Media Polling: Quality Data, Unreliable Garbage or Manipulative PSYOP? – Continued

I discussed the issues with the accuracy of general election polling over the last several election cycles in Part 1.  Part 2 will discuss 2024 primary polls.

Primary polls are even more unreliable and even harder to do.  That has always been true and is even more difficult now with the lack of landlines and the pathetically low participation rates of some of polls, often in the 1% and 2% range.

Let’s look at some primary polls.  I’ll start with Iowa because nothing else but Iowa and New Hampshire matter at this point. They will either upend the narrative and change the race or confirm it, but either way the states after the first two will either be impacted by them or will be irrelevant because the race is over.  The Des Moines Register poll conducted by Ann Selzer is generally considered to be the best poll for the Iowa caucuses.  It has 502 respondents of voters who say they will attend the Republican caucus, done on Dec 2-7 with a MOE of 4.4%.  Looking at the latest results, it has Trump at 51%, DeSantis at 19% and Haley at 16%.  Inside that poll, 76% say they are considering Trump, 67% considering DeSantis and 52% considering Haