attention to the candidates and issues only as elections draw near, if even then.  Until that time draws near, people simply mutter what they think their friends, customers, clients, patients, and relatives think.

Joe Biden flopped in the Iowa caucuses despite a strong showing in recent polling.  Former Vice President Joe Biden came in fourth place in the Iowa caucuses with about 13% of the vote, according to preliminary results released Tuesday evening, underperforming his recent polling.  Biden came in behind Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.  As of 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Sanders and Buttigieg led with 62% of precincts reporting.  The results came after an approximately 20-hour delay as a result of a malfunctioning mobile app.

The Editor says...
Something tells me 62% of the precincts reported over the phone, with a paper trail that's highly suspect, and the true results may never be known with any certainty.

James Carville:  Iowa Democrat Turnout Was Terrible and What Happened to The Polling?  Democrat political strategist James Carville appears on MSNBC and plays the roll [sic] of Toto pulling back the curtain on a false media-constructed narrative.  Carville notes this was supposed to be a year of hyped democrat voter enthusiasm, but it just isn't there.  Additionally, Carville asks what [...] happened to the polling over the past two weeks?

Iowa caucuses: legitimate disaster or cover for a more nefarious plan?  At this point, inquiring minds are getting paranoid about whether the DNC is desperately trying to run away from Bernie's apparent momentum. [...] Working with CNN, the Des Moines Register commissioned a poll in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses.  However, owing to some confusion about whether Pete Buttigieg was among the candidate choices offered to those taking the poll, CNN and the Register decided to pull the poll.  That's the official story.  The unofficial story is that the poll shows that both Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang polled so high that the Democrat establishment made the decision to yank the poll, lest it help those two candidates on the day of the caucus.  On the one hand, it's a great conspiracy theory, composed of imaginary dots connected by invisible lines.  On the other hand, knowing that the DNC essentially took the 2016 nomination from Bernie and bestowed it on Hillary, and knowing that the DNC is in a blind panic about Bernie's momentum... suddenly, anything is possible.

Mission Accomplished — Chaos in Iowa Caucuses Helps and Hurts All The Right Candidates.  Despite the media proclaiming Biden was leading the field for the past six months during the impeachment narrative, Joe Biden likely came in fourth or fifth.  He may not have gained any delegates in Iowa.  No-one will pay attention to that now... and few will question how the "media polling" could have gotten it so wrong.  [Tip: they lie]

Unreleased final Iowa poll had Biden in fourth.  A highly respected Iowa poll that was canceled from being released amid integrity issues had Joe Biden in fourth place, which could have drastically altered the news cycle and voter considerations in the days before Monday's Democratic caucuses.  According to leaked results verified by FiveThirtyEight, the final Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll of likely Democratic caucus-goers before Monday's first-in-the-nation caucuses had Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading with 22%, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in second at 18%, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 16%, and the former vice president in fourth with 13%.

Release of Famed Iowa Poll Cancelled at the last Minute After Buttigieg Campaign Complains.  The final Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers was pulled Saturday night [2/1/2020] shortly before it was to be released, supposedly because of a complaint that a name was left off the list of choices.  As a result, the historically accurate, 76-year-old Iowa poll will not be released before Iowa voters caucus on Monday.  CNN had planned an hour-long show to cover the results of the poll live and had to cancel at the last minute.  The announcement stunned the political world and led to widespread speculation that the real reason the poll was spiked was because they didn't like the results.

CNN, Des Moines Register Cancel Iowa Poll After Pete Buttigieg [was] Left Out.  The Des Moines Register and CNN announced Saturday night that they would not release their crucial Iowa poll, citing an error in which one candidate's name was left out of polling questions.  Jonathan Martin of the New York Times tweeted that the candidate who was left out was former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg:

Des Moines Register, partners cancel release of Iowa Poll over respondent concerns.  The Des Moines Register, CNN and Selzer & Co. have made the decision to not release the final installment of the CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll as planned Saturday evening.  Nothing is more important to the Register and its polling partners than the integrity of the Iowa Poll.  Today, a respondent raised an issue with the way the survey was administered, which could have compromised the results of the poll.  It appears a candidate's name was omitted in at least one interview in which the respondent was asked to name their preferred candidate.

Final installment of gold-standard Iowa Poll pulled after legitimacy complaint.  Political junkies waiting for the final installment of the famed Iowa Poll were left disappointed after its release was canceled.  The last Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll of likely Democratic caucusgoers before Monday's opening contest in Iowa was pulled late Saturday after an Iowa City man complained he wasn't given former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as an option to a question about his preferred candidate, according to reports.  The poll's results were due to be published simultaneously by Iowa's premier newspaper and during a live broadcast by CNN before both outlets canned their plans.

Democrats [are] Becoming More Desperate, and More Dangerous.  The bigger question is, where do the Democrats go from here?  Even their own delusional polls show their candidates either losing to President Trump or ahead by low single digits, which, as experience bears witness, means they are really losing by double digits.

Remember: Pay Little Attention to Current National General Election Polls.  According to Real Clear Politics, in spite of the economy and everything else going well in the United States of America, almost every current national poll has President Trump trailing a hypothetical Democrat opponent.  Whether Biden; Sanders; Warren; or even Buttigieg, Bloomberg, or Klobuchar, President Trump trails them all in nearly every poll.  As of this writing, the latest general election national poll by CNN, IBD/TIPP, Emerson, Fox News, Quinnipiac, and SurveyUSA has President Trump behind almost every possible Democrat candidate.  In 32 different matchups from the six polling agencies previously mentioned, President Trump leads in only two scenarios.  The latest IBD/TIPP national poll has Trump beating Warren 47% to 46%, and the latest Emerson poll has Trump beating Buttigieg 51% to 49%.  According to these polls, even Democrats who have since dropped out of the race were beating President Trump.

After the big Schiff show finale, public support craters for impeachment -poll.  Not too long ago, the press was calling President Trump a goner.  Remember this early October Fox News poll that shocked so many people?  They had it that a majority of randomly selected registered voters, 50% to 41%, were all in for impeaching and removing President Trump.  We had our doubts, but the press reported that as perfectly representative of public opinion, undoubtedly a lit fuse to the eventual ouster of President Trump. [...] So now we've got the impeachment needle moving decisively to the other side.  Not only did the needle not move the way Noonan forecast it might move, but it moved in exactly the opposite direction.  What happened?

Nolte: Massive Media Fail As Poll Of Polls Prove Trump's More Popular Than Obama.  Real Clear Politics, a non-partisan (and indispensable) site that tracks countless polls and averages them, also tracks the job approval numbers for President Trump and former (thank heaven) President Obama in a way that allows us to see how the two presidents compare on this same day during their respective presidencies. [...] We are now entering our fourth year of a media jihad against Trump, a hate campaign unlike any other in modern history.  Literally, billions and billions and billions of corporate dollars are being spent by every corner of the establishment media to destroy one man, this one man:  Trump.  The "Very Fine People" Hoax, the Russia Collusion Hoax, the Fish Food Hoax, the Brett Kavanaugh-Rapist Hoax, the Kurds Are Being Exterminated Hoax — I'm forgetting a hundred more — and now we have this laughable Impeachment Hoax.  Compare that to Barry Obama, a man this same media spent billions and billions and billions of corporate dollars to shield, to protect, to assure and reassure the public of his unique magnificence, competence, and holiness.

Polls: Endless Pursuit of Impeachment Spells Trouble for Democrats.  The Democrats' desperate pursuit of impeachment is driving key voters away — a sign of danger for Democrats going into 2020 — polling reveals.  Polls, in recent days, have indicated that the general public is growing weary of House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff's (D-CA) endless pursuit of impeachment, with survey after survey showing opposition to impeachment growing and support falling.  The results, however, are exacerbated when key voters, such as independents, are isolated.

The myth of Mayor Pete.  What is it about Mayor Pete Buttigieg that's going to most appeal to the people of Atlanta?  Is it the years he spent in consultancy on the McKinsey payroll?  Perhaps it's the large donations he's secured from a few Silicon Valley donors — because we know how much the new left loves billionaires. [...] The mayor's recent rise can be attributed to a few factors.  There is that tech money, which he's been pouring into early primary state TV advertising.  This in turn leads to an outsized performance in the polls there — it's one of the areas where money really talks.  Just ask Tom Steyer.  A St Anselm poll released Tuesday [11/19/2019] shows him with a 10-point lead over Biden and Warren in New Hampshire.  Never mind that it only surveyed 255 people and has a 6.1 percent margin of error — it's the headlines that count.

Bloomberg leads Trump by 6 points in 2020 election matchup.  Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg leads President Donald Trump by 6 percentage points in a hypothetical 2020 matchup, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico poll.  Forty-three percent of likely voters would back Bloomberg if the election were held today [11/10/2019], compared to 37% who would vote for Trump.  Twenty-one percent those polled, however, said they don't know or don't have an opinion.  The poll comes as Bloomberg considers jumping into the Democratic presidential primary.  The billionaire is still not sure if he'll enter the race, a source told CNBC, but he is troubled by what he sees in the Democratic field.

Another poll on the same day shows something entirely different:
Michael Bloomberg [is] more disliked than any Democratic candidate: poll.  Michael Bloomberg would face a tough start to his presidential bid — as a new poll Sunday [11/10/2019] has found him with little support and nearly a quarter of Democratic primary voters who dislike him.  Despite grabbing wall-to-wall press coverage over the past week since hints of his possible run surfaced, Bloomberg came out as the favorite candidate for just 4-percent of Democratic primary voters, according to the Morning Consult poll.  It puts the former New York mayor in sixth place, just behind Sen. Kamala Harris and Mayor Pete Buttigieg and clearly trailing Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 18- and 20-percent support respectively.

Lefty Pundits to Democratic Presidential Field: 'You're Losers!'.  Over on the far left, New York magazine's Jonathan Chait writes that the latest battleground states poll shows that Democrats are living "in a fantasy world."  [...] As Chait is forced to conclude, "if you've been relying on national polls for your picture of the race, you're probably living in la-la land."

We're Stuck in the Middle of a Grand Illusion.  A lot of polling out there today, folks, a lot of misleading, misrepresentative polling.  It's stunning how we continue to be stuck in the middle of a grand illusion. [...] The Mueller report shows no collusion, no obstruction, and yet they continue as though it does.  Now, there's a very interesting reason why this is the case.  I'm gonna illustrate here in a minute.  They believe that there is no such thing as public opinion.  I'm telling you right now they think public opinion doesn't matter.  Public opinion is what their published polls say it is.  That's a big difference, folks.  It is a huge difference.  There is no public opinion.

Do These Numbers Tell Us More Than the Polls?  One of the casualties of the Democrats war on free speech is political polls.  Polls have become useless because Republicans no longer feel safe replying to a pollster, even on on-line.  Polls are purposely skewed, often by the blatant expedient of polling more Democrats, as was done in the recent Fox impeachment poll.  So, we are reduced to anecdotal evidence about where public opinion is trending.  We often hear of the culture war victories of America's new Marxist left, because they fully control our propaganda press.  Are they really winning public opinion, or is that, too, propaganda meant to discourage conservatives and suppress our vote?  Beyond the headlines, things do not look so rosy for the woke left.

Pew Pushes Polling Propaganda.  Pollsters are at it again, pushing sketchy polls, not to reflect public opinion, but to shape it.  This is called propaganda, a popular tool for dictators who want to control the information flow from an all-powerful government to their subjects, the people.  What once passed for journalism is now mostly propaganda, an effort by major media organizations to insert themselves into the political process, to push their agenda, even if it means throwing any pretense of journalistic principle and integrity to the wind.

Impeachment Becomes A Psychodrama Of the Press.  Fox News, which is generally well-disposed to the president, published a poll last week that 51% of Americans believe the president should be impeached and removed from office.  Fox's polls aren't very accurate, though their news coverage and comment are quite professional.  But this one is bunk.  Between 40% and 50% of Americans may wish there were a reason to remove Mr. Trump, or hope that he won't be reelected.  That figure is insufficient to change congressional votes on an impeachment resolution, given that about 45% of the country is militantly pro-Trump and probably 10 million others will hold their noses and vote for his substantive performance despite his stylistic foibles.

Fox News Impeachment Poll Underrepresented Republicans.  If the Fox News poll had been weighted to accurately reflect party affiliation in the United States, it would have found 44.9 percent favoring impeachment, and 44.4 percent opposing, according to analysis from the New York Post.  That's still a plurality, which is arguably not great for Trump, but it's not as significant as a majority.  Many outlets jumped on the Fox News poll as proof that things look dire for Trump.  But this poll really shows not much has changed.  In May of 2017, a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that 43 percent of voters wanted Congress to begin impeachment proceedings.  That was just a few short months after Trump took office.  Despite three years of an anti-Trump media scandalizing everything, there really hasn't been huge movement of the needle on impeachment.

Fox News is Joining the Fake News Pollsters.  [Scroll down]  As the impeachment scheme falls apart, with no actual wrongdoing by the President, no bribes or extortion, no pay-to-play, no collusion, or anything else which Trump is accused of, but which Joe Biden actually did, the media has gone into overdrive to push the "everyone hates Trump and wants him thrown from office" mantra.  Who needs high crimes or misdemeanors if a majority of America wants Trump removed from office?  Impeachment by opinion poll.  Impeachment is being boosted and promoted by the usual Democrat media outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, the NY Times, and the Washington Post, but Fox News, so-called "fair and balanced," has been considered more reasoned than the rest of the Trump-loathing media.  At least until Rupert Murdoch's two sons got more involved in the news business, tilting Fox News leftward.

New York Post:  Fox News 'Misrepresented' Impeachment Poll.  The New York Post released an analysis Saturday [10/12/2019], which found Fox News had "mispresented" their poll, suggesting a majority of Americans supported impeachment of President Donald Trump.  Fox News released a poll this week which found that 51 percent of registered voters want President Trump impeached and removed from office, while 4 percent want Trump impeached but want him to stay in office, and 40 percent of voters oppose impeachment.  The Fox News poll found that supposedly showed a double-digit increase in the number of voters who wanted Trump impeached and removed from office.

Fox News pollster Braun Research misrepresented impeachment poll: analysis.  The poll released last week by Fox News that claimed most Americans favor the impeachment of President Trump underrepresented Republican and independent voters, The [New York] Post has found.  The poll said 51% of voters were in favor of Trump's impeachment and removal from office, while 40% did not want him impeached.  Princeton, New Jersey, pollster Braun Research, which conducted the survey, noted 48% of its respondents were Democrats.  But the actual breakdown of party-affiliation is 31% Democrat, 29% Republican and 38% independent, according to Gallup.

About that Fox News poll claiming 51% of voters want Trump out.  [Scroll down]  It's undoubtedly a lot of randomly selected registered voters, even if it's not 51%, and that's likely a reflection of the wall-to-wall negative media coverage President Trump has gotten over this impeachment whistleblower issue, which I've seen on television news broadcasts. [...] The bad thing with this is that it will embolden Democrats to keep pressing forward to remove President Trump from office, even on just obstruction grounds since they aren't doing any "impeachment inquiry" honestly or fairly to all sides.  They've gagged Republicans from asking questions, and their refusal to hold a real impeachment inquiry is nothing more than a bid to keep subpoena powers from Republicans.  Is any of that known to voters?  Not most Fox poll voters.  Worse still, the Drudge Report, for inexplicable reasons, is featuring almost exclusively negative Trump news these days, along with the NeverTrumps at Fox News.

What makes Fox News's 'Trump impeachment' poll totally unrealiable.  Polling in modern America has degenerated into a vehicle to create news and headlines and to shape public opinion on an issue or an individual.  Over the past few days, the lead on every cable news channel and the headline in virtually all newspapers is Fox News claiming in its exclusive poll that 51% of Americans now favor impeachment and removal of President Trump.  How did the Fox polling unit come up with this number?  The Fox news polling companies interviewed 1,003 registered voters, ostensibly throughout the length and breadth of the United States.  Many polling companies use either all adult Americans (254 million) or registered voters (158 million in 2016) as their universe for polling.  Obviously, the greater the number of potential people to contact and question, the easier a poll is to complete and to skew a result.  In reality, what matters is who votes in an election.

NPR Poll:  More Americans Trust Trump Administration Than Congress, The Media.  A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released Thursday [10/10/2019] shows that more Americans trust the Trump administration than the media and Congress as a whole.  "The poll of 1,123 Americans was conducted with live telephone Oct. 3 through Oct. 8, 2019," according to NPR and asked a series of questions related to President Donald J. Trump's presidency.  When asked, "How much do you trust Congress:  A great deal, a good amount, not very much, not at all?"  66 percent of Americans said they trust Congress "not very much/not at all."  31 percent said they trusted Congress a "great deal/a good amount."  When asked the same question regarding trust about the media, 69 percent said they trusted our news "not very much/not at all."  29 percent of Americans said they trusted the media.

Poll Shows Partisan Animosity Has Deepened Since 2016.  A 64% majority of Republican respondents felt that Democrats are more closed-minded than other Americans.  Sixty-three percent said Democrats are unpatriotic, and 55% said they are immoral.  Small numbers of Republicans said Democrats are lazy and unintelligent — 46% and 36%, respectively.  On the other side, 75% of Democratic respondents said that Republicans are closed-minded.  Forty-seven percent said members of the GOP are immoral, 38% said Republicans are unintelligent, 23% said they are unpatriotic, and 20% said they are lazy.

Andy McCarthy on impeachment push:  It's a political process 'masquerading' as a legal one.  The impeachment inquiry is a "political process kind of masquerading as a legal one," former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy McCarthy said Thursday [10/10/2019].  According to a Fox News Poll released Wednesday, just over half of voters want President Trump impeached and removed from office.  A new high of 51 percent wants Trump impeached and removed from office, another 4 percent want him impeached but not removed, and 40 percent oppose impeachment altogether.  In July, 42 percent favored impeachment and removal, while five percent said impeach but don't remove him, and 45 percent opposed impeachment.

Independent voters now favor Trump over Democratic front-runners:  Poll.  Independent voters are warming up to President Trump, says a new survey which finds that Mr. Trump is now besting Democratic front-runners in a theoretical matchup.  "A new IBD-TIPP poll shows President Trump has gained significant ground with independent voters in head-to-head matchups with the Democrat Party frontrunners for president," wrote Matt Margolis, a contributor to PJ Media.  He cited the factors.  Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, for instance, leads Mr. Trump by just one percentage point among independents, down from Mr. Biden's 18 percentage point lead in September.  Against Sen. Elizabeth Warren, 49% of independents backed Mr. Trump, while 43% favored the Massachusetts Democrat.

Trump Invades the Democratic Party.  President Trump's path to reelection goes through the Democratic Party.  Goal No. 1 is to get Democrats to eliminate his greatest threat:  Joe Biden. [...] The general election polls are what keep him up at night.  They show the former vice president beating Trump like a drum.  The most recent national Fox News poll puts Biden ahead of Trump by 14 points.  The ABC News/Washington Post poll gives him a 15-point lead.

The Editor says...
President Trump will almost certainly be re-elected.  There is no question that he can beat any candidate announced thus far.  In my opinion, the polls cited in this article are in error.

A deeper dive into one poll shows what Americans really think about impeachment.  The latest CBS News poll headlined the findings that "Majority of Americans favor an impeachment inquiry into President Trump," 55 percent to 45 percent.  But what if there's more than meets the eye?  Like many polls, there is plenty of fodder within the CBS News poll results to support either side.  The trick is who does the reporting and which points they select to highlight.  What if it turns out there are many other headlines — and statistics — that could have been chosen from the same poll, ones that give an entirely different take on the situation?  Here's one of them:  "Majority of Americans in Democrat-heavy poll favor an impeachment inquiry into President Trump."  Wouldn't most Americans looking for unbiased information want the context that the poll interviewed more Democrats than Republicans?

Presidential Polling Propaganda.  According to the latest presidential opinion polls, the 2020 presidential election is over.  Newsweek is giddy, reporting several days ago, "The latest Fox News poll about the 2020 election shows President Donald Trump losing to every Democratic frontrunner including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren."  Propaganda, used extensively in the past by communists and Nazis, is information put out by governments, or their media allies, to push an agenda and influence people rather than to inform them. [...] The Fox News poll noted above was not actually conducted by Fox, but instead commissioned to Beacon Research and Shaw and Company Research.  Calling it a "Fox News Poll" is part of the propaganda, meaning that if Trump's favorite news network thinks his electoral prospects are nil, then it must be really bad for Trump and his supporters.

Florida Poll:  Trump Narrowly Leads Top Democrat Candidates in General Election Matchup.  A Florida Atlantic University poll released Wednesday [9/18/2019] shows President Trump narrowly leading his potential Democrat challengers in a hypothetical 2020 general election matchup.  The poll — conducted September 12-15 among 934 registered voters in Florida — showed the president narrowly leading his top Democrat challengers in a general election matchup in the Sunshine State.

The Editor says...
Depending on the sample, the race might be closer in Florida, especially south of 29° North, than elsewhere in the country; however, I doubt if the leading Democrat candidate (whoever it is next year) has a serious chance of defeating President Trump.

Why Polls Now?  Why are we so beset with polls so long before an election?  An election whose candidates are still unknown?  Just to be clear, these are not opinion polls, nor election polls; they are variants of push polls.  These polls are used not to reflect public opinion, but to try to shape opinion or grow an audience.

Fake News, Fake Polls — CNN Edition.  It's been a tough few weeks for CNN.  Who knew pushing fake news could be so challenging? [...] CNN's story of the week is, "6 in 10 say Trump does not deserve a second term."  Well, that settles it.  If CNN says so, it must be true.

Dana Loesch Explains How Media Manipulates Polling On Firearms.  Gun expert Dana Loesch dissected a new ABC News/Washington Post poll on gun control on Monday [9/9/2019] and explained why polling on the issue is oftentimes misleading. [...] Loesch began by highlighting problems with the following question that was asked:  "Would you support or oppose a nationwide ban on high-capacity ammunition clips, meaning those containing more than 10 bullets?"  "This is one question," Loesch tweeted.  "First of all, the terminology is incorrect (this matters for a couple reasons) and who determined over 10 rounds means 'high-capacity?'  In some, that isn't even standard, it's below standard."

North Carolina Special Election Poll:  McCready Lead Oversampled Democrats.  A poll released on Friday [8/30/2019] that shows Democrat Dan McCready leading Republican Dan Bishop by four points in the September 10 special election in North Carolina's Ninth Congressional District apparently oversampled Democrats.

Americans Feel Better About Race Relations, And Other Trump Poll Results The Press Doesn't Want You To Know About.  How do you cover a poll that shows satisfaction with the economy, despite all the harrumphing about an impending recession, is much higher than it ever was under President Barack Obama?  Or reveals that views on race relations are actually better today than three years ago?  Or shows that most think the political system is being shaken up in a good way?  Answer:  You don't.  That is, if you'rea mainstream media outlet and the poll is your own.

Have Pollsters Learned Nothing since the Last Election?  While the moniker "fake news" is typically reserved for cable news and some of the more prominent newspapers in America, the term could also be applied to presidential polls.  How many pollsters predicted Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election by a landslide up to and including the day of the actual election?  The "paper of record," the New York Times, told readers on election day, Nov. 8, 2016, that Hillary Clinton had an 85 percent chance of winning the election.

Joe Biden won't win.  Joe Biden has led Democratic polls since day one, holding the kind of consistent lead within his party that Donald Trump held heading into the 2016 primaries.  The numbers say he will be the nominee.  They also say he will beat Trump.  They're wrong:  you should still bet against Biden getting the nomination or getting into the White House.

Volatile presidential polls spark new round of anxieties.  Trying to figure out the state of the Democratic presidential race?  Get in line.  Public opinion surveys have varied by the day, particularly in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where some candidates can point to individual polls to argue they are building momentum.  Former Vice President Joe Biden has held a relatively steady lead in national polls, though an Economist-YouGov poll this week found him holding just a 1 point lead over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Dems Rely on Phony Impeachment Polling.  [Scroll down]  In the Fox News poll, those surveyed were 46 percent Democrat and only 40 percent Republican, a 6 point Democrat oversampling. [...] Interestingly, when asked if Trump should be impeached but not removed from office, only 9 percent favor this approach while 77 percent believe he should not be impeached at all.  This is quite a disconnect suggesting that those surveyed may not understand the Constitutional process for impeachment and conviction.  How many low information voters believe that if Trump is impeached, Hillary Clinton automatically becomes president?

President Trump Slams Fox News As New Poll Shows Biden Up 10 Points On Trump!  Some things just don't smell right.  They don't pass the "smell test".  In other words, they're so fishy that your common sense just tells you they can't possibly be right.  And that's the case with the latest Fox News poll claiming that Sleepy Joe Biden has a 10 point lead on President Donald J. Trump.

After 2016, pollsters have no clue what'll happen in 2020 — but bookies do.  When you want to know who's going to win the next presidential election, don't read the mainstream newspapers or tune in to the cable networks.  And forget the pollsters — they don't know diddly.  Just check in with the bookies.  "Donald Trump is still favored to win the 2020 Election with -120 average odds," Sports Betting Dime wrote last week.  That means you'd have to bet $120 just to win $100.  Them's some pretty good odds that Trump'll repeat.

Democrat Internal Poll of Swing Voters Is Leaked and the Results Are Brutal.  Some Democrat strategist is going to wake up in a cold sweat later tonight after seeing this.  The Democratic Party conducted an internal poll of swing voters, including their feelings on the "squad" and socialism.  The result are absolutely brutal when juxtaposed with the stated positions of those running in the 2020 Democratic primary race.  The poll was leaked to Axios and here are some of the results. [...]

Poll: Megan Rapinoe Beats Trump in Hypothetical Presidential Race.  A recent poll from Public Policy Polling, showed U.S. Women's National Team (USWNT) co-captain Megan Rapinoe defeating President Trump in a hypothetical 2020 presidential matchup.

The Editor says...
Being a troublemaker is never a resumé enhancement, except in politics.

Poll Shocker:  Trump Ties With 'Unnamed Socialist'.  The headline out of the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll was that President Trump's approval ratings had hit an all-time high. [...] If it weren't for the relentlessly negative coverage he gets in the press or the constant attacks by politicians, pundits and celebrities, Trump's approval number would probably be 10 points higher.

The deciding factor in the 2020 presidential campaign will be surprisingly simple.  While a majority of Americans tell pollsters they definitely will not vote to extend Trump's White House lease for a second term, a majority also say they believe he will be reelected.  How does that work?

Wishful thinking on the part of ABC News:
Trump reaches career-high approval, yet faces a range of re-election risks:  Poll.  Bolstered by a strong economy, Donald Trump reached the highest job approval rating of his career in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll and runs competitively for re-election against four of five possible Democratic contenders.  Yet he remains broadly unpopular across personal and professional measures, marking his vulnerabilities in the 2020 election.

Who Really Believes Biden Can Beat Trump?  According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, however, if the 2020 election were held today, Biden would beat President Trump by 10 points.  If this inspires skepticism, it won't be ameliorated by the finding in the same survey that Trump's approval rating is at the highest point of his presidency.  The new poll found that 47 percent of registered voters say they approve of Trump compared to 42 percent in April.  Meanwhile, Biden's lead among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination is dwindling.

The Polls Show Trump Lagging Behind Biden And Everyone Else, But The Betting Market Tells A Whole Other Story.  Polls mean nothing, and we all know then-candidate Donald Trump was down big-time in almost every one back in 2016 for, well, pretty much the entire cycle until the actual election results proved the polls to be a giant sack of you know what. [...] Even so, wouldn't it be great to hear a little good news?  Well, I've got some - not from polls, but from political betting aggregator website US-Bookies.com.  The site, which uses millions of betting dollars worldwide to provide market trends, also specializes in U.S. politics and who wagerers think will win at any given time.  Political betting is currently illegal in the U.S., but is alive and well in other markets.  In fact, US-Bookies.com predicted via press release Tuesday [6/25/2019] that over $100 million will be spent in the 2020 race, "making it the biggest non-sports betting event of all time."

Biden's Mythical Mass of Support.  Something very strange is going on with our news media, as it covers the state of the 2020 campaign.  Donald Trump, according to the big news outlets (CNN, the New York Times, ABC, the Washington Post, and their brethren), is on the ropes.  The polls from these same news outlets show him losing by catastrophic margins to virtually every Democratic candidate.  Even Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who is polling at 2 percent among Democrats, would defeat Trump in every key state.  Joe Biden — according to the polls and the pundits — would crush Trump even in the reddest of the red states.  Forget the Midwest — Biden is so wildly popular, even Texas is now out of reach for the GOP.  Quinnipiac says Biden will squash Trump like a bug in Florida — 50 percent to 41 percent.  In fact, another Quinnipiac poll reports a tsunami of Bidenophilia is sweeping the nation from coast to coast.  "Joe Biden is ahead by landslide proportions," says Quinnipiac.

The Editor says...
The news media thrive on neck-and-neck horse races, where the lead changes every hour, depending on who's speaking.  An impending landslide doesn't compel you to tune in every day to learn the latest details.  Sensationalism sells advertising.

MainStream Media continues to be duped by anti-Trump pollsters.  With headlines, the mainstream media is able to direct the national narrative.  Headlines told us that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.  They told us Donald Trump would never, ever win.

Trump and the Latest Polls:  Summertime Blues or More Fake News?  Recent polls show President Donald Trump in big trouble, likely to lose in a landslide to many of the 20-plus Democrat contenders.  Once again, the media tell their dwindling audience how "the walls are closing in" on Trump and how no one likes him.  Should Trump-supporters be worried?  Or is this just the latest edition of the Fake News Gazette, courtesy of the Trump-loathing media?

Trump's 'Orlando Poll' Makes Stale Bread Out of Of Fox Poll.  Some 20,000 patriots cheered the president on at the packed-house Amway Center [6/18/2019]. [...] The Fox News poll, released within a few days before Trump's official re-election launch, and which may have intended to leave the masses reeling in shock with the 'news' that Trump was trailing behind Democrat primary contender Joe Biden and raving socialist Senator Bernie Sanders by 10 and 9 points respectively, is looking pretty stale after Orlando.

Art of the Hype: [the] Media's early-poll fascination [is] about ratings, revenue, not sound reporting.  It's campaign season and the Democrats are scrambling for traction, so guess what, America — make way for the weekly, daily, hourly horse race of polls.  That, and the accompanying snarky pundit swipes at this current president.  And not just any polls.  Polls specifically showing Democrats, the favored class of mainstream media types everywhere, are firmly in the lead.  Let the eye-rolling begin.  Let's not pretend for even a moment these surveys mean anything.

Fake Polls Are Back Again.  Since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Donald Trump has masterfully labeled the media as "fake news" for their ongoing liberal bias and censorship of conservatives.  One method the "fake news" media uses to ridicule President Trump is to champion supposedly independent polls that show his low approval rating.  The latest tactic is to promote polls that indicate the President will lose in a "landslide" to former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 election.  This week several new polls were heavily hyped by the Trump-hating media.  A new Quinnipiac University poll boasts nothing but good news for the top Democratic presidential contenders.  In individual matchups against President Trump, all of them are leading.

Survey: 56% of Americans think Arabic numerals shouldn't be taught in schools.  A Pittsburgh-based polling company is making waves after its CEO tweeted the results for a survey question that showed 56% of Americans believe Arabic numerals shouldn't be taught in schools.  Civic Science CEO John Dick tweeted a screengrab of results for a question included in the poll, which revealed that only 29% of Americans believe Arabic numerals should be taught to children.

The Editor says...
This poll is obviously an attempt to prove (or provoke) anti-Arabic prejudice.

Australian Politics, Upside-Down.  The Liberal/National Party's election victory in Australia on May 18 was the latest electoral result to shock the punditry.  Like Brexit and Donald Trump, it was a conservative victory that few expected.  Voters in Queensland, Australia's agricultural and industrial power center, turned to the LNP in support of the proposed Carmichael coal mine that would provide up to 5,000 jobs to the local economy — but which the Labor Party and Green Party opposed.  Labor's supposedly unlosable "climate change election" proved a debacle, as exit polls predicting that the party would gain up to 18 seats turned out to be wildly inaccurate.

How did the federal election polls get it so wrong?  [Scroll down]  Tasmanian electoral analyst Kevin Bonham also described the events as a "massive polling failure", writing that it was looking like a "mirror image of the expected result".  As of Sunday [5/19/2019], he told SBS News that there seemed to be a three percent error across every poll in the past two weeks, which is far outside the usual margin for error.  "It's like one poll can be three percent out and that's what you would sort of expect now and then by random chance.  But all the polls being out by that amount in the same direction and getting all the same results is something that absolutely cannot happen by random chance," he said.

Wrong polls blindsided nation, but 'Shorten knew all along'.  As Scott Morrison charged to victory yesterday, seemingly defying all odds, Australians were left scratching their heads about how the polls could have got it so wrong.  In the past two years leading up to last night's election, the Coalition did not win a single Newspoll.

Conservatives Win Shock Victory in Australia, NYT Laments Climate Alarmist Los.  On Saturday [5/18/2019], the conservative party — the Liberal/National coalition — held on to its majority in Australia's parliament, even picking up a few seats and stunning observers who had predicted a Labor Party victory.  In fact, The New York Times ran a lament that the climate alarmists lost their election. [...] Prime Minister Scott Morrison called his coalition's victry a "miracle," since polls had predicted a Labor victory.

What the Dems Can Learn From Down Under.  You may have, for various social reasons, told some pollster that the "Save the Earth" party has your support.  But it's a lot easier to focus on the environment if one can count on a steady income.  Consequently, in the end, you'll vote for the "Paycheck Party."  This shouldn't require enormous prescience to predict, yet it consistently surprises the pollsters.  The latest election in which they managed to miss the blindingly obvious just took place Down Under between the Labor Party and the conservative Liberal-National coalition.

Australia votes 2019: Shock!  Climate action bombs.  Pollsters crash.  Skeptics Win.  Against all the polls, the money, advertising, and the non-stop media coverage, against all expectations and the betting agencies — the Extreme Climate Fix was a flop.  The Labor Plan to cut Australian emissions by 45% percent [sic] is now gone — per capita this would have been a world record sacrifice in a country already increasing their renewable energy faster than any other.  Major betting agency Sportsbet were so sure Labor would win they paid out $1.3 million on bets two days early. [...] If Labor had won, they would be crowing right now about how it proved the people wanted action. [...] Labor was tipped to win decisively in every poll.  Even in the exit polls.  So thousands of people told pollsters one thing, then they voted the other way, and hid that again on the way out the polling door.  This was not just the abject failure of climate change as a vote winner, it was also a crashing fail for the pollsters.

Conservatives Win in Australia ("Unexpectedly!").  Another national election where polls favored the left-wing party but the right-wing party won, this time in Australia. [...] How badly were the polls off?  "The polls — 56 consecutive weeks of them — pointed to a win for Labor and Bill Shorten."

Inconvenient Truths, Inconvenient Outcomes.  The Liberal Australian government pulls out a surprise win Down Under! [...] I understand that Labor teamed up with the Green Weenie contingent and made global warming their main focus.  All the polls predicting Labor's win might suggests that there was a whole lot of virtue signaling going on for benefit of the pollsters but the peeps just aren't really buying it.

Australia's conservative coalition scores stunning political victory in general election, defies polls forecasting loss.  Australia's ruling conservative coalition defied polls and scored a stunning political victory in the country's general election on Saturday, with the main opposition party officially conceding the defeat.  Opposition leader Bill Shorten called Prime Minister Scott Morrison to congratulate him on the election victory.  He told Labor party supporters that his party didn't win enough seats to form a coalition government.

Democratic social media poll finds more users want Supreme Court justices like Kavanaugh than Ginsburg.  A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Twitter poll asking what type of Supreme Court justices social media users would like to have on the bench apparently backfired when 71 percent of respondents selected "justices like Brett Kavanaugh" compared to just 29 percent who chose "justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg."  The poll, which is not scientific and open to anyone with a Twitter account, was posted on May 3 and stated it had two more days before it closed.  However, by Sunday afternoon [5/5/2019], the tweet had vanished.

New York Times claims nearly half of students are 'going hungry' by citing survey with 6 percent response rate.  It's no secret among academic researchers that journalists frequently mischaracterize their research, likely because the journalists don't understand it.  Perhaps the most misreported statistic in higher ed, the 1-in-5 campus-rape figure, has been explicitly disavowed by the researcher who led the study.  But sometimes reporters and their editors just want a better headline than the research can deliver.

Why Those Biden/Trump Polls Are Meaningless.  [A Drudge Report] headline links to a Morning Consult story that found Biden with a 42 percent to 34 percent lead over President Trump in a hypothetical matchup.  "Along with his advantage over Trump, Biden has held a consistent lead in Morning Consult's weekly tracking among likely Democratic primary voters," the report says.  But the only thing shocking about this poll is that anyone would put any stock in such polls so early in the race.  Just ask President John Glenn.  In May 1983, a Gallup poll came out showing that then-Sen. John Glenn would do better in a matchup against President Reagan, with a far wider margin than the Biden/Trump split.  As the New York Times reported on May 19 of that year, the survey "found that Senator Glenn led Mr. Reagan 54 percent to 37 percent."

The end of polls?  Like everything the internet touches, and not always for the better, polling seems to be going the way of the buggy whip. [...] That's likely to have implications for coming elections if there is no such thing as reliable polls anymore.  And it's a great shame for reputable polling companies such as Pew Research, which often brings to light interesting and unexpected information to the public fore based on its thorough polling.

Biden the Democrats' sole hope to beat Trump in 2020, says Iowa poll.  Former Vice President Joe Biden is the only potential presidential candidate who could beat President Trump in next year's general election, according to a new poll of Iowa voters.  In a direct match-up with Trump, Biden would prevail in 2020 with 51 percent of the vote to the president's 49 percent, Emerson College found in a survey released on Saturday.  Other contenders eyeing the Democratic nomination, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., as well as former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, earned enough support to fall within the research's margin of error.

The Conservative Majority and Polls.  Every single major poll in the last fifty years has shown that conservatives outnumber liberals. [...] Indeed, if Republicans won those states and congressional districts in which conservatives outnumbered Democrats, they would have a clear and solid majority in Congress and easy presidential victories.  Republicans ought to embrace this and make each race one of conservatives against liberals — but Republicans shy away from this and are encouraged to do so by conservatives who simply do not believe that they are the ideological majority in America.  What makes this even more bizarre is that the most prestigious polling organization, Gallup, goes to extraordinary lengths to hide conservative strength.

Florida Governor:  DeSantis defeats Gillum.  The polls were wrong.  Gillum consistently was up by low single digits.

Poll that's never been wrong since 1946 signals GOP keeps House.  Half of Americans believe that Republicans will maintain control of the House in the midterm elections Tuesday, according to Gallup's final poll.  The result of that question has lined up with the actual election outcome every time Gallup has asked it since 1946.  Fifty percent of Americans believe Republicans will stay in power in the House, while 44 percent believe Democrats will take control.

Democratic Firm's Poll Of Texas:  Cruz 49, O'Rourke 49.  Too many other polls lately have Cruz at 50 percent or better to make me believe that Beto! can actually pull this off.

Midterm Myopia?  Pollsters On Trial.  With the harrowing vision of their disastrous performance in 2016 still fresh in their heads, pollsters far and wide have to be feeling mighty skittish as midterm elections beckon just hours from now.  There was seemingly little introspection among the polling class as to how things could have gone so terribly wrong in their near-unanimous proclamation that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in in the most recent national election.  But whether they acknowledge it or not, their outdated and myopic view of national politics is now threatened as never before.  Only Rasmussen and the much-maligned LA Times tracking poll detected the Trump wave and nailed the outcome.

One Last Look at the Old Polls While the New Ones Are All Over the Place.  The polls going into Tuesday are all over the place.  Some are obvious and clear:  Pocahontas will win in the tribal lands of Massachusetts, Gillibrand will win in New York, Hutchinson in Arkansas, Bernie in Vermont, McMaster in South Carolina.  But lots of key races really are hard to gauge.

What They Told Us:  Reviewing Last Week's Key Polls.  Election Day's almost here, and most pollsters are predicting a blue wave that will sweep the Democrats back into control of the House of Representatives.  But is another picture possible?

WashPo/ABC News Poll Has Ominous News For Democrats.  Despite the headlines about an eight-point advantage for Democrats in the generic congressional ballot, the detailed results of today's Washington Post/ABC News poll should make most Democratic Party leaders and their billionaire benefactors sweat.  First, the eight-point gap represents a five-point drop from the same poll just three weeks ago, when Democrats had a 13-point advantage. (Like most polls, the sample favors Democrats by six points among registered voters.)  But even more ominous for Democrats is how specific voting blocs responded.  If Democrats are going to win control of the House, they need to pull votes from independent women and women in the suburbs, and support for the generic Democratic congressional candidate has dropped significantly among these two groups.

What Do the Polls Say About a Blue Wave?  Since it's now clear that Democrats may not only fail to take control of the U.S. Senate, they actually could lose seats, all eyes are focused on the battle for the House of Representatives.  The political fortunes for congressional Republican candidates are the reverse of those with which their Senate counterparts are blessed.  In the Senate, Democrats are defending nearly two-dozen incumbent senators, many in states that Donald Trump won in 2016; if Republicans run the table, the GOP could get very close to a filibuster-proof Senate.

Polls Could Be Missing a GOP Surge.  Here's Why.  If the polls are correct, we're heading for either a good year for Democrats or a very good year for Democrats.

Report: Trump Approval Rating Much Higher Than Media Wants You To Believe.  It's another fake news moment by the Establishment Media.  They know it.  You know it.  Certainly, the Trump White House knows it.  Remember all of those polls in 2016 declaring Hillary Clinton the winner?  They were repeatedly slanted, skewed, a sham of an attempt to convince Trump supporters to stay home and assure Clinton voters of certain victory.

Trump's Real Job Approval Could Be as High as 60 Percent.  There are at least eight ways in which poll numbers are likely exaggerated against Trump — and thus Republicans in general:  [#1] Pollsters are asking the wrong question.  Every polling firm aside from Rasmussen appears to ask this exact question:  "Do you approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as President?"  Clearly, "handling" is a loaded term in the context of Trump:  there are millions of Americans who don't care for his "handling" of things — which largely speaks to demeanor and style — but are at the same time satisfied with his actual job performance and results. [...] [#2] Many firms produce consistently negative results, outside the norm, suggesting bias or a flawed approach. [...] [#3] Corporate media ignore Trump's successes and obsesses over issues that can be used to paint him in a bad light. [...] [#4] Many polling firms sample the wrong people — registered voters or all adults.  The only valid sample is likely voters.  Those who stay home on election day aren't part of the election results. [...]

Paradox Emerges In the Trump Presidency.  It's a paradox of the Trump presidency going into the midterm elections.  The economy is strong by conventional indicators — a 4.2% growth rate in real gross domestic product for the second quarter of 2018, according to the Commerce Department, and a 3.9% unemployment rate, according to the Labor Department.  The stock market has racked up impressive gains, with the Standard and Poor's 500 Index of large U.S. stocks up about 36% since Election Day 2016.  America is not mired in any high-profile military conflict generating televised casualties.  President Trump has no Iraq War, no Vietnam. [...] Yet surveys show Mr. Trump's job approval ratings and his favorability ratings underwater.  Polls find that a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.

The Editor says...
Most of the noise is coming from the Democratic Party, not the White House.  The Democrats can't stand to see Donald Trump succeed.

Do Democrats Trust Midterm Polling?  If midterm election polls increasingly show that Democrats are poised to regain control of the House, then why are liberals in panic mode?  What do they know that we don't — or that they don't want us to?  The highly touted opinion poll analyst, FiveThirtyEight, released an election update video reporting that Democrats have an 82 percent chance of winning a majority of the House in November.  The narrator breathlessly reveals that this is the first time their forecast has given the Democrats more than an 80 percent of winning the House since the launch of the model.  Yet an MSNBC panel was apoplectic over President Donald Trump's approval rating, which remained constant despite an avalanche of negative news stories concerning legal developments on Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

'The System's Not Working' Is Liberal Speak For 'We're Not Getting What We Want'.  CNN released a new poll this week that alleges only 38 percent of Americans support the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, while 39 percent do not.  It was the lowest net approval of any Supreme Court nominee since Harriet Miers. [...] Kavanaugh is down by a single point in a CNN poll in a nation where more than half the people can't even name a single Supreme Court justice.  Never mind either that 2016 was the most SCOTUS-centric election we've had in modern times.  The GOP's presidential candidate provided a list of names then promised to nominate those people if he became president.

The Media's Latest Poll Dance.  CNN and MSNBC are currently at Category 4 hurricane strength against President Trump.  Expect to see this ratchet up to Category 5 in the upcoming weeks before the midterms.  Ninety percent of Trump's media coverage is negative.  This will increase to approach 100 percent if Mueller can't find or fabricate the smoking gun that will send The Donald slinking back to Trump Tower.  Since Stormy Daniels's pole dances haven't damaged President Trump, big media are using their own "poll dance," specifically opinion polls, to create the narrative that no one likes the president.  They hope to dispirit Trump voters, damping the enthusiasm of November 2016, to pick off enough House seats to shift House control to Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters.

How To Lie With Polls:  Texas Senate Race Edition.  Like Wendy Davis was in 2014, O'Rourke is the Texas poster-child for national Democrats. [...] A few weeks ago, a new Lyceum Poll showed O'Rourke within two points of Cruz.  The first thing to check with a Lyceum Poll is how badly they skewed the sample.  That didn't take long:  They sampled equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, because evidently their samples are from 1994, they last time a top-of-the-ticket Democrat was within 10% of the vote total of the Republican.  Now this week we have a Marist poll that shows O'Rourke within four points of Cruz.  I'd like to tell you what level of skewing went into the Marist poll crosstabs, only I can't find any.  If that's the complete list of questions, they don't appear to have asked party affiliation, so there's no way to know just how skewed the smallish (759) sample of registered voters is.

CBS Rewrites History:  The Polls Weren't Wrong in 2016.  CBS attempted to rewrite history on Monday with This Morning co-host Norah O'Donnell and network Director of Elections Anthony Salvanto declaring that the polls in 2016 weren't wrong.  That might be a surprise to anyone who trusted the numbers in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.  Helping Salvanto promote his new book on polling, O'Donnell wondered:  "People said that proved that the polls were wrong.  But were they?"  "No," he declared.  O'Donnell cheered the revisionist history:  "Yes, thank you!  Anthony, explain to everybody!"  Using the benefit of hindsight, Salvanto lectured:  "All the signs were there."

Polls and history continue to point to a Ted Cruz victory in Texas.  Many liberals have made it a cause célèbre to try to defeat Cruz.  Indeed, the attention paid to the Texas Senate race has been greater than for other more competitive races such as Tennessee, where Democrat Phil Bredesen has consistently led in polls against Republican Marsha Blackburn.  Yet the polling has continued to suggest that Cruz is ahead.  Just how much of a favorite is Cruz?

The Polls Are Crazy.  [T]he Washington Times cites the NBC/Wall St.  Journal poll for the proposition that Americans increasingly see Democrats as extreme: [...] That means voters are likely to swing to the GOP in the midterms, right?  Not so fast.  Rasmussen, hardly a left-wing bastion, finds Democrats pulling ahead on the generic Congressional ballot, now leading by seven points.  And those results are pretty typical.

Six Reasons Why Barack Obama Is the Worst President in History.  By now you've probably heard of polls that say Americans believe that "Donald Trump is the worst president in history" or that presidential scholars have ranked Trump "dead last."  I can tell you right now to ignore the polls and the so-called experts.  While it may be too early to properly gauge presidential rankings for recent presidents, I am confident that history will ultimately judge Barack Obama as the worst president our nation has ever seen.

America First Ohio Poll:  Nancy Pelosi Drags Down Democratic Party, Donald Trump Boosts GOP.  A new poll conducted by America First Action Super PAC, President Donald Trump's official Super PAC, shows that Democrats in Ohio are in serious trouble of losing their re-election bids while House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi proves to be an anchor on her party's November chances.

48 Hours Later, Media Still Keeps Dems' Total Collapse in Reuters Poll a Secret.  On Monday [5/21/2018], Reuters/Ipsos announced that the Democratic Party's strong lead on the generic ballot question, which had remained stable for most of 2018, had rapidly collapsed over the prior week.  The #BlueWave narrative — the media's all-but-concluded assumption that Democrats would retake the House of Representatives from the GOP in November — has largely been based on the state of the generic ballot poll.  So you might assume the media tasked with covering the 2018 midterm elections would immediately react to a sudden shift in the most important metric available for predicting the most important outcome of those elections.

AP to offer election voter survey to replace exit polls.  The Associated Press said Tuesday [5/15/2018] that it will begin conducting an elaborate election voter survey designed to replace the traditional in-person exit poll, which has been criticized in recent years for inaccuracy and failing to keep up with changes in how Americans vote.

Hmmm... Who was the President for most of the last 11 years?
Poll: Optimism in Direction of Country Hits 11-Year High Under Trump.  A poll released by the far-left CNN shows that optimism about the direction of the country under President Trump has hit an 11-year high of 57 percent.  The last time this same poll registered a number that high was in January 2007.  This includes 40 percent of Democrats, which is a leap of 15 points from just last month.  Only 40 percent say things are going badly.  Also of note is that CNN polled a random sample of adults.  Polls that screen for registered or likely voters generally produce a more favorable result for Trump.  This poll is a good example.  While Trump's job approval rating sits at 41 percent with all adults, when CNN's polling firm (SSRS) screened for registered voters, the president's job approval rating jumped to 44 percent.

The 2016 election was far from a fluke.  America's political experts got it wrong in 2016 — not because they took too few polls, but because they made the false assumption that American elections are immune to societal change.

Spike in Support for Trump Causes Pollster to Reject [His] Own Poll.  A poll shows that President Donald Trump's approval rating has spiked since April 27 — prompting the Reuters/Ipsos polling team to quarantine their data.  "Every series of polls has the occasional outlier and in our opinion this is one," the pollster announced.  "So, while we are reporting the findings in the interest of transparency, we will not be announcing the start of a new trend until we have more data to validate this pattern."

Make a note of this announcement, and check back in a year.
CNN poll:  President Trump will lose in 2020, majority of Americans say.  More than half of Americans think President Trump is doomed in his 2020 re-election bid, according to a new CNN poll released Thursday [3/29/2018].  Per the poll, 54% said said they think Trump will lose in 2020.  Comparably, 40% expect him to win.

Media using phony polls to force narrative of Trump failure.  [Scroll down]  This is reminiscent of opinion polls during the presidential campaign.  In mid 2016, I wrote about an ABC News poll gleefully proclaiming a 12 point lead for Clinton over Trump.  This survey oversampled Democrats by 12 points, accounting for the poll result.  The reality was a dead heat at that time.  This current poll is no different, inaccurately reflecting public sentiment, instead advancing the left-wing media agenda that Trump is unpopular, that Americans regret electing him.  Wishful thinking on their part.

Collapse of Credibility In Mainstream Press Puts Burden on Readers.  Take, for example, the New York Times news article reporting on President Trump's decision to hire Lawrence Kudlow as chairman of the National Economic Council.  It devoted three paragraphs to a poll that "found support dipping slightly for Mr. Trump's signature tax law:  49 percent of respondents approved of the bill, down from 51 percent in February."  Given that the poll's margin of sampling error was 1.5%, the idea that a two percentage point move either way is newsworthy is questionable.  If the poll had moved two percentage points in the other direction and President Trump tweeted triumphantly about it, you can bet that Times "fact-checkers" would have been all over his case about being statistically illiterate.

Media step back from Democrat 'blue wave' predictions.  The national media are scaling back their prediction for a Democratic "blue wave" in the 2018 midterms, in light of a new poll that shows some Democrats are vulnerable and a healthy GOP turnout in Texas this week.  Fueled in part by Republican-backed tax cuts that increased the paychecks for most people, Republicans and President Trump have seen their own poll numbers rise, and what was previously viewed as a coming reckoning by Democrats has stalled.  The website Axios on Thursday [3/8/2018] published a poll that showed "big warning signs for Senate Democrats."  It noted that in 10 states where Democrats are defending Senate seats, a Republican opponent polls either ahead or close to the Democrat in five of those states (though in most of the races, the GOP has not chosen its nominee yet).  The poll also showed that in most states, Trump's approval rating is 50 percent or higher, which could be a sign that he will not have a negative impact on those state races.

It Appears CNN Might Be Skewing Poll Results To Make Trump Look Bad.  If you were ask Rasmussen what Trump is polling at, they'd tell you he's sporting a healthy 49 percent approval rating.  If you asked CNN, however, they'd tell you it's far lower at 35 percent.  That seems like a huge discrepancy, so what's the deal?  Enter the Daily Caller, who decided to get down to the bottom of the mystery of the missing approval numbers, and what they found shows that CNN might not be playing all that fair.  Collecting the data from CNN and SSRS, a market research firm, the Daily Caller showed several factors that could contribute to the disparity between polls, including two major factors.  For starters CNN/SSRS poll over-sampled Democrats and Independents, and it sampled "adults," not potential voters.

I Thought America Hated Donald Trump.  Watch any cable or network news station or read the newspaper, and you will be told that President Trump is unpopular.  That Americans don't like him.  The Washington Post proclaims that "Trump is historically unpopular."  Predicting big trouble ahead for Republicans, the Post tells readers, "There's never been a president who was as deeply unpopular for as long as he has been at this stage of his presidency."  Newsweek goes farther with its headline:  "Trump's 2018 approval ratings show he's the most unpopular president in history and failing at his job."  The Washington Examiner, not a far-left publication but firmly in the NeverTrump camp, asks, "So why is Trump still the most unpopular first-term president?"  You get the point.  These articles were all written last month, in the wake of a historic tax cut, with millions of Americans gaining bonuses and a fatter paycheck, plus a stock market hitting record highs despite a recent and necessary correction.  Yet the media smart set is quite certain that America hates President Trump.  Why?  Opinion polls.  You know the names.  Quinnipiac, Ipsos, Rasmussen, CNN, Fox News, and others.  Remember these same polls about 15 months ago?  The ones that predicted with 95-plus-percent certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the election?  Even on election day?

Now, why would Americans' positive perception of the U.S. surge this past year?  A new Gallup Poll finds that nearly half of all Americans are satisfied with their perception of the U.S. position in the world.  That's the highest that collective national perception has been in 13 years.  And, get this, the 45 percent who feel that way is fully 13 points higher than it was just a year ago.  Why do you suppose that is?  A year ago.  Hmm, what happened in the winter of 2017 that could possibly explain a surge in positive self-perceptions of the U.S. global position?

Don't know much about history....  This new poll, put out by a couple of political science professors, places President Trump at rock bottom in its rankings of all the U.S. presidents.  Worse than Warren G. Harding.  Worse than James Buchanan.  Worse than Franklin Pierce.  Worse than Jimmy Carter.  And certainly worse than Barack Obama, who correspondingly rose to the top ten in the same estimation of the same political scientists.  After bringing us the Iran deal, Obamacare, the one-way love-fest with Castro, the unmaskings, the IRS targeting of dissidents, the global apology tour, the SEIU thugcraft, the politicization of the Department of Justice, and Ben Rhodes, he's top ten!

Obama Campaign Manager Wants Pollsters "Shot" For Recent Polls Showing Democrats Losing Support Among Voters.  Jim Messina is an odd guy.  Always has been.  Always will be.  He was the lumpy outcast with a penchant for canoodling just enough with the then-Obama campaign's legion of media supporters to give himself some political street cred.  Work was easy back then though.  Obama had few strong opponents in D.C., and fewer still among the media elite.  Then came Donald Trump and Jim Messina's world was turned upside down.  The manufactured polls he once used to great effect to manipulate opinion and validate Barack Obama have been discarded in favor of a single Trump Tweet.  And now when those same once-friendly polls show Mr. Trump gaining in popularity and Democrats increasingly despised, Jim Messina offers up this rather aggressive solution:  "I think all public pollsters should be shot."

The Last Two Weeks of Polls Have Been Great for Republicans.  Do They Signal a Shift?  The Democratic advantage on the generic congressional ballot, which asks people whether they'll vote for Democrats or Republicans for Congress, has dwindled since the heart of the tax debate in December.  Then, nearly all surveys put Republicans behind by double digits.  Now, poll averages put the Democratic lead at only around six or seven percentage points.  The question isn't really whether Republican standing has improved recently.  It has.  The question is whether anyone should care:  Is it just one of many blips and bumps along the road, or does it say something meaningful about the midterm elections?

'Blue Wave' Evaporates, 2018 Generic Ballot Back to Dead Heat.  A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday shows Democrats with only a "negligible edge" over Republicans for November's Congressional elections.  The poll, conducted over three days almost entirely before President Donald Trump's well-received State of the Union Address, shows 47 percent of respondents saying they would vote for a generic congressional Democrat compared to 45 percent for a generic Republican, well within the poll's 3.5 percent margin of error.  This figure is a massive shift from earlier polls showing double digit Democratic leads and fueling pundits' talk of a "blue wave" that could sweep Republicans from power.  The same polling agency, the Monmouth University Polling Institute (MUPI), found a 15 point generic Democratic advantage using the same question only last month.

Pollster Zogby:  Trump brought 'A game,' boosted GOP 2018 chances, 2020 re-election.  In an unusually positive review, Democratic pollster John Zogby said that President Trump brought his "A game" to the State of the Union Address and bolstered chances that the GOP will retain control of Congress in the midterm elections and maybe his own re-election odds.  "He hit a solid triple tonight.  If he can sustain this message and tone, he will cross home plate standing up," blogged Zogby, who co-authors our weekly White House Report Card.

CNN polled the audience on Trump's State of the Union and soon came to regret it.  CNN may have been hoping for a different outcome as results from their poll on President Trump's State of the Union address came back to bite them.  It seems 70 percent of those polled who were watching the speech reacted positively according to an instant CNN/SSRS poll, CNN reported.

"Hey Google... How's The US Economy Doing?"  On a quarterly basis we use Google Trends as essentially a thermometer for a range of social and capital markets measurements.  How are Americans feeling about themselves and their economic prospects?  Are they interested in investing?  Those are queries most often answered by polls and surveys, of course.  But Google Trends lets us see what people are searching for online, in the privacy of their homes.  And that can be much more telling than what they reveal to a random phone survey taker.

Everything Is Looking Up, Except For Trump's Approval Rating:  IBD/TIPP Poll.  The public is more upbeat about the direction of the country and the economy, less likely to be looking for a job and less stressed.  Yet they're not giving President Trump much of the credit, the latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows.

On Christmas Eve, Donald Trump Challenges 'Fake News' for Negative Reporting on 'Incredible Year'.  President Donald Trump continued to criticize fake news, even on Christmas Eve.  He appeared frustrated by reports that showed his base was shrinking, accusing them of running fake polls to set their narrative. [...] Trump indicated that White House polling showed that his base was still strong, especially after passing significant tax reform.

How The Media Tries To Pressure Gun Rights Advocates Into Gun Control Support.  Despite claims to the contrary, gun rights advocates are a large and active voting block.  There's a reason lawmakers in pro-gun regions — regions that make up the bulk of the nation — make it a point to present their pro-gun credentials when running for office.  While polls occasionally claim most people support some kind of gun control, those polls rarely delve deeper into how important the issue is for those people.  Most don't so much support new regulations so much as think, "Yeah, sounds good."  In their minds, however, there are bigger issues to tackle and so they don't care enough about gun control for it to make a difference in their voting.

Who Says The GOP Tax Cuts Are Unpopular?  Poll after poll shows that few support the Republican tax-cut plan.  But when pollsters bother to ask about specifics in the bill, support skyrockets.  Guess which results make the headlines?

Breaking Down The CBS News Gun Poll.  CBS News released the results of a new poll on the topic of guns.  There are some interesting tidbits in there for discussion, but there's also a lot that shouldn't be overly surprising.

Credibility of Fox News On the Line with Poll That Shows Jones Up by 10.  Fox News put its credibility on the line when it released a new poll on Monday that shows liberal Democrat Doug Jones leads conservative Republican Roy Moore by 10 points, 50 percent to 40 percent, in tomorrow's special election for the U.S. Senate in Alabama.  The contrast between the results reported by Fox News and every other recent major poll could not be sharper.

Media Manuevers To Manipulate Alabama Voters.  Fox News is back in action with the single most ridiculous, psy-op engineered, agenda polls in the last several years[,] and coming from a CTH community that has reviewed hundreds of media polls in the past 5 years, that's quite a statement. [...] There is a NINETEEN point difference between both Alabama Polls.  However, only ONE is a media driven agenda poll.  Can you guess which one?

Sick and Tired of Schumer and Others Continually Lying about Tax Cuts and Debt.  What makes me sicker is that almost all reporters just repeat Schumer's talking points as if they are factual.  They repeat the outright lies over and over again, and then after indoctrinating the readers with pure garbage, they take a poll of fewer than 1,000 people, skewed with more Democrats than Republicans, to show that the people aren't in favor of reform.  Then they run the poll results as if they are somehow factual news.  Reporters should be truly ashamed of themselves for pushing an agenda instead of ever even considering reporting actual results of previous tax cuts.

Call Florida and get some hanging chads!
Exclusive: New poll shows Roy Moore and Doug Jones in statistical tie.  A new Raycom News Network Senate Election poll conducted by Strategy Research finds the race in a statistical tie nearly two weeks after allegations of sexual misconduct against Republican Roy Moore rocked the campaign.  The exclusive poll of 3,000 likely Alabama voters finds if the election were held today, Moore would receive 47% of the vote to Democrat Doug Jones with 45%.  Five percent of the respondents remain undecided with 3% indicating plans to Write-In a candidate.

Democrat Oversample:  Fox News Poll Claims Roy Moore Losing Despite Faulty Numbers.  A Fox News Poll of 649 likely voters in Alabama released on Thursday and conducted between Monday and Wednesday of this week shows Democratic candidate Doug Jones with an eight point lead over Republican candidate Judge Roy Moore in the December 12 special election for the Alabama U.S. Senate seat once held by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 50 percent to 42 percent, with a 3.5 percent margin of error.  That poll stands in striking contrast to a Fox10/Strategy Research poll of 3,000 likely voters in Alabama released on Wednesday [11/15/2017] and conducted on Monday of this week that shows Moore with a six point lead over Jones, 49 percent to 43 percent, with a two percent margin of error.

Fox News poll:  Jones beating Moore by 8 points.  A new poll shows Democrat Doug Jones leading by 8 points in the Alabama Senate race in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against his opponent, GOP candidate Roy Moore.  Jones is supported by 50 percent of likely voters surveyed in the deep-red state, while 42 percent of likely voters support Moore, according to the Fox News poll released Thursday.  The survey was conducted Nov. 13-15.  The last Fox News poll on the race, conducted in mid-October, showed Jones and Moore tied.  Another recent poll from the Senate GOP's campaign arm showed Moore trailing by double digits.

The lesson the media refuses to learn.  So let us go back and revisit where they went wrong.  They trusted polls.  A year ago today, Nate Silver gave Donald Trump less than a 14% chance of winning — two weeks before the election.  His prediction was 338 Electoral College votes for her, 198 for Trump.  Silver saw her taking all of Obama's 2012 states, plus Arizona and North Carolina.  Michigan?  Michigan!  Don't make me laugh.  He gave Trump an 8% chance in Michigan.  Democrats would take the Senate.  And Silver was the cautious one.

New Political Poll Shows Just How Unreliable Polling Can Be.  A new survey from NBC News/Wall Street Journal is the perfect example of the utter worthlessness of public polling as it relates to the implementation of government policy.  In the poll, which covers numerous political topics, one question stands out:  "Would you favor or oppose a single-payer health care system in which all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan that is financed by Taxes?"  To this question, 47% said they "favored" such a system, 46% said they "opposed," and 7% said they were "not sure."  However, when pollsters added a bit of specificity to the question, the results changed rather dramatically.

Bias chart 402
Fakepolls: How Legacy Media Manipulates Polling and Lies to You About... Everything.  [Scroll down]  In every poll, Democrat respondents outnumbered Republicans by significant amounts.  The Economist poll was the worst.  Only 24 percent of respondents (360) were Republicans compared to 38 percent (570) Democrats — which means that 58 percent more Democrats were polled than Republicans, as shown in the %D/R column.  On average, in these seven widely recognized national polls, only 29 percent (409 people) of the total 1,383 polled were Republicans, while 37 percent (518) were Democrats.  Another way of saying it is that, on average, 29 percent more Democrats than Republicans were polled.  This occurs because of the way these polls are constructed.  Most use a methodology that queries a random sample of adults.  That sounds "fair" and one would expect it to produce roughly equivalent numbers of Republicans and Democrats, but it does not.


Sharyl Attkisson embarrasses media for the shoddy way they report on polls.  Wait, you mean the media isn't exactly straightforward with how they conduct and report on polls?

USA Today's Impeachment-Push Poll.  Reporters Susan Page and Emma Kinery proclaimed a dark omen in the results, which is why the newspaper asked the poll question.  They said, "Just six months after his inauguration, Americans already are split down the middle, 42%-42%, over whether President Trump should be removed from office, a new USA TODAY/iMediaEthics Poll finds."  What's the impeachable offense?  If a national poll were to emerge with a 42-42 tie over the belief that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, would the subsequent analysis focus on the concentration of moon matter or the irrationality of 42% of the American people?  It doesn't matter that the prospect for impeachment is zero with Republicans in control of Congress.

How Approval Polls and 'Junk' Journalism are Fake Views Pushed by Fake News.  The latest rod by which to beat the President of the United States is a Washington Post/ABC News poll showing Mr. Trump's approval ratings languishing at 36 percent. [...] The poll was performed by AbtAssociates — a swamp dweller-staffed research and policy shop in Cambridge, MA.  AbtAssociates board members include former Bob Dole, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Planned Parenthood, World Bank, and Deloitte staffers.  In other words, it is a microcosm of the party of Davos.

Busted! Trump Favorability Polls As Fake As Fake News Can Get.  Want to know a dirty little secret liberal media pundits don't want you to know?  Donald Trump is far more popular with the American people than any of the far left polling data would have you believe.  Those very same polls that were so wrong in predicted the 2016 presidential outcome are being used again to try and convince Americans Trump is an unpopular and highly divisive president.  These polling firms lied repeatedly during the 2016 election cycle and they have continued lying about the POTUS Trump's popularity among voters.

Pollsters Are Screwing Up Again.  Most national pollsters are back churning out biased and misleading poll numbers after recovering from their shock over President Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, according to The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.  "I do know inherently there is a Democratic bias in the polls.  And most of them will deny it" says Raghavan Mayur, an independent pollster who is president of TechnoMetrica, which leads the polling operations at Investor's Business Daily.

They're Wrong About Everything.  Events are turning me into a radical skeptic.  I no longer believe what I read, unless what I am reading is an empirically verifiable account of the past.  I no longer have confidence in polls, because it has become impossible to separate the signal from the noise.  What I have heard from the media and political class over the last several years has been so spectacularly proven wrong by events, again and again, that I sometimes wonder why I continue to read two newspapers a day before spending time following journalists on Twitter.

Why You Should Be Skeptical About Polls on Impeaching Trump.  Among registered voters in a Politico/Morning Consult poll at the end of May, 43% want Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Trump, up from 38% the week before.  But experts say the polls may mean less than they appear to show.  Three polls by CNN/ORC showed roughly similar numbers of adults-about 30%-wanted to impeach President Clinton in 1998, President Bush in 2006 and President Obama in 2014, even though the presidents were in very different circumstances.  And Gallup polls from the Watergate era show a clear majority of Americans didn't support impeaching Nixon and removing him from office until August of 1974-the same month he resigned.

From Fake News to Fake Polls.  The media blob is making much of a Washington Post/ABC News poll that finds the public by a 2 to 1 margin opposes President Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord: [...] You need to click through to the actual poll questions to see what [an incompetent] poll it is.  The poll only asked five questions. [...] Conspicuously missing are any questions about whether people support appropriations for wealth transfers from the U.S to developing nations that the Paris Accord included (and into which Obama tossed $1 billion)?  No questions, also, about whether people are willing to pay higher energy costs for an agreement that will make no difference to the planet's temperature 80 years from now, according to the EPA's own models.

Who Really Torpedoed Hillary's Campaign?  What about the polls?  All the smart set pollsters told us Clinton would win.  In a landslide.  From Real Clear Politics to poll guru Nate Silver, all agreed that Mrs. Clinton had a 90 to 95 percent chance of winning.  And stuck with this up until election night.

Rigged NBC/WSJ POLL Claims Trump Hits "Historic Lows" — 100% FALSE!.  The sample size was only 900 people!  Please note the number of people who are "Strong Republicans" 19% — If you add the people who consider themselves to be Republicans, it's 38%.  Does this sample size reflect a fair sample size?  We think not!

Wash Post poll hides:  Trump still beats Clinton, 43%-40%.  A new Washington Post poll that declares President Trump as "the least popular president in modern times," waits until the second to last paragraph to reveal another tidbit:  He'd still beat Hillary Rodham Clinton if the election were held today and in the popular vote, not just Electoral College.  The poll found that Trump's polls continue to be upside down, with a 42 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval.

Hillary ran the worst presidential campaign ever.  In the last weeks before the election, the Hillary Clinton campaign did no polling.  No.  Polling.  Whatsoever.  Oh, it had data.  Lots and lots of data.  Analytics, even.  Data analytics!  But it had no independent information on the overall field of battle in states like Florida, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  So when the election began to turn Donald Trump's way, the Clinton campaign had no idea.

Democrats burned by polling blind spot.  As they investigate the forces behind the party's stunning losses in November, Democrats are coming to a troubling conclusion.  The party didn't just lose among rural white voters on Election Day, it may have failed to capture them in its pre-election polling as well.  Many pollsters and strategists believe that rural white voters, particularly those without college degrees, eluded the party's polling altogether — and their absence from poll results may have been both a cause and a symptom of Donald Trump's upset victory over Hillary Clinton in several states.

AP Touts Anti-Trump Poll with Warped Demographics Conducted by Soros-Backed Org.  The Associated Press on Monday released a news making story with a glaring headline claiming that "Most young Americans don't see Trump as a legitimate leader."  A closer look at the survey finds it was conducted by a group financed by billionaire George Soros whose activist arm demands reparations for slavery and "mass incarceration," and has engaged in anti-police activism.  In addition, the survey was not representative of the racial and ethnic profiles of young adults.  Instead it focused heavily on demographic samples of populations that voted overwhelmingly against Donald Trump.

The Media Hides Its Own Disapproval Rating.  The latest poll by USA Today and Suffolk University carried some eye-opening numbers about public disapproval of the media's aggressive attempts to run the country.  It found that President Trump has a 47% approval rating and that 44% disapprove of him.  That's not surprising.  The media talk about his unpopularity all the time.  But here's what they don't talk about:  their own numbers.  Only 37% of Americans have a favorable opinion of their job performance.  A whopping 50% have an unfavorable opinion.

52% Voters Approve Trump Job Performance — Stat Buried in 2nd-to-Last Graph of Story.  A Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday [3/15/2017] shows 52 percent of voters approve of President Donald Trump's job performance, but that statistic is in the second-to-last paragraph of the Politico article about the poll.

A new poll shows a majority think Jeff Sessions lied and should resign.  Be skeptical.  A new poll from Quinnipiac University has a splashy finding:  A majority of people think that Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied under oath about his communications with Russian officials while working with the Trump campaign and should resign — 52 percent and 51 percent, according to the poll.  I was a little surprised by this.  And upon further inspection, there are a few reasons for skepticism. [...] This poll seems to be a great example of the way you ask the question determining the answers you get.

YouGov poll:  Majority of Dems consider Trump an "enemy," majority of Republicans consider Democrats an "enemy".  Among Republicans, 43 percent say the media is an "enemy" while another 35 percent say it's "unfriendly."  Interestingly, despite endless whining from Democrats online that the media is either too right-wing or insufficiently left, fully 60 percent of Democrats polled here acknowledge that the media is either an "ally" or "friendly."  I wonder about the phrasing of the questions, though.  Instead of asking straightforwardly "Do you regard the media as an enemy?", YouGov asked "Would you say that the media is an enemy to people like you?"  Phrasing it that way leaves it unclear to the respondent which way the hostility is supposed to be running in the "enemy" relationship.

Trump is stronger than national polls suggest.  President Trump is still popular in core Republican strongholds, even though he has suffered a dip in the national public opinion polls.  Trump's approval rating is 45 percent, an underwater mark previously unseen for a president this early in his first term.  But Trump's image and his policies are holding up just fine among voters in Republican districts and states key to the president's ability to drive his agenda through Congress, and his party's success in 2018.

About Those Latest Media Polls.  Amid the jaw-dropping revelations within the U.S. body politic in 2016, one of the most important was the American electorate discovering that Media Polling is just as brutally biased as the media entities who present the polling results.  With election 2016 behind us, and predicting "media opinion polls" once again being used in 2017 to create false narratives, the truth behind the intentionally constructed 2016 deception must not simply fade back into the shadows.  Never again should the American voter trust polling presented by corporate media.  Everything about media polling is a financed and manufactured fraud.

Jake Tapper: 'The Media Is in a Rough Place Right Now' After Misreading Election.  CNN's Jake Tapper spoke candidly with TheWrap in an interview out today about what the press needs to do to "regain ground" with the American people after getting the election so wrong.  On election night, Tapper said that if Trump ends up winning, it may "put the polling industry out of business."

The Editor says...
The polling industry will never go out of business for at least two reasons:  First, because one cannot underestimate the gullibility of couch-potato consumers of TV news shows; and second because most TV news organizations don't have their own polling people on staff, so they rely on polls that they read about in the New York Times.

Trump slams 'rigged' polls of his public approval.  President-elect Donald Trump blasted 'rigged' opinion polls Tuesday [1/17/2017] as two different surveys pegged him as the least popular man to take the oath of office in four decades, with a popularity rating just half of what Barack Obama's was eight years ago.  'The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls,' Trump tweeted Tuesday morning.  'They are rigged just like before.'  Trump set out his missive amid blaring headlines about his record-low popularity upon taking office, and negative ratings for his handling of the transition period.

New ABC / WaPo Poll Shows Drop In Trump Favorability Courtesy Of Aggressive "Oversamples".  In the month leading up to the election on November 8th, we repeatedly demonstrated how the mainstream media polls from the likes of ABC/Washington Post, CNN and Reuters repeatedly manipulated their poll samples to engineer their desired results, namely a large Hillary Clinton lead.  In fact, just 16 days prior to the election an ABC/Wapo poll showed a 12-point lead for Hillary, a result that obviously turned out to be embarrassingly wrong for the pollsters.  But, proving they still got it, ABC/Washington Post and CNN are out with a pair of polls on Trump's favorability this morning that sport some of the most egregious "oversamples" we've seen.

Fake Polls?  How CNN And ABC Are Fudging The Numbers To Tank Trump's Favorability.  Two polls released Tuesday — one from ABC and a second from CNN — tout Donald Trump as being the most unfavorable incoming president in modern history — yet on second look, the data is clearly boosted by the pollers' decision to oversample Democrats.

Fake Poll News:  Public Says Trump Can't Handle Being President?  A Gallup poll seemed to put a damper on Donald Trump's presidency before he's even sworn in, with fewer than half the public saying he's up to the job of being president.  At least, that's how the results are being reported.  But a closer look at the data tells a much different story.

Don't Fall For This Poll Showing Only About 1 in 4 Wants Trump to Repeal Obamacare.  The Kaiser in question, creator of the Kaiser Family Foundation, was a rich industrialist and auto manufacturer who also founded Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest health care organizations in America, and a primary beneficiary of Obamacare.  As for the biased nature of anything issuing from the polling fundament of the Associated Press, after the egregious fiascos committed during the campaign season in AP's headlong, all-in efforts to stop Trump and elect Hillary, little more needs to be said.  Another dead giveaway:  No link to the poll's internals.

Pat Caddell: 'Grace, That's What's Missing' as Obamas Prepare to Leave White House.  Political pollster and analyst Pat Caddell told Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Monday [12/19/2016] that, concerning the Obamas leaving the White House, "We are watching this ending here.  It's not quite as bad as the Clintons ... but the lack of grace, that's what's missing here." [...] Additionally, pointing out that, post-election, no one in major media was fired or demoted for getting the election so wrong.  "None of them have been fired.  Are you kidding?" he said.  "The pollsters who are bad," he continued, "what are they doing?  They're back with new polls this week."

Malcolm Turnbull says opinion polls are unreliable after Donald Trump's shock win in the US election.  Opinion polls are no longer a reliable indicator of political outcomes according to Malcolm Turnbull.  The Australian Prime Minister says following political events such as Donald Trump's presidential win and Brexit, results from opinion polls should be met with some skepticism.

Fake News Versus Junk News.  The big "fake news" stories of 2016 were the polls.  Most showed Donald Trump losing big in November, thus cable news ran countless renditions of the many ways Trump could not possibly win the necessary Electoral College vote.  Getting the story utterly wrong should result in hand-wringing, hair-pulling and painful introspection in my profession; instead many in the news business have turned their hungry eyes on "fake news" disseminated on Facebook and Google.  That's right.  After a year of getting the story consistently wrong, journalism gurus are pointing to phony stories not produced by the mainstream media.

When Polls Become Idols.  Hillary and her supporters on PBS, CNN, NBC, ABC, and CBS are always using the word "inclusivity" as expressing her vision for America, thus they suppose that Trump's interest in putting more controls on illegal immigration or refugee admission is exclusionary, whereas he is merely talking about some practical restraints, not the elimination of our inclusive history.  Thus, polling pundits failed to factor out or offset their own P.C. bias in interpreting the feedback from voters and potential voters.  Pollsters must ask questions, and the questions as well as the hearing of the answers require an interpretive cognitive framework that governs the creation of the questions and the understanding of the responses.  Thus, the polling questions may be distorted and colored by bias from beginning to end.

Putting the Polling Miss of the 2016 Election in Perspective.  Over all, the national polls missed the result by only a few points:  Hillary Clinton is on track to win the popular vote by around 1.5 percentage points, not especially far from her roughly four-point lead in an average of national polls.  But the state polls were a different story.  They systematically underestimated Donald J. Trump's standing in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.  His strength there was enough to make him the president.  Few saw it coming.

Post-election thoughts from a 'deplorable'.  Wikileaks also exposed the collusion with the Clinton campaign and pollsters and the MSM; thus the public refused to believe those polls showing Hillary winning.  Trump also cited a warning of this deceit.  We no longer believed anything reported in the mainstream press which had abdicated all journalistic ethics by their blatant bias for Clinton.

The PPD Poll Was the Most Accurate in 2016. It Wasn't Even Close.  The USC Dornsife/LA Times Presidential Election Poll and Investor's Business Daily TIPP Poll are taking victory laps for predicting Donald J. Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton.  But they, and those in the media citing them, are inaccurately claiming those two polls were the only two that got it right.  "Not one other national poll had Trump winning in four-way polls," IBD Editorials falsely claimed last week.  Sorry, but that's incorrect.  In fact, they predicted the eventual winner, but missed the actual margin.

Election Pundits:  Clueless, Spectacularly Clueless.  On October 1, according to the New York Times, the odds were 76 percent in Hillary Clinton's favour and steadily increased from there.  On the very eve of the election the Times declared that the probability of a Clinton victory was 85 percent.  The pollsters tried hard.  After the unexpected victory of Brexit in the United Kingdom, they realised that their models could be wrong.  They tried to take into account voter turn-out and the limitations of telephone polling.  They failed.  But it wasn't just the number crunchers who failed.  The pundits read in the tea leaves that Clinton would bring together a coalition of workers, professionals, black and Hispanics which would propel her to victory. [...] Yet she lost.

The Media and the Pollsters have lost their clout by incompetence and deceit.  Pre-election night polls and media coverage reflected that leftist monoculture.  The pollsters who should now begin shuttering their shops and looking for real work.  After months of predicting a certain substantial Hillary win, they predicted the following results:
    NBC/SM: Clinton +6
    Ipsos:  Clinton +4
    NBC/WSJ: Clinton +4
    ABC/WaPo:  Clinton +4
    Herald:  Clinton +4
    Bloomberg:  Clinton +3
Only IBD and Dornslife predicted a Trump win.

Reuters Explains How It "Fudged" Its Polls.  Over the past couple of weeks, we have constantly pointed out that polling data was seemingly being manipulated to "manufacture" artificial leads for the mainstream media's chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton.  By "oversampling" democrats and/or various minority groups, pollster after pollster kept rolling out predictions that seemed utterly ridiculous to us but were gobbled up by complicit media outlets.

An Important Post-Election Message About Media PollingThe media didn't get it wrong.  The pollsters did not work from the wrong data set; the media pollsters, consultants and professional political class did not work from the wrong assumptions, or use the incorrect baselines.  THEY LIED.  The professional media polling agents knew exactly what the truth was.  They lied and manipulated their data in a concerted effort to intentionally falsify reality.  There should be no doubt, EVER, in the mind of any political observer as to what took place within the expressed and broadcasted polling which fueled over two years of broadcast news.  The media intentionally lied.  They knew the truth.  The same tools available to us, and to those who were ridiculed for truth-telling, were available to them and many more.  They did not get it wrong.  They chose to lie to you the American electorate.

How the polls, including ours, missed Trump's victory.  Two days ago, pollsters and statisticians gave Hillary Clinton odds of between 75 and 99 percent of winning the U.S. presidential election.  How did so many get it so wrong?  In hindsight, the polling consensus went astray in two major ways.  The media, including Reuters, pumped out two kinds of poll stories.  Some were national surveys designed to estimate the entire country's popular vote, but not the outcome in individual states, where the contest is actually decided. [...] News organizations also produced a blizzard of stories meant to calculate the probability of victory for the two candidates.  These calculations were predicated on polls of individual states.

Results call future of political polling into question.  For pollsters, the 2016 presidential election will go down as more than an embarrassment — it threatens to spiral into an existential crisis.  At the moment we needed them most, when the nation was desperate for accurate projections, many pollsters whiffed.  Although most correctly predicted Hillary Clinton's narrow popular-vote victory, vaunted poll averages and complex mathematical forecasts largely failed to envision Donald Trump's rise to the presidency through a convincing triumph in the Electoral College.  The ramifications reverberated swiftly Wednesday, as pundits and voters mocked the surveyors for bumbling their quadrennial moment in the spotlight.

How did polls miss the presidential election result so badly?  Heading into Election Day, virtually all public polling — at the national and swing-state level — pointed to a relatively easy victory for Democrat Hillary Clinton.  That, um, didn't happen.  In search of the "why" behind that poll fail, I contacted my longtime friend Jon Cohen.  Jon was once the head of polling at The Washington Post, but in his new life he serves as the senior vice president of Survey Monkey, the leading purveyor of Internet-based polls.

Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment.  Pollsters and election modelers suffered an industry-shattering embarrassment at the hands of Donald Trump on Tuesday night.  Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, had long said the polls were biased against him.  His claims — dismissed and mocked by the experts — turned out to be true.  "It's going to put the polling industry out of business," said CNN anchor Jake Tapper.  "It's going to put the voter projection industry out of business."

Sabato's Final Calls:  Hillary Wins Big, 50-50 Senate.  Hillary Clinton will win the presidency with more than 300 electoral votes, and the Senate will be tied at 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats according to Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball final projections ahead of Tuesday's vote.

How Did Polls & Experts Get the 2016 Election So Wrong?  Donald Trump defied the pundits and polls to defeat Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential election.  Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, appeared on "Fox & Friends" this morning to explain how pollsters' predictions — which overwhelmingly favored Clinton — were so wrong.

The USC/L.A. Times poll saw what other surveys missed:  A wave of Trump support.  For most of the last four months, the USC/L.A. Times Daybreak tracking poll has been the great outlier of the 2016 campaign — consistently showing a better result for Donald Trump than other surveys did.  In light of Tuesday's election returns, the poll now looks like the only major survey to see the wave coming.

Let's laugh!  Here are the final media polls before election.  All of the so called "pollsters" and eggheads were so convinced that Hillary Clinton would win the election and likely get at least 300 EVs.  There were only two polls yesterday which showed a win for Donald Trump.  The L.A. Times daily tracking poll which had Trump +3 and the IBD/TPPP poll which had Trump winning by two in a four way race.  The other polls, all had Hillary Clinton winning.  Let's review them and mock them.

What Trump's upset win teaches us about free will and the limits of statistics.  [Scroll down]  Today, statistics are being used for everything from determining health care costs to how to educate our children to who is likely to be a criminal.  In some cases, academics are advocating abandoning our understanding of basic human rights to promote healthier living through science.  If we can use numbers to determine who will be a criminal and who won't, why bother with this whole justice system folderol?  This is the same mindset that drove the American eugenics movement, where experts thought they had the knowledge to know who was fit to reproduce.  Basically, a blind faith in data is in danger of driving the surrender of essential liberty to government planners who know better.  The Austrian School understood, nearly 100 ago, that such planning is impossible to do effectively because people are not cogs in a machine.  They are individuals capable of choosing their own fates.

How did pollsters get Trump, Clinton election so wrong?  Pollsters flubbed the 2016 presidential election in seismic fashion.  Donald Trump's victory dealt a devastating blow to the credibility of the nation's leading pollsters, calling into question their mathematical models, assumptions and survey methods.  Several months of polls pegged Hillary Clinton as the leader in the polarizing race and as the leader in many key battleground states.  But Trump's surge crushed the conventional wisdom among pollsters.  Early Wednesday [11/9/2016], he was far outpacing projections across the board.

Pollsters suffer huge embarrassment.  Pollsters and election modelers suffered an industry-shattering embarrassment at the hands of Donald Trump on Tuesday night.  Trump had long said the polls were biased against him.  His claims — dismissed and mocked by the experts — turned out to be true.  "It's going to put the polling industry out of business," said CNN anchor Jake Tapper.  "It's going to put the voter projection industry out of business."  Going into Election Day, a strong majority of pollsters and election modelers forecast that Hillary Clinton would coast to victory, with many predicting she would sweep the battlegrounds and win north of 300 electoral votes.  The final University of Virginia Center for Politics model had Clinton winning 322 electoral votes to 216 for Trump, with Clinton winning Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — all states that she lost.

Exit polls under siege.  Ever since Jimmy Carter's early concession in 1980 was blamed for losses to down-ballot Democrats in Western states, both politicians and media outlets have been religious about not reporting the results until everyone's voted.  But that's all about to change, starting early Tuesday morning [11/8/2016].  This year, a handful of different projects are underway to disrupt the rhythm and flow of information on Election Day — including one controversial effort that some worry could affect the actual election results.

When It Comes to Polls, We Need Something Between Absolute Faith and Absolute Denial.  Yes, the polls in 2012 were off, with the average pollster underestimating Obama's lead and largely unprepared for how effectively the Obama campaign's get-out-the-vote effort would change the electorate.  But most of the polls were off by one, two, or three percentage points.  Yes, the polls in 2014 were off, with the average pollster overestimating Senate Democratic candidates' performance by 4 percentage points and overestimating gubernatorial Democratic candidates' performance by 3 percentage points.  But quite a few elections that year were outside that margin.  Yes, every once in a while, you get a race where the election day winner didn't lead any poll — like Republican Larry Hogan's victory in Maryland in 2014 and Matt Bevin's victory in Kentucky in 2015.  Yes, sometimes you'll get very contradictory results from different pollsters surveying the same state at the same time.

Polls Are Still Being Used as Weapons.  The major polls that everybody talks about, NBC, ABC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Monmouth, you name it, all show Hillary Clinton anywhere up from three to five points.  Now, in every case the Hillary win is within the margin of error.  They don't make a big point of telling you that.  My point is I think the polls are still being used as weapons and that's a departure from my previously stated theories and beliefs.  And I finally asked myself, I mean, if we don't trust the news every day from these people, why would we trust their polls?

Early Voting a Poor Predictor of Final Results.  As we wind down this election, we begin to hear the familiar chime:  The election is over and/or can be predicted because of what we see in the early vote.  Don't buy it.  While we might be able to make some broad projections based upon early voting — maybe — we're more likely to substitute our own judgments and arbitrary intuitions for actual results.  There are (at least) three reasons this it true. [...]

Trump Leads in Average of National Polls Released Tuesday.  Four national tracking polls have been released so far Tuesday [11/1/2016].  Average them out, and you get a one-point lead for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.  Mrs. Clinton has crashed in the ABC/Washington Post poll, which just last week had her up by 12 points but which today shows a one-point lead for Trump. [...] Other interesting polls released today come out of Virginia, which was supposed to be a lock for Hillary Clinton.  A Washington Post poll has her up by six, while an Emerson University survey puts Clinton's margin at only four points.  But a Franklin & Marshall poll has Clinton leading by 11 points in Pennsylvania.

Now it's Clinton saying the polls are rigged.  Hillary Clinton's campaign is claiming 'bad polling' is responsible for the candidate's sudden fall from grace in a daily tracking survey she's lead since May, not her emails.  A senior campaign official told reporters traveling with Clinton today an ABC News/Washington Post poll that gave Donald Trump a one-point advantage was wrong.  'It's just not what we see at all.  It's not what other people seem to have.  There just seems to be something about that model that seems off,' the aide said.

Poll: Donald Trump +7 over Hillary Clinton in North Carolina, Now at 51 Percent.  A new WRAL/SurveyUSA poll shows that Donald Trump is now leading North Carolina by seven points ahead of Hillary Clinton — 51 percent to Clinton's 44 percent.  That means that Trump has shockingly flipped his numbers in the state in just one month.

The Stretch Drive (6).  [T]he ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll today [11/1/2016] has Trump leading by 1 point.  Yes, yes, margin of error, mumble mumble — but there's no avoiding the obvious fact that Hillary's once large lead has evaporated.  The state-by-state polls showing Hillary still ahead should be viewed with skepticism.

Trump Leads Clinton by 1 Point in New Poll as Enthusiasm Declines.  In the latest results, 46 percent of likely voters support Trump, and 45 percent are for Clinton.  With the data taken to a decimal place for illustrative purposes, a mere 0.7 of a percentage point divides them.  Third-party candidate Gary Johnson has 3 percent, a new low; Jill Stein, 2 percent.

Clinton tanked before Comey's surprise.  Hillary Clinton's campaign was floundering before the FBI announced on Friday that federal agents are back to investigating her for breaking the law as secretary of State.  Readers may recall that on Wednesday I noticed a 4-point drop in Hillary's lead in the ABC tracking poll.  The next day it dropped another two points.  Then it dropped to 4 and now it is at a two-point lead for Hillary.  That is a ten-point drop in four days — before Friday's news.

ABC News/Washington Post Tracking Poll:  Ten Point Swing For Donald Trump In Four Days.  Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump is rising in the polls, according to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll.  Trump is now at 45 percent with likely voters, up seven points from his low of 38 percent earlier in the month.  Hillary Clinton is at 47 percent while Gary Johnson is at four percent and Jill Stein is at two percent.

The Visual Guide to Disputing Media Polling.  The purpose of this article is to prove that the media is either lying to massively impact motivation or turnout for Trump or has absolutely no idea what the actual score is.  The media don't care if I know what they are doing with their nonstop analysis of new "chaos" within the Trump campaign.  They are playing this sad song for the record number of independent voters who appear to be requesting ballots or voting early in battlegrounds across America.  The first clue is that in the same week, ABC and CNN have polls showing a massive lead and a comfortable lead, respectively.  These two polls are seven points apart.  Obama's landslide win from 2008 was by a margin of 7.6%, and he still lost 22 states.

L.A. Times Tracking Poll:  Donald Trump Leading Hillary Clinton Again.  Donald Trump's polling numbers are ticking back up, according to the latest L.A. Times tracking poll.  Trump is now at 45.8 percent nationally in the poll, while Hillary Clinton is 44.5 percent, per the Times' website.  However, the sponsor of the poll — the Center for Economic and Social Research — seems to have interpreted the data differently and shows Trump with a slightly larger lead:  45.8 percent to Clinton's 44.1.

Poll: Hillary Clinton's Lead Shrinking in Michigan.  Hillary Clinton is maintaining a six to seven point lead over Donald Trump in Michigan, according to two new polls — but her lead has shrunk since earlier in the month when she held an 11 point advantage.  A Free Press/WXYZ-TV poll reveals Clinton with a seven point lead over Trump, 41 percent to 34 percent.  Earlier this month, Clinton topped Trump in Michigan by roughly 11 points.

Democratic 'oversampling' is a dirty trick.  Without random sampling, the fundamental math basis of statistics goes kablooey.  Oversampling one side or the other is an invitation to make false conclusions, and any decent scientist or statistician avoids biased sampling like the Black Plague.  No scientific journal in the world would accept an article based on biased sampling.  Like so many Demo-mafia tactics, this one counts on voter laziness.  The Media Apparatus understands perfectly well that a single big headline, "Hillary ahead by 15 points," sways more votes than a thousand statistical details down in the small print.  Radio and TV talking heads only read the headlines.  They've never learned anything else, and they care too much about their hairdos.

Trump Has 2-Point Edge in Bloomberg Politics Poll of Florida.  Donald Trump has a slim advantage in Florida as critical independent voters narrowly break his way in the must-win battleground state, a Bloomberg Politics poll shows.  The Republican presidential nominee has 45 percent to Democrat Hillary Clinton's 43 percent among likely voters when third-party candidates are included, the poll found.  In a hypothetical two-way race, Trump has 46 percent to Clinton's 45 percent.

Democrats' push-polling strategy revealed by WikiLeaks.  Donald Trump is publicly accusing Hillary of "rigging the system."  Push-polling is one way to do that.  It amounts to artificially blowing up the Democratic poll numbers to "push" a psy-ops mission — to encourage one set of voters to think they are winning and to demoralize the opposition voters, who think they are losing.  One Alinsky rule is to do what your supporters enjoy:  winning feels better than losing.

Trump:  Media pushing fake polls to supress turnout.  With just two weeks before Election Day and suffering a five to six-point deficit in the polling averages, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is lashing out at both the media and pollsters, claiming that the majority of surveys being conducted are rigged in favor of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.  Speaking at a round-table event with farmers in Florida on Monday, Trump dismissed claims he is losing to Clinton, arguing that the media was using "phony polls" and downplaying those polls which show Trump tied or leading.  Trump is currently trailing the former Secretary of State by 5% in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in a four-way race.  Only two polls — the Investor's Business Daily/TIPP tracking poll and Rasmussen Reports tracking poll — have shown Trump in the lead over the past week.

Texas Rigged?  Reports Of Voting Machines Switching Votes To Hillary In Texas.  [Scroll down]  Obviously, the desired effect of such actions isn't to create a warm and fuzzy feeling for the Hillary campaign over polling data that they know is false.  Rather, the intent is to use artificial polls, like the ABC / WaPo poll released over the weekend showing a ridiculous 12-point national lead for Hillary, to suppress the republican vote by convincing opposition voters that the race is already over.  Of course, another way that democrats have attempted to "maximize what they get out of their media" this election cycle is by combining rigged polling data with reports from liberal newspapers, like this one from the Washington Post, suggesting that the election is such a blowout that typical republican strongholds, like Texas, are actually in play.

November 8th: Trump +5.  Presidential polls are split into two camps:  MSM polls and non-MSM polls.  They have starkly different characteristics and results.  MSM polls come from those you already know, and the companies themselves have already shed their last shred of dignity and objectivity to throw in with Hillary.  They also poll in discreet measure (i.e., release a poll whenever they want one to come out).  Non-MSM polls are not as well known but quite accomplished (e.g., Rasmussen, LA Times/USC, IDB/TIPP — the most accurate in 2012 election, by the way).  They also poll daily (actually an average of the last three days).  Finally, MSM polls consistently show Hillary up by an average of 8%, whereas the non-MSM polls have shown variation based on events and a logical current tightening of the polls down to basically +/-1% or so per candidate (e.g., Trump in the lead right now by 2% in Rasmussen's poll).

Trump Expands Lead in Most Accurate Poll Over Last Three Presidential Election Cycles.  Donald Trump expanded his lead over Hillary Clinton in a four-way race to two points, 42%-40%, in day 4 of the IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll, with Trump moving past his Democratic rival in a head-to-head match-up for the first time.

Trump, Clinton In Dead Heat As Race Hits Final Two-Week Stretch — IBD/TIPP Poll.  With the presidential election set to enter its final two weeks, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump find themselves in a near dead heat at 41% each in a four-way race, the latest IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll shows.  Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson edged up to 8% from 7%, while the Green Party's Jill Stein rebounded to 4% from 3%.  Without rounding, Trump stands at 41.1%, 0.1 percentage point behind Clinton's 41.2%. Johnson stands at 7.7%, unrounded, while Stein is at 3.7%.

Texas could destroy the United States.  The state department is conceding things in negotiations with other countries to influence the outcome of the presidential election.  Thousands of illegal voter registrations have occurred in places like Indiana and Virginia.  There are millions of dead people on voter rolls and registered in multiple states — and voter fraud is relatively easy to detect.  Electoral fraud — the fraud that takes place during the counting process — is even more difficult for those on the outside to trace and definitively track.  With wildly divergent polls providing cover, an professional media backing Hillary more overwhelmingly than self-identified Democrats are, and a bipartisan political apparatus that demands Trump lose, even the discovery of blatant irregularities and outright fraud won't reverse a Hillary win if it occurs.

What's going on with the polls?  Something funny is happening in the major national polling department of this presidential race, and no one's talking about it.  First, somehow the narrative seems to be developing that the polls show Clinton with a near insurmountable lead. [...] There is a very large gap between Trump's and Clinton's current national standing, as revealed by Goebbels/Pravda (CBS, NBC, ABC/Washington Post), on the one hand, versus the picture painted by three respected polling organizations that are not part of the propaganda wing of the Democratic Party, on the other.

Dueling Polls:  Clinton Lead Drops to 5 in One Michigan Survey, Increases to 13 in Another.  Hillary Clinton's lead over Donald Trump in Michigan dropped to five points in one Michigan poll, while it increased to thirteen points in another poll.  A statewide poll conducted by the Marketing Resource Group showed "Hillary Clinton continues to lead Donald Trump by five percentage points (41 percent — 36 percent) in Michigan as the campaign for President enters the final few weeks of the election.  The statewide poll, conducted by Marketing Resource Group (MRG), showed the number of undecided voters has been reduced to just eight percent."

Poll known for accuracy finds Clinton, Trump locked in dead heat.  An independent daily tracking survey billed as nation's most accurate shows Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton knotted in a dead heat even as other polls show her leading the presidential race.  The Investor's Business Daily poll, known as IBD/TIPP, released Monday found the top two candidates deadlocked at 41 percent, followed by Libertarian Gary Johnson at 8 percent and Green Party nominee Jill Stein at 4 percent.  What's more, since Oct. 20, the survey has shown Mr. Trump running slightly ahead of Mrs. Clinton.  He led Mrs. Clinton on Sunday by 43 to 41 percent, a marked difference from the Real Clear Politics average, which had Mrs. Clinton ahead by six percentage points.

New Poll Finds Hillary Clinton Leading Donald Trump by 12 Points.  Hillary Clinton has jumped into a double-digit lead against rival Donald Trump, pushed largely by disapproval of the Republican candidate, according to ABC News's inaugural 2016 election tracking poll.  The Democratic nominee now leads Trump by 12 percentage points among likely voters.

On the very same day:
Trump Up 2 Points Nationwide, While Clinton Campaigns As If The Race Is Already Won.  With 16 days to go until November 8, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 2 percentage points — 43% to 41% — in a four-way race, according to the latest IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll.  Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson saw his support held steady at 7%, while the Green Party's Jill Stein dipped to 3%.  Unrounded, Trump leads 42.6% to 40.8% — a 1.8-point edge — with Johnson at 7.2% and Stein at 3.3%.  Trump also holds a nearly one-point lead in a two-way matchup — 43.2% to 42.3%.

Trump Expands Lead Over Clinton To 2 Points — IBD/TIPP Poll.  Donald Trump expanded his lead over Hillary Clinton in a four-way race to two points, 42%-40%, in day 4 of the IBD/TIPP presidential tracking poll, with Trump moving past his Democratic rival in a head-to-head match-up for the first time.  Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson fell 1 point to 7%, while Green Party [candidate] Jill Stein held at 4%.  In the first three days of the tracking poll, Trump held a 1-point lead in a four-way race.  Unrounded, Trump leads 42.1% to 39.7% — a 2.4-point edge — with Johnson at 7.3% and Stein at 3.6%.  Meanwhile, in a 2-way race, Trump leads Clinton by a half-point — 42.2% to 41.7%.  Previously, Clinton had led by two or three points in a 2-way race vs. Trump.

The media thinks the American people are mushrooms.  The Los Angeles Times poll for six months calls the same people over and over again to see how the race is going.  That is expensive.  The other polls do it on the cheap, randomly call different voters each day, because that is what the textbook says you should do.  Who got it right in 2012?  The Los Angeles Times poll has it tied.  The rest of the polls have her up by more than six (on average).

Anti-Gaslighting: Raw and Current State Vote Data Not Remotely Close To Media Polling.  Earlier today on CNN Clinton Campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon stated:  "in the next three weeks we expect the polls to tighten significantly". [...] The reason for Fallon's prediction is brutally obvious, the current media polls are nonsense.  As a result, the polling averages are nonsense.  As a result the electoral maps the media want to sell today — based on those polls — are nonsense....  In essence, the same bias media coverage is embedded in their biased media polls.

Busted!  Hillary's Fake +11 Poll Lead Just Exposed By Anonymous.  Anonymous validates our suspicion of fake polls.  [Video clip]

Eight More Days Remain In Current MSM Narrative Cycle.  The peak U.S. media false polling cycle is thankfully in the rear-view mirror.  Over the next eight days corporate media entities will begin scaling back the promoted pro-Clinton polling advantages they have falsely inserted into the presidential election narrative.  By Friday October 28th, their manipulative cycle will have concluded.

America's Leading Motivation Expert Explains Why Hillary Polls are Bogus.  Polls showing Hillary are "up" are unreliable, because they do not reflect the lack of enthusiasm people supporting Hillary have.  A poll is like a New Years Resolution.  Yes, people will tell you they are going to do all sorts of things — lose weight, save more money, read more books, and vote for Hillary Clinton.  The reason most people never take action is because they lack motivation.  They can't see why their lives will improve if they take action.  There's no motivation.

Political science professor says pollsters have no idea who will vote in November.  A casual observer of national polling on the White House race might conclude that Hillary Clinton is the assured victor.  All but four of the surveys taken since the first general election debate that are included on industry website Real Clear Politics have Clinton winning head-to-head match-ups against Donald Trump.  She leads him by an average of 5.5 percent in recent surveys.  When Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein are options, Clinton is still ahead by 6.3 percent.

Are Polling Firms Now Factoring in Democratic Voter Fraud?  Trump supporters have repeatedly questioned not just the findings, but the motives of pollsters.  Earlier this week, Thomas Lifson expressed skepticism about a Hart Research Associates poll showing Donald Trump down by 11 points.  As Conservative Treehouse revealed, the organization has been a big contributor to Hillary Clinton, handing over $220,500 in September alone.  But Hart is not taken seriously by those who follow the polling industry.  Peter Hart is always identified as a "Democratic pollster," and Nate Silver, in his detailed analysis of the 2012 presidential race, didn't bother looking at Hart's data.

Pence: 'There's Something Missing in the Polling These Days'.  Friday [10/14/2016] on Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends," Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) questioned the accuracy of polling, which shows his running mater Donald Trump behind against his opponent Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.  Pence pointed to the attendance of Trump's rallies and said that suggests something different is going on that isn't reflected by the polls.

The Savvy Person's Guide to Reading the Latest Polls.  When a poll comes out, I start by looking at the topline results — Hillary Clinton is plus 3 percentage points, or Donald J. Trump is plus 1, for example.  But it's also worth looking at vote share — whether Mrs. Clinton has 47 percent or 40 percent, for instance.  In particular, I care about how close the leading candidate is to 50 percent.  There's more uncertainty the further a candidate is from 50 percent and the larger the number of undecided voters.  Until a candidate approaches 50 percent, it's hard to know whether the lead is because of party unity or because the candidate has won over the key voters needed for victory.

Illegal In-Kind Campaigning?  Poll Fraud.  You know about that nice NBC/WSJ "poll" that shows that Hillary is up 11, right?  Well, CTH [Conservative Treehouse] deconstructed it. [...] What CTH managed to find is that the organization that ran the poll is an organization run by a man who currently is a SuperPAC operator for PrioritiesUSA in support of Hillary Clinton, and was involved in a similar one for President Obama.  In other words the so-called "media poll" wasn't actually run by NBC and the WSJ, it was run by a SuperPAC dedicated to Hillary's election.  The reason for the intentional bias in the poll's sample is now obvious — and ought to have been reason enough for both NBC and the Wall Street Journal to refuse to run it at all.

Clinton widens lead in Democrat-heavy NBC-WSJ poll.  [Scroll down]  Another factor introducing possible bias in polls, according to our expert, is the types of questions asked and they way they are asked.  For example, respondents in the WSJ-NBC News poll were queried about Trump's "vulgar" comments.  But it appears they were not asked about any negative Clinton developments, such as Wikileaks emails showing that, in paid speeches, she privately told Wall Street types that she has a "private" position on issues and a different "public position," and used the phrase "open borders."

The 11-point lead for Hillary in WSJ-NBC poll sure looks like psy-ops.  The NeverTrumps got a huge boost when the first poll out after the infamous bawdy tapes showed an 11 point lead for Hillary a month before the election.  That is an insurmountable margin, we have been instructed. [...] The Mainstream media touted this poll endlessly.  Unless, of course, the poll was pure psy-ops.  Which, thanks to some research by Sundance of Conservative Treehouse, it now strongly resembles.

Media Polling Fully Exposed — About That NBC/WSJ Clinton +11 Point Poll.  You have probably seen the latest example of the media claiming a released presidential poll from NBC and The Wall Street Journal as an example of Hillary Clinton expanding to an 11 point lead in the weekend following the "controversial" leaked tape of Donald Trump.  The claim is complete and utter nonsense.  Here's the proof.

Half a Dozen News Sites Stop Polling Their Readers on Who Won the Presidential Debate.  Half a dozen news outlets skipped posting snap polls after the second 2016 presidential debate on Sunday — most likely because Donald Trump touted his dominance of their polls after the first debate in September.

If my candidate is behind, the poll must be biased.  As we close in on Election Day, polls tracking the horse race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are everywhere.  And as results are released, partisans and strategists work hard to discredit those in which their candidate does poorly and to emphasize those in which he or she is doing well.  Some make dubious attempts to "unskew" all the polls so that they favor a particular candidate.  At least some people apparently believe that surveys are biased against their side.

When You Hear the Margin of Error Is Plus or Minus 3 Percent, Think 7 Instead.  As anyone who follows election polling can tell you, when you survey 1,000 people, the margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.  This roughly means that 95 percent of the time, the survey estimate should be within three percentage points of the true answer.  If 54 percent of people support Hillary Clinton, the survey estimate might be as high as 57 percent or as low as 51 percent, but it is unlikely to be 49 percent.  This truism of modern polling, heralded as one of the great success stories of statistics, is included in textbooks and taught in college classes, including our own.  But the real-world margin of error of election polls is not three percentage points.  It is about twice as big.

Lester "Candy" Holt Moderates a Completely Useless Debate.  Nobody Won.  America Lost.  I had a feeling when Lester "Candy" Holt, who was every bit as partisan and self injecting as Candy Crowley was 4 years ago, began by talking about 6 years of unprecedented job growth under Obama and Secretary Clinton that Trump was about to be ambushed.  And I was right.  But did this completely tilted "debate" change any minds?  Absolutely not.  But the polls will show Hillary with momentum and she will see a 6 to 8 point rise in her numbers over the next few days.  But fear not, the polls are not showing movement in Hillary's direction.  Not at all.  You see, for the past few days the pundits and news shows have been talking about Trump's rising numbers in the polls.  He has "come from behind" and the race is now tied.  But there really hasn't been much movement in the polls themselves, just in the mix of Republicans and Democrats sampled.  Can you say set up?

Very Good News For Donald Trump In North Carolina "Non-Media" Poll.  A Suffolk University "non-media" poll released today [9/8/2016] shows exceptionally good news for candidate Donald Trump in the quest to overcome the rigged system.  Unlike most media funded polls, the Suffolk poll is very extensive and provides full disclosure on all aspects of the construct allowing for comprehensive research, analysis and evaluation.  The general top line result shows Donald Trump winning with 44%, and Hillary Clinton 41%.  However, the fully disclosed methodology provides an even greater level of optimism.

Polls Show Gary Johnson Hurts Hillary More Than Trump — MSM Jump Into Action.  Poll after poll is showing presidential candidate Gary Johnson in the race hurts Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump.  And you know what that means?  Yup, time for the MSM to wage a thermonuclear media operation against the guy.

Today's Hillary Clinton Tampa Rally -vs- Donald Trump Tampa Rally.  The media polls seem to be moving in a positive direction for Donald Trump, but that's not the whole story.  What's really going on is the media smoothing out the methodology and assumptions while trying to remain relevant.  Nothing more.  Polls don't swing 15± points every few weeks... it just doesn't happen.  As we have outlined for years, all "media polling" is fraught with the same ideological bias inherent in the publication and broadcasting of those media entities presenting their interpretation of their constructs.  Nothing more.

All mixed up:  One national poll has Hillary leading by 7 while another has the race tied.  Hillary Clinton is maintaining her lead over Donald Trump in a Monmouth University poll — though her edge has narrowed since the political conventions and another poll out Monday [8/29/2016] showed the race as tied.

Relying too much on polls doesn't serve public.  Every major broadcast and cable network, and many major newspapers, feel compelled to sponsor their own political polls.  But the polling conducted today by news outlets and universities does little to serve the public interest.  The polls do, however, serve the branding and marketing interests of the sponsoring organizations.  That financial motivation drives the polling frenzy more than any sense of civic duty.  When CNN, Fox News or NBC releases periodic poll results, the news channels benefit from having those results reported across the journalistic world, raising the profile of the respective news outlets.  Polls provide journalists with something to report about, fill time and endlessly analyze.  That's easier for news organizations than covering issues and providing election news of substance.  Such "horse race" coverage diminishes the process of democracy to the level of a sporting event.

Trump Obliterates Clinton's Lead In Latest Reuters Poll.  U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads her Republican rival Donald Trump by 5 percentage points among likely voters, down from a peak this month of 12 points, according to the Reuters/Ipsos daily tracking poll released on Friday [8/26/2016].

Monmouth University Pollster Patrick Murray Busted Manipulating Poll Data, then Lying About It.  By now most CTH readers are familiar with the more notoriously biased polling manipulators.  One of those is Patrick Murray from Monmouth University. [...] Today [8/22/2016], Monmouth via Patrick Murray presents a presidential poll of Ohio voters.  The actual raw data showed Donald Trump with a lead in the result; however, Murray changed the data through weighting to show Hillary Clinton with a lead.

CBS News Deletes Poll Story Crediting Trump for 5+ Point Lead in Pennsylvania.  True Pundit is issuing an Amber Alert for a missing CBS News story.  The story was short, weighed very positive for Donald Trump, was last seen at a CBS affiliate website, and vanished early Monday morning [8/22/2016], approximately 3 am EST.  Voters with any information on this story's whereabouts are encouraged to be quiet and act like nothing happened, just like CBS who is refusing to comment on our questions of what happened to the Trump poll story.  I mean, if the poll showed Hillary Clinton leading by +5 chances are there wouldn't be a story on a missing story.

Poll swings
Media Manipulation of U.S. Politics Under Increased Scrutiny.  It's all nonsense.  All of it.  Polls don't swing back-and-forth 15, 20, 30 points +/- every few weeks.  Regardless of how much the media wants to sell this reality, it just doesn't happen.


LA Times Poll Narrative Ignores Finding: 10-Point Black Voter Shift to Trump.  The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times "Daybreak" poll released Thursday had a stunning finding:  Donald Trump's support among African-Americans had increased by over 10 points virtually overnight.

Clinton lead over Trump shrinks to margin-of-error:  Bloomberg poll.  Is Hillary Clinton squashing Donald Trump into oblivion in the polls?  Or is her lead over him perilously shrinking?  One thing we know is: there are countless ways to spin a poll.  Consider the case of selective reporting on the most recent Bloomberg national poll.  On Aug. 10, Bloomberg reported "Clinton up 6 on Trump in Two Way Race."  But looking at the actual poll, Trump has moved so close to Clinton, the results are within the margin of error.

Media Photoshops Crowd Image For Hillary Clinton St.  Petersburg, Florida Speech.  A couple of hundred people showed up [door count puts the number at 171] within a St.  Petersburg venue capable of holding in excess of 4,000 without seating.  But the media, well, in the land of make believe, they just can't help but manufacture the optics because the same media are selling an entirely different story with their polling.

Pat Caddell on 'Cooked' Reuters Poll: 'Never in My Life Have I Seen a News Organization Do Something So Dishonest'.  On Sunday's Breitbart News Daily with SiriusXM host Alex Marlow, political strategist Pat Caddell outlined his charge that Reuters tampered with its own daily tracking poll to manufacture a sudden surge for Hillary Clinton.  "They not only changed their formula, to put Hillary ahead.  They went back and changed the results, for a week of results where Trump was ahead, and then they turned those into Hillary leads," said Caddell.  "They also erased all the former polling off the site.  They didn't tweak their procedure — they cooked it."

North Carolina Poll — Donald Trump Gains 32% of Black Voters — Leads 46/42 Overall.  A post convention scientific (non media) poll of North Carolina voters from The Civitas Institute shows candidate Donald Trump with a 46/42 lead over Hillary Clinton.  Also, in what is becoming an increasing concern for the Clinton campaign team — the demographics (crosstabs) of the poll show Trump is capturing 32% of the black voting base.

New Polls Signal Deep Trouble for Republican Nominee.  A raft of new national and battleground-state polls released Thursday found Donald Trump slipping well behind Hillary Clinton one week after the end of the Democratic convention, and as the Republican nominee reels from a public feud with the parents of a slain Muslim American soldier.  "There has clearly been a significant movement toward Clinton in the last week," said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco and polling analyst for Bloomberg Politics.  "Some of it is a Clinton post-convention bounce, but more of it seems to be a Trump deflation or implosion."

Cook Political:  The 2016 Race Is Not Over.  [Scroll down]  Another thing we know:  the push polls, the agenda-driven media, and the exhortations of the Beltway insiders on both sides of the aisle are completely ignored by the dirt people in flyover country.  Just as Brexit caught the world's foremost economics "experts" and pollsters by surprise, so too could America's serfs rebel against everything K Street and Wall Street are trying to sell them.

Clinton Media Polling — CNN: "Now She's So Far Ahead There's No Need for an Election".  National Media Polls now show Secretary Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by 10 to 15 points.  And right on cue, the CNN punditry (Erin Burnett) begin tonight [8/4/2016] by saying:  ..."with a national lead this large is there really any reason to have the election?"

Reuters Announces Poll Changes To Help Lift Hillary Clinton.  After Reuters polling showed a 17 point (two week) swing to benefit Donald Trump something urgently needed to be changed.

Exclusive: Pat Caddell Blasts Reuters' Back-Rigging Polls to Show Clinton Winning.  Speaking exclusively to Breitbart News, political polling pioneer Pat Caddell said the Reuters news service was guilty of an unprecedented act of professional malpractice after it announced Friday it has dropped the "Neither" option from their presidential campaign tracking polls and then went back and reconfigured previously released polls to present different results with a reinterpretation of the "Neither" responses in those polls.  "This comes as close as I have ever seen to cooking the results," said the legendary pollster and political consultant.  "I suppose you can get away with it in polling because there are no laws.  But, if this was accounting, they would put them in jail."

75 Percent Positive Response to Donald Trump Speech — So CNN Trashes Its Own Poll.  Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in Cleveland during a momentous week in political history.  On Thursday night [7/21/2016], Trump gave a one-hour-and-fifteen-minute speech accepting the Republican nomination.  The speech was so overwhelmingly well-received among the crowd that the media did not know what to do to tear it apart.

Opinion Polls or Propaganda?  An opinion poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample, designed to represent the opinion of a larger population group.  The key word here is 'sample'. Suppose you want to conduct a survey on gun rights.  How might the results differ if you sample attendees at a Wyoming gun show versus a meeting of the Ithaca Code Pink chapter?  Presidential polls are no different.  The sample determines the poll results.  Ask a group of Americans who they prefer for president in November.  Who exactly is being asked?

The polls were not biased before the 2012 election, but they are now.  It is Donald J. Trump versus the world, and this makes the current round of polling different from previous elections.  Trump has certainly attracted the anger of Democrats, but many in the GOP establishment dislike him as much as — if not more than — their Democratic opponents.  And for this reason, we must be far more cautious in how the polling data is interpreted.  The GOP establishment (GOPe) — and its media outreach team at places such as National Review, the Wall Street Journal, etc. — is angling for influence with Trump, and its primary means of running this influence operation is by attempting to show that Trump's message and approach are failing with the public, and thus, he needs the GOPe in order to avoid an election apocalypse.

Evidence for massive liberal bias in Ipsos polling of the Trump vs.  Clinton match-up.  Stepping out of reality into the rapidly expanding landfill of polling data biased against Donald Trump reveals what a disaster is taking place when it comes to surveying the public's actual opinion — rather than the desired liberal narrative — about the 2016 general election. [...] The proverbial "tell" in these types of data sets is how respondents answered the question regarding their presidential vote in 2012.  If the poll is representative of the public, the relative percentages of Obama 2012 versus Romney 2012 voters surveyed should approximate — within reason — how the state in question actually voted in 2012.  But if there are significant deviations between the poll's composition and the 2012 results, the cause either needs to be fully explained by the pollster, or we default to the assumption of a bias.

After correcting for bias, Clinton's national lead in CBS News poll evaporates.  CBS News is now pushing the pro-Hillary Clinton polls in rapid fashion.  Late on Wednesday, this media outlet released the results of a national poll claiming to show that Clinton holds a 6% advantage over Donald Trump in the direct head-to-head matchup. [... But] this CBS News poll appears to be biased in favor of the Democrats by the same margin that Clinton purportedly holds over Trump, meaning that if the bias is removed, so is Clinton's lead, and we have a statistical tie.

It Ain't Over Yet.  More than at any period before 2008, polling data has become the main barometer for determining the public's political leanings and from the beginning Trump has been leading here.  The question is, of course, how accurate are these polls?  Are only Republicans being polled or is the general public?  Who's paying for the polls?  What questions are being asked by the pollsters?  Can this data be manipulated by the media?  Of course it can.

Pollster Tries Really, Really Hard To Make GOP Seem Racist.  A newly-released poll conducted by Democrat-aligned Public Policy Polling (PPP) appears to have been deliberately designed to ferret out any possible racism among South Carolina's Republican voters.  But the attempt largely seems to have failed.  The poll released Tuesday [2/16/2016] asks 33 questions, and most of them are basic for just about any poll regarding presidential primaries.  Likely Republican primary voters were asked which GOP candidate they favored, how firm they were in their choice, how they viewed each candidate, and so forth.  But along with the normal questions were nine that dealt with religious or racial matters.

Pollster Frank Luntz Admits To Conflict of Interest With Rubio.  Pollster Frank Luntz acknowledges that he took money to help shape Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)'s political career, a fact that he did not disclose while praising Rubio on Fox News and on social media. [...] Luntz admitted to Breitbart News that he once accepted payment to work for Rubio.  "Yeah, nine years ago," Luntz admitted.  "Nine years ago."  Luntz defended the supposed impartiality of his post-debate focus groups.

Trump Poll Numbers May Be Vastly Inflated Due to Reality Show Name Recognition.  Two-and-one-half months before last week's Iowa Caucus, columnist S.A. Miller of The Washington Times noted what could be called "The Trump Effect" on poll numbers with an article entitled "Donald Trump seen unlikely to win in Iowa despite poll numbers": [...] The critical question that Miller and others have raised is the possibility that some poll respondents choose Trump based not upon policy positions but because they recognize his name.  In my non-scientific discussions with various registered voters, I have discovered a rather significant percentage who are unfamiliar with the name of any GOP candidate, except for that of Donald Trump.

Iowa's Biggest Loser? The Polls. Again.  If you recall, the polls blew the mid-term elections in 2014, the polls really blew the highly-publicized Virginia Senate race, the polls in Israel greatly under-estimated Benjamin Netanyahu's most recent victory, the polls completely whiffed on the conservative win in Britain, and now the polls have blown the Iowa Caucus.  On the GOP side, every recent poll out of Iowa showed Trump as the victor.  In the Real Clear Politics poll of polls, Trump was up by an average of +4.7 points.

Christie Reminds Stephanopoulos of His History as Dem 'Operative'.  An annoyed [Chris] Christie retorted, "I know that as a former operative, you're obsessed with the polls.  I know you are.  But I also know that when you working for Bill Clinton in 1992, everybody told him the night before the New Hampshire primary, he was going to be in single digits and was finished."  He continued, "And the next day, he came in second place and his campaign went on to win the nomination.

Iowa shows polling is slippery business, getting more so.  Most poll-takers took it on the chin when Donald Trump's lead in pre-election polls ended with a Ted Cruz victory at Monday's [2/1/2016] caucuses.

Can We Shoot All the Pollsters Now?  Metaphorically speaking, of course, but in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2015, and now 2016 the pollsters have steered political press coverage.  And in each of those years, the pollsters have seriously screwed up and gotten things wrong.  Again today in Iowa, networks poured in resources based on polls and newspapers set coverage based on polls.  Ted Cruz smashed the record for votes in an Iowa Caucus, beating the 2008 Mike Huckabee win, with a traditional ground game.  But the polling missed it.  The polling missed it big time.  Establishment Republicans as well fed a narrative to the media that was wrong.  Turnout was over 180,000, and pundits all said that would mean Donald Trump would win.  He did not.  Time and time again, the talking heads got it wrong.

Poll: Ten Percent of College-Grad Men Hide Support For Trump From Interviewers.  [Donald] Trump consistently gets a whopping 6 percent more supporters in online polls than in traditional telephone-polls — and that's a big margin in a race with a dozen contenders.  This discrepancy between online and live interview polls has baffled survey experts, because online polls have become quite accurate since previous presidential elections.  A new study detected a possible reason for the 6 percent difference:  college-graduate men are apparently reluctant to tell phone interviewers that they like Trump, but are more comfortable revealing their opinions via online polls.

How Polls Manipulate Voters, No Matter The Results.  A new Indianapolis Star poll, conducted with Ball State University, shows 50.2 percent of people in Indiana support providing special nondiscrimination protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Indiana's laws.  Reportedly, only 35.1 percent are opposed.  That is par for the course on LGBTQ issues, but vote results consistently invalidate such polls, which raises the question:  Is the purpose of polling data to convey the views of a representative sample or to engage in marketing tactics to sway views?

Can We Have a Word About the Polls?  Everyone today [12/14/2015] is freaking out about a poll from Monmouth University that purports to show Donald Trump getting 41% of the Republican vote.  There's a lot to note about exactly how garbage this poll is.  It is so bad that Monmouth's own polling director is basically disavowing it.  If you are interested in a relatively robust writeup of the methodological problems with the poll itself, which are primarily driven by the insane method Monmouth used to select their sample, you can check this Politico writeup [elsew]here.

NBC Promotes Agenda Driven Poll Result — AND, Yet Again, Hides The Data.  Against an increasingly obvious level of support for a common sense freeze on Muslim immigration the progressive apparatchik within the bowels of NBC/WSJ rush to the typeset to deflect the damage.  We've written extensively before about pollster Mark Murray, NBC, and their agenda-polling promotion, so there's no reason to re-hash that again.  However, the latest attempt is so far beyond absurd the light from where absurd emanates won't catch it for a year.

Don't Buy Trump's Big Lead.  When you examine the poll, which was taken from Nov. 27 through Dec. 1, 2015 (which was a holiday weekend and is problematical all by itself in terms of who the respondents were), it is clear that the pollsters chose to ask five questions on the topic of illegal immigration prior to asking about the Republican nomination horserace.  This is a bad polling practice that can skew the results.

The Obama Polling Disconnect.  There continues to be, in short, a gap between opinions about Obama's job performance and feelings about the country's direction.  This essay seeks to determine why nearly half of American adults frequently tell a pollster they approve of the job Obama is doing as president, but only about a quarter opine that the nation is headed in the right direction.

The Front-Runner Fallacy.  Early U.S. presidential polls have tended to be wildly off-target.  There's no reason to think this time is different.

How polling poisoned the political well.  Has political polling reached the end of the line?  While some won't find it as terribly shocking anymore, the polls in Kentucky which had previously been considered among the most reliable missed the Bevin win in the governor's race by a wide margin.  This wasn't the first time either.

Another Data Point to be Ignored.  Matt Bevin won Kentucky by EIGHT points.  It was not even close.  Every poll had it very close and many predicted the Democrats would win.  Kentucky is not alone.  Throughout the nation, polling has been incredibly flawed.  [In addition], it has been flawed internationally.  Look at the British election last year where no one saw the Tories getting an outright majority, which they did.  The polling was flawed in 2014.  It was flawed in 2012.  It was flawed in 2010.  Kentucky is just the latest example.  But even though we have another data point that the polling is flawed, the media is going to continue to shape its political coverage based on the polling.  The debate stages will still be set using polling.

Three Pinocchios:
Clinton's claim that 40 percent of guns are sold at gun shows and over the Internet.  So where does the 40 percent figure come from?  It is derived from studies that were based on data collected from a survey in 1994, the same year that the Brady Act requirements for background checks came into effect.  In fact, the questions concerned purchases dating as far back as 1991, and the Brady Act went into effect in early 1994 — meaning that some, if not many, of the guns were bought in a pre-Brady environment.  The survey sample was relatively small — just 251 people.  (The survey was done by telephone, using a random-digit-dial method, with a response rate of 50 percent.)

The Biggest Scam of the 2016 Election.  Let's go ahead and state this right up front, because there's no other way to spin this.  Either the media and the Republican National Committee charged with overseeing the debate participation criteria are guilty of a negligence bordering on malfeasance, or they are conspiring together to gerrymander the outcome of the 2016 nomination.  How else do you explain the systemically flawed process of permitting public opinion polls, with questionable accuracy, to determine which candidates in a crowded field get access to a debate stage with over 20 million potential voters watching?  As well as how the air-time is doled out for those candidates who do qualify?

How the election revolution has arrived.  A political revolution is taking place in America.  The process of selecting party presidential candidates has been transformed in the last two or three election cycles.  Now we have the early debates designed to drive poll numbers and tell us who's "ahead" and who's "behind," who's "gaining" and who's "dropping."  Yet not a single vote has been taken, not a single voter has pulled a lever in a voting booth or gone to a single caucus.  And yet candidates are being winnowed out.  Take, for example, Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Is he out because he couldn't get any voters to vote for him?  No, few voters have even bothered to focus on the race thus far with any intensity, much less actually vote.  It's because his debate performances proved lackluster, which sent his poll numbers down, which led to a sharp decline in his ability to raise money.  He lost in a contest that was extra-electoral.

Supposedly Neutral Federal Report Stacks The Deck Against Marijuana Legalization.  In 2012 Coloradans approved Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use, by a vote of 55 percent to 45 percent.  Last February a Quinnipiac University poll found that 58 percent of Colorado voters supported that decision, while 38 percent opposed it and the rest weren't sure.  For prohibitionists determined to portray marijuana legalization in Colorado as a disaster, those poll results are inconvenient, since they indicate that public support for Amendment 64 was higher after more than a year of legal recreational sales and more than two years of legal possession and home cultivation than it was in 2012.  Honest drug warriors would acknowledge the Quinnipiac numbers and perhaps try to balance them with other poll results.  Dishonest drug warriors would do what the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (RMHIDTA) does in its new report on marijuana legalization:  change the numbers.

Why is CNN Hiding Its Poll Showing Deep Distrust on Iran Deal?  CNN did a poll on the Iran deal from September 4 to 8.  On Sunday morning [9/13/2015], CNN pollster Jennifer Agiesta (formerly of The Washington Post) reported the results — another poll showing deep skepticism about Iran, and the prospect that Iran will cheat on any nuclear deal.  Obama has a bad disapproval rating on Iran.  You'd never know this from all the "major victory for Obama" talk on this deal.

Rigging the Elections.  Does anybody really look into who's behind those ubiquitous yet influential polls?  It's a no-brainer to insist that we 'follow the money.'  Who is funding the various polls?  Who and where are they polling?  the general electorate or registered Republicans?  What questions are being asked?  I've never been polled.  Have you?

Goodbye, straw poll; you were fun but frivolous.  The Iowa Republican Party pulled the plug on the Iowa Straw Poll on Friday, but the party's official action merely confirmed the obvious:  The quadrennial caucus event was effectively brain dead.

There's No Proof Americans Want The Supreme Court To Save Obamacare.  According to a new [Washington Post]-ABC News poll, Americans oppose the Democrats' health-care insurance reform, 54 to 39 percent.  Yet, by a margin of 55-38 percent, more people say the court should not take action to block federal subsidies in states that didn't set up own exchanges.  This led the Michael Hiltziks of the world to declare that "Americans want to save Obamacare."  This seems like a contradictory message — until you discover how WaPo frames the question: [...]

Documents: Republicans In Congress Cook Up Phony Poll-Tested Talking Points To Push Obama Trade Deal.  [Scroll down]  A deeper dive into this particular poll, however, shows that the results obtained depend on the wording of the questions asked.  Neither Hughes' article nor Amenabear's article printed the actual question that was asked of respondents to get the still unimpressive 37 percent.  So to find it, anyone interested in knowing the full context of this data would need to go behind a paywall at the Wall Street Journal to get the full polling data.

Americans Support Nuclear Deal With Iran?  Presumably, hardly any of those telephoned by the pollsters realized that the objective of the agreement, assuming that Iran abides by it — a laughable assumption — is to extend the time it will take Iran to build a bomb to one year.  Even assuming that objective could be achieved, which most experts do not believe, it would be a small payoff for ending sanctions, which will entrench the mullahs' regime and increase the resources they can devote to nuclear enrichment and ICBM development, which will not be addressed in the prospective deal.

The Myth of Netanyahu's Racism.  Netanyahu's election comment about Arabs being bused in to vote has been seized on as a useful excuse to explain how the media's poll numbers that showed Netanyahu losing align with the actual results by claiming that a rash of racist Israelis rushed to vote.  But that fails to explain why the exit polls were still badly wrong.  A more realistic explanation is that the media's polling was biased against Netanyahu.  But it's easier for the media to accuse Netanyahu of racism than admit to its own biases.

Don't Believe the Latest Elizabeth Warren-Hillary Clinton Poll.  Like many seemingly crazy poll results, it comes down to methodology.  In this case, the Run Warren Run poll includes a string of ten leading questions that paint Warren in an exceedingly favorable light.

Absurd Polls That Favor Jeb Bush.  Jeb Bush is polling as the man to beat in 2016, and it's completely absurd.  Most people outside of Florida have little idea what Jeb Bush has done in office and even fewer voters know what he plans to propose or the direction he seeks for the Republican Party.  But in poll after poll, John Ellis Bush (J.E.B.), the privileged son of President G.H.W. Bush, brother of President G.W. Bush and grandson of a banker and Rockefeller-type Republican senator from Connecticut, Prescott Bush, is leading the list of Republican nomination contenders by a wide margin.  So far though, he's the only one who has announced his desire to run for the office.

Republican Wave Drowns Pollsters.  Despite all of their supposed science, improved methodologies, and sophisticated turnout models, the nation's pollsters have just suffered through their worst midterm elections drubbing in 20 years.  The last time they were off this badly was when they woefully underestimated Republican gains in the Newt Gingrich "Contract with America" midterms of 1994.  In this year's U.S. Senate races, preelection "tossup" predictions really meant "comfortable Republican wins" in three instances — Georgia, Iowa and Kansas, where Republican victory margins were eight, nine, and 11 points, respectively.

Why the media, seduced by the polls, were stunned by huge Democratic defeat.  It's clear now that most prognosticators underestimated the depth of the Republican triumph in the midterms by slavishly hewing to the polls, some of which were wildly off the mark.  But as one Republican after another declared victory, there was another aspect to the coverage that struck me:  The focus remained solidly on the Democrats and why they had so badly blown the election.

Election results looked nothing like the polls — what gives?  Tuesday's midterm elections were supposed to be a night of nail-biters, from Sen. Mitch McConnell's re-election race in Kentucky to veteran Sen. Pat Roberts' battle in Kansas.  The too-close-to-call refrain was expected to be heard throughout the night.  Instead, when the dust settled, Republicans rumbled to one of their biggest victories in decades.  How could so many polls get so many races so wrong?

Losers.  Some polls seem to have transmogrified into pre-election partisan tools, given that a few Senate races and lots of governorships weren't even close to supposedly scientific predictions.

How did pollsters miss the Republican tsunami?  Republicans out-performed their poll numbers in race after race Tuesday [11/4/2014], raising questions about pro-Democratic bias in this year's election's polls — a major turnaround from the pro-GOP bias in 2012's polls.  The series of misses caused at least one political forecaster — Larry Sabato of the widely read Center for Politics' Crystal Ball — to call for changes to the industry Wednesday.  Sabato said on Fox News that he wanted an investigation of polls in Virginia that showed a double-digit lead for Democratic Sen. Mark Warner — who wound up winning re-election by less than a point.

The Polls Were Skewed, All Right — in Favor of Democrats.  As the 2014 midterm election wound to a close, left-wing pundits repeated the error of their conservative rivals in 2012, claiming that the polls forecasting doom were skewed.  It turns out that they were right — but in entirely the wrong direction.  As fivethirtyeight's numbers guru Nate Silver noted after midnight Wednesday [11/5/2014], the polls were skewed, on average, six points in favor of Democrats in the key Senate races where Republicans romped.

Is It As Close As That?  For most of 2012, I maintained that Mitt Romney would lose to Barack Obama. Only after President Obama's first debate did there seem to be a glimmer of hope.  After that debate, polling moved in Romney's direction.  Conservatives had hope.  As we now know, much of the polling in 2012 was wrong.  There were some great pollsters.  The IBD/TIPP poll, the Reuters/Ipsos poll, the Pew Poll, and others were spot on.  But many pollsters, including the most prominent pollster of all, Gallup, were left with black eyes.

Are Colorado Polls Underestimating Democratic Turnout?  Is it possible that pollsters are underestimating the size and composition of Colorado's electorate in the upcoming Nov. 4 — given that the state now mails ballots to its voters?  Democrats seeing incumbent Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., trailing in most public polls to Republican Cory Gardner certainly hope that's the case.

Skewed.  The political community has adopted polling averages or medians to correct somewhat for misleading surveys, and these averages are made widely available by websites such as Real Clear Politics and HuffPost Pollster, among others.  These aggregations are particularly useful when a new survey is released with results that buck the general polling trend in a race.

New Poll: Americans Oppose Obamacare's HHS Mandate 53% to 43%.  A new poll released Thursday [5/8/2014] shows that Americans oppose Obamacare's HHS mandate — the rule requiring "free" coverage of contraception, sterilizations, and the "week-after" pill that may kill human embryos — by a 10-point margin.  Polling on this issue has varied widely, depending on how pollsters frame the question.

The Polls Driving GOP Surrender Are Unscientific Garbage.  [Scroll down]  Conservatives should outnumber liberals by almost two-to-one, but the poll has the ratio at 34:23.  And people who claim not to have health insurance or health care coverage, which should be under 10% unless illegal aliens are included, constitute a whopping 16%.  Demographers might argue over these ratios, but as far as I can tell every case of apparent oversampling/undersampling favors the liberal or Democratic side.  Honest errors would tend to be more evenly distributed and would balance each other out.

About that NBC/WSJ Poll that Killed Republicans on the Shutdown...  This looks like a left-heavy sample.

Mark Levin: NBC/WSJ Poll Showing Shutdown Has Hurt Republicans A "Fraud".  ["]And you see folks, they all look at this poll, this NBC poll, and this has been all over FOX News today.  And unfortunately nobody there reads PJ Media or listens to talk radio or reads the internet, because the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a fraud, an absolute fraud.["]

PPP sat on poll showing Colorado recall strength.  I'll have to defer to pollsters as to whether this is consistent with professional polling protocol.  PPP has admitted that it deliberately did not release a poll showing that Colorado State Senator Angela Giron was likely to lose the recall election by a wide margin.

Gallup Post Mortem Leads To Polling Changes.  Nearly seven months after President Obama won reelection by a margin of 4 percentage points, the Gallup Organization, the world's best-known polling firm, identified in a new report four main reasons why their 2012 surveys badly understated Obama's support.

Bloomberg News hid conflicting fiscal-cliff poll numbers, pushed results favorable to Obama.  A poll conducted last week by an Iowa-based firm showed Americans are conflicted about whether or not to support raising tax rates on wealthy Americans to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff."  But that's not how Bloomberg News, which commissioned the poll, reported the results Thursday [12/13/2012].

U.S. Main stream media duped on global warming polls.  In the past two weeks many U.S. media gave supportive coverage to two public opinion polls about global warming.  However, reporters were duped.  The surveys released on October 9th and 18th by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication were hopelessly biased.  They therefore cannot be meaningful measures of American public opinion.

Ready? Fire Ames!  Iowa governor Terry Branstad, a Republican, has suggested that the days of the Ames straw poll — the Midwest summer spectacle that takes the temperature of an idiosyncratic slice of the Republican party months before the first binding primaries — might be numbered.  "I think the straw poll has outlived its usefulness," Branstad told the Wall Street Journal.

PPP's polls were rigged all along.  New York Magazine was trying to be sympathetic to the popular polling figures on its own side of the political, but let out a secret in the process:  Public Policy Polling cooked the books all along.

A 59% pro-abortion turnout? I don't think so!  Remember that the exit poll methodology changed drastically this year:  they only polled in 31 states.  Of the 19 states (plus D.C.) that were dropped, there were three tiny 2008 Obama states (plus D.C.) with a total of 14 electoral votes between them, and the other sixteen were huge McCain 2008 states with 24% of the nation's population and 149 electoral votes, including Texas, Georgia, and Tennessee.  So, the "exit polls" weighted their sample by excluding 1/4 of the electorate.  More importantly, these polls explicitly exclude a cherry-picked, heavily Republican, pro-life-leaning 24%.

Fear and Loathing in Ohio.  [Scroll down]  One recent poll, showing Obama ahead by 6 points, had a survey sample composed of 38 percent Democrats and 29 percent Republicans — a D+9 oversample that actually exceeds the Democrat advantage in partisan ID reported by 2008 exit polls, when Ohio went to Obama by a 5-point margin, 52-47, over John McCain.  Such implausible oversampling of Democrats has become routine in polls this year.

It's Now Public: Editors Rejigger Polls.  The leading objection raised this year is to polls whose findings suggest a more Democratic turnout in states than is likely to be the case. [...] A stunning tale today in the Salt Lake Tribune, however, reveals the dirty little secret of polls paid for by the media.  The results are, in effect, owned by the media, and the media can insist that they be rejiggered.

A stunning admission on polling.  A significant section of America has chosen to disconnect from the media bubble.  They no longer buy newspapers or magazines.  They seldom watch network TV, especially the network news shows. [...] I suspect these people started to associate polling firms with their media clients some years back.  Now they just hang up on pollsters the same way they have turned their back to the media and entertainment industry.

Election Predictions from PJ Media Columnists.  For almost all of President Obama's term, polling has been more a media device to shape public opinion than a dispassionate barometer to report public opinion — reporting as "mainstream" the perceptions and programs of skewed samples.

CNN's latest poll deconstructed.  So, if Romney has 99 percent of the Republican vote, 5 percent of the Democratic vote (Obama comparably having only 1 percent of the Republican vote) and is ahead of Obama by a very impressive 22 percent among Independents, how can the race be tied?

Exit Polls Are Bunk; Ignore Them.  Take my advice and ignore exit polls.  Wait for real results.  Exit polls are media outlets or people they hire standing outside a polling place and asking people upon leaving who they voted for.

Brit Hume on presidential polling: 'There's something wrong here'.  On FNC's "Special Report" Monday night [11/5/2012], Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume said that many mainstream polls — which appear to indicate President Barack Obama will win a second term — may be fundamentally flawed.

Everything — Except the Polls — Points to a Romney Landslide.  The Drive-Bys are all excited by their own polling data. [...] You know, common sense tells me this election isn't gonna be close and shouldn't be.  And yet every poll, every single poll, has this race tied.

The Polls Are Wrong: Electorate is R+6.  While every single poll on the planet predicts Democrats will enjoy a turnout advantage of three to eleven points, the latest Rasmussen survey of party affiliation taken throughout October shows that Republicans enjoy a huge 5.8% Party ID advantage going into the 2012 election.

The Election Will Not Be Close.  The pollsters tell us that the election is too close to call, but that does not conform with reality.

Romney Gains 3 to Tie Obama in CNN's D+11 Poll.  [Scroll down]  Yet there is something odd — and even ridiculous — in the poll's sample:  of the 693 likely voters in the total sample of 1,010 adults polled, "41% described themselves as Democrats, 29% described themselves as Independents, and 30% described themselves as Republicans."  In other words, the poll is a D+11 outlier.

After This Election, Does PBS Deserve Public Funding?  Based on the reporting of several of its major contributors, one has to question PBS's objectivity during the current election.  On Oct. 25, PBS highlighted a TIME poll showing Obama leading Romney 49% to 45% in the key battleground state of Ohio.  Just four days later, the Cincinnati Enquirer showed the race tied, while the Rasmussen poll showed Romney ahead by 2 points.  On what basis did PBS select the TIME poll for its report?

Uncritically, Media Accepts Misleading Global Warming Poll.  Conducting surveys that measure real public opinion about global warming is difficult.  Because the hypothesis that humanity is causing dangerous warming is now loudly supported by most opinion leaders — media, educators, and government — and alternative viewpoints are condemned, most citizens are reluctant to express skepticism about the issue despite what they actually think.  The public will often give answers contrary to their opinions so as to conform to what they believe is socially acceptable concerning issues on which the politically correct position is clear.

D+7 PPP Iowa Poll: Obama Leading by One.  Public Policy Polling (PPP), the liberal polling outfit, conducted a D+7 poll this weekend that found President Barack Obama with a one-point lead over Mitt Romney (49%-48%) in Iowa.  Romney led by 8 points among independents.  On Friday [10/19/2012], PPP released an R+4 poll that had Romney leading by one, which means after an 11-point swing in its sample, Obama only gained 2 points in Iowa.

Brit Hume: On Average US Polls Are Weighted Seven Points For Obama.  FOX News analyst Brit Hume explains that the presidential polls this year give Obama on average a seven point advantage.

Investors' Business Daily Struggles to Prop Up Obama in Polls.  A walk through the RealClearPolitics average of polls is an exploration of parallel universes.  This morning, the overall RCP average shows a tied race between Obama and Romney.  While this itself is an ominous sign for Obama's chances at reelection, his actual standing is likely far weaker.  Propping him up are a gaggle of polls, led by Investors' Business Daily, that are clinging to fantasies about Democrat turnout.

Confused by all the polls? Pollsters explain the variation.  Even among polls conducted over the same span of time, different methodologies — whether it's differences in the way survey samples are chosen or differences in the way the surveys are conducted — can lead to different results.

Obama senior adviser questions polls.  "With all due respect to USA Today, they're running this flawed poll that has us tied with women, which is an impossibility," [David] Plouffe said, before turning to Gallup.  "Gallup has a terrible likely voter screen," he said.  "Gallup's been erratic all year.  Even when it's benefited us it's been way too high.  By the way, there's not that much movement.  There's very few undecided voters.  The USA Today thing ... they probably had a too-conservative skew amongst women voters."

Soledad O'Brien: Obama 'up 15' in Virginia.  This morning [10/18/2012], CNN's Soledad O'Brien told Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell "pre-debate polling shows that the president was up 15 points in the state of Virginia."  But O'Brien did not mention what the CNN Chyron, on the bottom of the screen, did:  The +15 points was among female voters, based on a Quinnipiac poll that had Obama leading Romney by 16 points (56-40) among women.

Obama camp attacks Gallup again.  President Obama's campaign once again attacked the methodology of Gallup just days after the polling group adjusted their methodology in a way that benefited the president.

Skewed Presidential Polls Should Be Trashed, Not Published.  With the public and the pundits hungry for more information about the election, the focus on polling seems to be greater than ever.  Unfortunately for the pollsters, so has skepticism about their results.  Part of that lies in the natural unwillingness of partisans to accept that their side is losing.  Thus, Republicans take polls that show their side winning as truthful while scoffing at those that show Democrats ahead; Democrats play the same game.

Nothing Like a D+9 National Sample to Cheer Up Obama.  So Obama is up three, as long as the party ID is two percentage points more favorable than it was in 2008.

WashPost Buries Its Tilted Sample, GOP 'Zeal' for Romney on A-4.  It's always wise to look inside the paper for the real news when The Washington Post reports on improving polls for Republicans.  The headline in Monday's [10/15/2012] paper is "GOP's zeal for Romney grows," but adds underneath "Race is still close after 1st debate; Poll shows little change among likely voters." [...] Only inside do you learn about how enthusiasm now for Mitt Romney doubles John McCain's at this point in 2008, and that the "virtual dead heat" touted in the first paragraph is matched in paragraph 17 with a 9-point Democrat sampling push.

WaPo Packs Dems Into Poll to Lift Obama.  This morning [10/15/2012], Washington Post & ABC released their latest poll of the presidential race.  Naturally, they find Obama leading Romney by 3 points, 49-46.  This is similar to their last poll, which found Obama leading by 2, 49-47.  Similar, but very, very different.  Their last poll had a D+3 sample.  Today, though, to keep Obama where he was, they had to juice the sample to D+9.

Daily Kos/SEIU Poll: Romney Beats Obama 50-46.  The left-leaning Public Policy Polling does regular weekly polling for the extreme left-leaning Daily Kos and SEIU, and the numbers this morning have probably stopped the hearts of leftists everywhere.

The Editor says...
Something tells me this poll is part of an effort to re-energize the disillusioned Democrat base.

America Won't Survive Another Four Years of Obama.  The Pew Institute's bombshell survey released this week showed that the number of Americans not affiliated with any religion rose from 15% in 2007 to almost 20% in 2011, and that the unaffiliated are much likelier to vote Democratic (63% of unaffiliated lean Democratic vs. 48% of all registered voters).  This prompted rejoicing in the liberal camp.

Irreligious people on the rise? Or just suspicious polling practices?  Once again, the Pew Foundation has brought forth a report on religion in America.  In the past they claimed that atheists know more about religion than religious people do, a conclusion not supported by their data.  This time the media headlines based on Pew's latest survey declare that the number of people with no religion is dramatically increasing.  The way the survey is being pitched by the media is that America is becoming less religious.

Five Reasons There Are Bad Polls.  This morning, CBS and the New York Times announced excitedly that their new swing-state poll (conducted by Quinnipiac University) in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey showed a substantial margin for Barack Obama in all three.  The problem:  The poll's results are preposterous.  We know this not because it shows Obama leading but because its "internals" are hilariously out of whack in relation to vote totals in 2008 and 2010.

Propaganda poll shows Obama ahead.  These results are as valuable as the media that sponsored them.  It is a shame that Quinnipiac, which was once respected, has thrown in with the propagandists.

Poll: Obama, Romney Tied in CO; Obama Underperforming.  [Scroll down]  Another poll released on Thursday [9/13/2012] had Obama leading by five points, but mainstream outlets, unlike local news organizations in Denver, failed to mention that the poll was conducted by a public affairs firm run by Democratic operatives who ran the campaigns of Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Sen. Mark Udall, both of whom are Democrats.

Yes, the media are massively biased towards Obama.  The Republicans aren't worried about Romney performing well in Wednesday's debate.  They're worried about how the mainstream media will choose to report it.

How 'The Shy Republican' Could Be Masking a Landslide.  At time of writing, polls show the race for the presidency to be tight. [...] Yet to many, especially those of us on the right, it seems peculiar that Obama is still remotely in the race.  With high unemployment, minimal GDP growth, a 100% increase in food stamp costs, and out-of-control spending, many conservatives are asking how just under half of the American population can possibly want more of the same.

Washington Post Cooks Swing-State Poll For Obama.  My colleague, John Nolte, has already covered how absurd the Washington Post poll of voters in "swing states" was.  For the last few months, I have become convinced that the media is actively trying to use their polls to impact the Presidential election.  Not the pollsters per se, but the media sponsors who pay their tab.  They are active participants in the campaign.  The Washington Post confirmed that my suspicions were correct.  They are totally an in-kind contributor to the Obama campaign.

A pollster under oath.  In May, the pollster for Al Gore's presidential bid in 2000 and John Edwards's in 2004 and 2008, Harrison Hickman, took the stand in the federal criminal case against Edwards over alleged campaign finance violations stemming from payments to support Edwards's mistress.  Under oath, Hickman admitted that in the final weeks of Edwards's 2008 bid, Hickman cherry-picked public polls to make the candidate seem viable, promoted surveys that Hickman considered unreliable, and sent e-mails to campaign aides, Edwards supporters and reporters which argued that the former senator was still in the hunt — even though Hickman had already told Edwards privately that he had no real chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

We are the 91%.  The most important unnoted characteristic of telephone polls (on which most of the political journalism these days seems focused — instead of on the economy) is that 91% of people refuse to participate in them.  In other words, only 9% of the population is being heard in the polls.

Rigging the polls.  Major election surveys in the last few months have shown Mr. Obama either in the lead or tied for the win, despite an economic record of massive unemployment and astronomical debt.  With that kind of baggage, the current Oval Office occupant ought to be trailing by at least 10 points.  The disconnect between data and reality has spurred increasing analysis of the polls and polling methods generally.

Can the Democratic Psyops Boost Obama?  If it doesn't pass the smell test, it is probably not true.  We keep being told that Obama is leading, that the race is close at best, that voters have accepted a 'new normal' for unemployment, that the economy is improving, that the price of gas means nothing, that Romney is making fatal gaffes.  We were even told that the 9/11 attacks which left our ambassador to Libya dead made Romney look bad.  Every week is a good week for Obama and a bad week for Romney according to the media.  Now we're told that this week's polls are showing Obama creaming Romney in the swing states.

Skewed polls indicate Obama's in trouble — not Romney.  Certain media polls indicating Obama is ahead of Mitt Romney by as much as 10 to 12 points in swing states seem to spell disaster for Romney, but what they really say about the Obama campaign may just surprise you[.]  The absurdity of the skewed sample models in those polls is one thing, but what conservatives need to understand is that polls skewed to heavily favor Democrats logically point to one very important fact — Obama is in big trouble.

Introducing The New Polling Firm of Madoff, Marist, Quinnipiac and Ponzi.  The pollsters of 2012 just don't know who is going to win in November any more than did the pollsters of 1980 know that Ronald Reagan was headed towards a landslide in that late-breaking year.

Is there a Republican landslide coming in November?  It would be an election night to remember for Republicans and conservatives if the Romney/Ryan presidential ticket wins in a landslide, but nothing short of shock and awe for Democrats and their liberal media allies based on the latest polls.  Quick to sweep the historic Republican election landslide in 2010 and Scott Walker's big victory in Wisconsin's recall election under the rug, Democrats and the liberal media have been treating Obama's dismal record on the economy and foreign policy the same way they treated those elections — like they never happened.

NYT Buries Obama's Tanking Poll Numbers.  Did you know that this debate we've been having around abortion, contraception and other health care issues is hurting the GOP?  You may not know it, unless you read the New York Times. ... They buried Obama's falling poll numbers, while insisting the debate must be hurting the GOP, because that's what they wanted and thought it would do.

CBS: Obama Leads in Our D+13 Poll.  Virtually every [media poll] uses a polling sample that is so heavily-skewed towards Democrats that it distorts the actual state of the campaign.  Of course, that is a feature, not a bug of the polls.  The polls are specifically designed to drive a narrative that Obama is surging and Romney is struggling. [...] This election, it isn't so much about polling as propaganda.  The polls are simply a tool being used by the media to try to depress GOP turnout and give a powerful lift to Obama's obviously lackluster campaign.  The polls confirm that the media aren't really biased.  Rather, they are active players for the other team.

Obama Media begin the Faking of Obama Poll Numbers.  In order to sway the vast majority and growing number of Americans who have finally faced up to the fact that Obama is purposefully trying to destroy the United States of America, the Obama Media have begun their side of the Obama syndicate's overall strategy of lying to us.  Polls now show 50% of voters would vote for Obama.  Intelligent people — even those few on the Left — know this is a lie.

Is the Liberal Press Shooting Itself In the Foot?  Reporters have been trying to help Barack Obama limp across the finish line by creating a daily distraction to divert attention from the Obama administration's awful record.  Whenever possible, they have trumpeted the claim that Mitt Romney has committed one gaffe or another, that he is falling behind in the (bogus) polls, that his campaign is in disarray, and he is basically doomed.  No doubt this gives reporters and editors momentary satisfaction, and they have indeed convinced most people that Obama will likely win, but does that really advance the objective of re-electing Obama?

The day polling died.  [Scroll down]  Pollsters themselves, when challenged on their stats, say they're just presenting a snapshot of public opinion.  Fine, but these snapshots are wildly distorted.  The key hidden fact is that fewer than one in 10 respond to those who try to poll them.  People who screen their calls, hang up on people they don't know or end the survey because they don't have time to take it make up more than 90 percent of those phoned by pollsters.

CNN Is Just Making Up Poll Numbers Now.  First let me say, with less than three months to go in this campaign, can we please stop polling the political views of "adults", rather than "registered voters."  We really should be moving soon to a "likely voter" screen, but I'll take "registered voters" for now. Knowing the political views of unregistered voters is worthless at the height of an election campaign and serves no real purpose but to give the Democrats an advantage.

Washington Post joins Poll "Truthers".  [Scroll down]  So what does this mean?  It means that when you have a poll that closely reflects the actual GOP vs Dem split (within 1.4 points of it if you believe Rasmussen) you get a result that accurately reflects what is going on rather than a Democrat fantasy.  Much as I hate to give solace to Andrew Sullivan, public opinion didn't swing 12 points in a week, Pew simply took a sample that almost matches the American electorate and we are seeing what was already there, only more so.

WaPo Furthers Liberal Media's 'Racist' Narrative at RNC: 'Republican Party is White, Aging, & Dying Off'.  The liberal media can't seem to help themselves.  While counter-arguments are occasionally acknowledged, most journalists of the progressive persuasion are not interested in fair and balanced coverage of politics.  Facts and figures are seemingly subjective in the whole scheme of things.  Severely limited studies and polls seem to provide them with all the information they need.  Oh, and almost everything is racist.

As Predicted: Now That Obama Is Losing, Dems Play Mormon Card.  This is a scripted attack, which seems to be a "push poll" specifically targeted at Catholics registered as Republican, with the purpose of suppressing the pro-life vote for Mitt Romney.  Exactly how widespread it is or who is funding and directing it, we don't know.

NBC Uses D+11 Poll to Find Obama Up by 6.  Serious question:  Does NBC just think we are all idiots?  Have they been under a rock for the last decade and not realize that they no longer can control the information we hear?  Do they think they can breathlessly report that their latest poll has Barack Obama leading Romney by 6-points and not mention that they are using a D+11 sample?

Pollster pulls out of Fla., NC and Va., says Obama can't win there.  Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, whose polls are aggregated into mainstream averages to show where the presidential race stands in the swing states, said he's finished polling in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia because President Obama has no shot of winning those states.

Did CBS lie about its Obamacare poll?  The CBS/New York Times poll shows that the public has warmed up slightly to Obamacare on its second anniversary.  Or does it.

Ron Paul supporters decry media neglect.  Ron Paul finished just 152 votes behind Michele Bachmann in the Ames Straw Poll, but from the headlines and TV news coverage, it's hard to tell he even showed up.

WaPo Fails to Publish Own Poll on ObamaCare's Lowest Popularity Ever.  A new ABC-Washington Post poll found ObamaCare sunk to its lowest popularity yet:  52 percent opposed, and only 43 percent in favor.  ABC mentioned the poll without fanfare at the end of a Jake Tapper report on Monday's World News [12/13/2010], and Tapper added this was the health law's "lowest level of popularity ever."  But Tuesday's Washington Post reported not one sentence on the poll in the paper — even as they reported in the paper that the same survey found Obama's tax-and-unemployment-compensation deal has "broad bipartisan support."

Misreading the new CBS poll.  The headlines throughout the mainstream media are trumpeting the latest CBS poll:  "71% of the country disapproves of the way the Republicans are handling the debt ceiling crisis."  The implication being that the Republicans are at fault because of their intransience and Obama is winning the PR battle.  However a more in depth look at the poll reveals a skewed, at usual, result.

CBS makes Herman Cain sit at the back of the poll.  Herman Cain has been doing well in the polls, but don't tell the Cracker Broadcasting System.  The DC's Alex Pappas reports: "CBS omitted Herman Cain's performance in a new Iowa poll of GOP presidential contenders despite his third place finish.  On Sunday's [6/26/2011] 'Face the Nation,' moderator Bob Schieffer correctly said former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann finished first and second in the poll.  But then he passed over Cain, incorrectly saying Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich polled next after the two front-runners."  Either Bob Schieffer has forgotten how to count — a distinct possibility — or he just doesn't want to give Herman Cain any credit.

Why are Obama and the Press so Silent on Afghanistan?  The mainstream media basically downplayed or ignored a March 15 Washington Post/ABC News poll which showed American support for the Afghanistan war seriously eroding.  For the first time since the war there began almost a decade ago, nearly two of three surveyed said the battle is not worth fighting.  Normally, such a dramatic turn in public sentiment against a war would rate screaming headlines and endless speculation on how that might affect President Obama's political standing and re-election chances in 2012.

Skewed Public Sector Union Poll Ignores Reality.  While other polls have Democrats and Republicans roughly even in party identification, the Times/CBS poll gives Democrats a 10-percentage point edge.  Also, 20 percent of those questioned have a union member in their household and 25 percent have a government employee.  Those are considerably higher percentages of union members and government workers than actually exist in the country.  So the poll is slanted to begin with.

Sometimes in Polling, It's All in the Question.  What does the public think about the Bush administration's wiretapping program?  It depends on how you ask the question.  A half dozen polls on the issue have turned up different conclusions, and a key distinction appears to be the way pollsters identify the people who might have their emails and phone calls monitored as part of an effort to fight terrorism.  Recent poll questions have referred to "suspected terrorists," "people in the United States" and "American citizens."

MSNBC's Mitchell Touts Planned Parenthood Poll.  During Tuesday's [12/6/2010] 1PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Andrea Mitchell highlighted a new poll from the left-wing pro-abortion group Planned Parenthood that claimed that voters do not trust Sarah Palin on so-called "women's health issues":  "A new poll suggests that she may have a tough time getting voters to trust her on at least one front...  54% of registered voters do not trust Palin on those issues."

Associated Press poll claims 60% Obama Approval.  Obama sycophants in the media, which means most of the media, have been trumpeting an Associated Press poll that purports a 60% approval rating for Barack Obama.  And if you believe that number, I have a compound in Abbottabad I'd like to sell you.  The AP reached the 60% figure by lumping the majority of 'Undecideds' into the Obama approval column.  Typically approval polls categorize respondents into three categories:  Approve; Disapprove; and Undecided.  Not the AP poll.

MSM Reports Wildly Flawed WI Exit Polls To Spin For Obama.  You should've seen the MSM last night on Twitter.  I make it a point to follow several of these folks in order to keep an eye on them, and the Wisconsin exit polls, released just after the state's polls closed at 8pm CT, showed the recall race between Republican Governor Scott Walker and his opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, tied at 50/50.  And was the corrupt media giddy?  Oh yes they were.  Not only was the MSM giddy over the idea Walker might lose, but they then drip-drip-dripped all the internal numbers that spelled gloom and doom for our side.

Newsweek Poll: Too Many Democrats in the Sample.  This Newsweek poll released over the weekend [10/24/2010] found some surprisingly good news for Democrats.  But it probably doesn't mean much for President Obama and his party:  the sample includes too many Democrats, at least based on a lot of other recent polls.

Newsweek poll assumes lower GOP turnout than in 2008.  If you look at how each party does by the voters' partisan ID, and do the three-by-three equation ... you'll find their registered voter sample is weighted as follows:
  •   39 percent Democrat,
  •   29 percent Republican,
  •   32 percent independent.
They give different numbers at the end of their report, but this is how the poll is actually weighted, according to the math.

The New York Times May Want To Poll This Question.  It seems every day there is another example of media deception in America.  With the Fourth of July approaching, it is well worth remembering why the Founding Fathers gave the press special privileges.  They wanted journalists to report honestly, to give the folks accurate, unbiased information so they could make informed decisions about who should hold power.

New York Times Misrepresents Global Warming Surveys.  The New York Times on April 30 published a news article that leads off with the assertion, "polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk."  No such poll exists, but don't expect the New York Times to make a correction any time soon.  The only poll that resembles the Times' assertion was an online survey in which only 79 respondents listed themselves as having climate science as their primary area of expertise.  This is an absurdly small number of respondents -- even overlooking the less-than-scientific nature of the poll itself -- from which to draw meaningful conclusions.

Obama gets a boost after Gallup tweaks polling methodology.  President Obama's job approval rating spiked this month, according to Gallup's daily tracking survey, but the jump may be the result of a shift in the polling outlet's survey methodology.  Since late 2011, President Obama has held steady at just under 50 percent saying they approved of the job he was doing and just under 50 percent saying they disapproved.

Gallup Ignoring Its Own Big Stories.  The Gallup Poll is one of the oldest in polling organizations in America.  Its reputation ought to be important.  The articles which accompany Gallup's polls, however, seem calculated to hide the real story.

54 Percent Say the More They Learn About ObamaCare, the Less They Like It.
Washington Post Ignores its Own Poll Finding.  A Washington Post-ABC News poll conducted in the three days following President Barack Obama's speech to Congress about his health care plan discovered that 54% say the more the hear about the plan the less they like it.  This particular poll result was not mentioned anywhere in the story about the poll that was posted by the Washington Post on its Web site on Monday [9/14/2009].  The result did appear in the data sheet from the poll that was linked to the story.

Still the Biggest Missing Story in Politics.  In August of last year I wrote an article, "The Biggest Missing Story in Politics," which reviewed the single most important datum in the last thirteen Battleground Polls over a period stretching from early 2002 to late 2008.  The critical fact, completely ignored by almost everyone, was that in answering Question D3, which asked the respondent what he considered his ideology to be, sixty percent of the American people described themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative."



Conflicting interpretation of the same numbers:

Viewpoint 1:

Poll: Obama's approval rating sinks to new low.  President Obama's approval rating has hit the lowest level ever in CBS News polling, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times survey.  The drop may be partially attributable to rising gas prices.  Just 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing as president, according to the poll, conducted from March 7 to 11.

At the same time...  Viewpoint 2:

Obama's Job Approval Rating Reaches 49% Over Weekend.  President Barack Obama's job approval rating rose to 49% in the three-day period from Friday through Sunday [3/11/2012], building on an upward trend that began the middle of last week.  Obama's current approval rating is the highest measured since early February, and before that the highest since June 2011.

President Obama's approval rating has either sunk to a new low or reached a new high, depending on which newspaper you read.



Election questions no one ever asks:  After each debate, some network would convene a focus group of undecided voters who then preened over their lofty status.  Pollster Frank Luntz, CNN's Soledad O'Brien or some other enabler would gush over how fascinating it was to talk to "real people." ... [But] These people are undecided because they don't do their homework.

The cell phone effect: about 1 percent.  The question of whether polls have systematic errors is a continuing one.  In the recent polling news is a Pew Center study that hits hard on the question of cell phone users.  According to the survey, failing to survey people who have cell phones but no landline leads to a net underestimate of Obama's support relative to McCain.  According to a previous Pew/AP survey, cell-onlys comprised nearly 13% of households at the end of 2006.  Cell-onlys prefer Obama over McCain by 18-19% (compared with an even split in the landline sample).

Attitude Polls — Servants or Masters?  The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, Autumn, 1945.

The Bradley Effect.  The theory proposes that some voters will tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, while on election day they vote for the white candidate.  It was named after Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who lost the 1982 California governor's race despite being ahead in voter polls going into the elections.  The Bradley effect theory posits that the inaccurate polls were skewed by the phenomenon of social desirability bias.

Bradley's Revenge.  If Barack Obama's re-election campaign ends in failure, you can expect to hear a lot about a man named Tom Bradley.

Does the Bradley Effect Overrate Obama in the Polls?  The Bradley Effect was observed in dozens of elections throughout the U.S. — from Virginia and North Carolina, to Illinois and California — for about 15 years.  It started with George Deukmejian's surprise win over Tom Bradley in 1982 and operated predictably in American elections until the mid-1990s.  Then it vanished.  Obama's victory in 2008 bore no traces of it.

The disappearing Bradley effect.  [Scroll down]  Now comes a large-scale empirical study (in preprint form) by Harvard political scientist Dan Hopkins.  He finds that since the mid-1990s, the Bradley effect has disappeared.  His paper is a must-read.

When and Why Polls Mislead about Black and Female Candidates.  The 2008 election renewed interest in the Wilder or Bradley effect, the gap between the share of survey respondents expressing support for a candidate and the candidate's vote share.  Using new data from 180 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1989 to 2006, this paper presents the first large-sample test of the Wilder effect.

Clearing up this silly media bias business.  The new Rasmussen poll reports that this time 51% of likely voters now fully expect reporters to help the incumbent Democrat keep his office, while only 9% expect reporters to help the Republican ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  Nine percent?  Really that much?  Other Rasmussen findings:  18% of likely voters, presumably deaf, blind and living in closets, can't make up their minds, while 22% absolutely expect unbiased coverage throughout the remaining national agony and bonanza for commercial TV stations.  Obviously, they only watch C-SPAN.

Americans still believe in one man, one woman.  For years, the mainstream media has done their level best to make the redefinition of marriage seem inevitable.  As if in concert, local, regional, and national outlets have published the results of poll after poll under headlines like "Majority of Americans Now Supports Same-Sex 'Marriage,'" all in an attempt to silence opposition and create an atmosphere wherein they can finally see the fabrication of same-sex "marriage" achieved.

Stunning results in early voting in California.  California has begun early voting already as well as mail-in balloting.  The number of people who have gone in to vote in person has been extensive.  The results so far prove what we had always suspected.  The polls are being proven as totally unreliable.

Oversampling Dems.  How important is it for polling organizations to include the correct proportions of self-identified Republicans and Democrats in their polls?  The short answer is:  Extremely.  In this hyper-partisan age, the partisan ratio can not only determine the poll's top-line results, but also shape the ensuing media interpretation of what it all "means."  That interpretation defines the expectations game, which, in turn, affects fundraising, voter enthusiasm, and turnout.

Deceptive Polling:  Polls are among the most telling expressions of bias in the media.  They are very often agenda-driven, used to make a political point, or to pile on a favorite target.  The most controversial and flawed poll that has been most cited in recent weeks has been the CBS News poll finding that President Bush's approval rating was down to 34%.  But another poll, purporting to find that U.S. troops are weary of the Iraq War or want a premature withdrawal, is also suspect.

Media Polls: Pimping for Obama?  Polls are manipulated in a number of ways, including question wording, the order in which questions are asked, and how respondents are chosen. ... Pollsters acknowledge that they are oversampling among three demographics that the Obama campaign is targeting:  young people, minorities and Democrats.

CNN Poll:  All Americans Are Racists.  For creating a story out of nothing and then finger pointing at US society and saying how evil it is, this Dec. 12th CNN story takes the cake.  In "Poll:  Most Americans see lingering racism — in others", not only is a somewhat leading poll cited as evidence that America is still rife with racism, but CNN uses comments emailed to them by their viewers as some sort of follow up proof for it!

NBC/WSJ Poll:  What The 'Today' Show Didn't Report.  These days, it is almost as telling what little gems media organizations choose to hide from the public about their own polls as what they share.  The release of the most recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a fine example.

Pollster guilty of fake data conspiracy:  A polling company owner admitted participating in a conspiracy to falsify data in order to meet deadlines for clients.

Suspicious Surveys:  You can be sure that when the media release a poll tied to a major news event, it's often biased. … Take the ABC poll.  It was conducted from Aug. 17 to 24.  Yet for some reason it wasn't released until Sept. 10, the day Petraeus delivered his much-anticipated report on the surge.  We also wonder who actually conducted this poll on the ground in Iraq.  Hope they weren't the same local reporters and translators that U.S. newspapers and TV networks employ, many of whom have been found to be less than credible.

Media polls as instruments of propaganda.  The MSM's relentless propagation of Democrat-generated dezinformatsia has portrayed Operation Iraqi Freedom as a quagmire, the booming economy as an unjust bust and the President as a lawless spy and has even suggested that George Bush is at fault for high fuel prices.  All this certainly has taken its toll in the polls.  These polls become self-fulfilling when the MSM incessantly pushes a particular perspective, polls the indoctrinated masses in search of that perspective and then reports the results as "news."

Obama fails the race test.  A March 26 CNN poll showed that 73 percent of Americans think [George] Zimmerman should be arrested, and this trial by media brings to mind John P. Roche's observation that lynch mobs will claim to be highly democratic because there is only one dissenting voice.

The scandalmongering co-presidents:  To [the news media, President Bush is] the enemy, and he must be taken out.  And they're doing everything they can to make that happen, including rigging the polls against him by oversampling Democrats, and including nonvoters along with voters, to make him appear even less popular than he apparently is.

L.A. Times poll skewed.  Kerry, Bush survey sample was 38% Democrats, 25% Republicans

Ignoring the Pro-Pope Polls of Catholics:  ABC and The Washington Post downplayed their finding that 81 percent of U.S. Catholics approve of the selection of Pope Benedict XVI, and the other networks just ignored it.

Blatant Media Bias: CBS ignores its own poll showing support for a tax cut.

A 55-point chasm in military support for Kerry and Bush.  October 11 [2004] editions of Military Times publications (Navy Times, Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Air Force Times) carried an astounding story not likely to get much coverage in the establishment press.  Bush leads Democratic Sen. John Kerry 73 percent to 18 percent in the voluntary survey of 4,165 active-duty, National Guard, and reserve subscribers.

The media's partisan "domestic spying" fight.  When given a choice between more information about our intelligence-gathering methods and less safety, or less information about our intelligence-gathering and more safety, which do the public choose?  The public tends to prefer more safety.  The media prefer more information.  And the media would prefer the public believe it agrees with them, even if it has to cook a few surveys to establish that canard.

More information about "domestic spying" can be found here and here.



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Updated December 3, 2024.

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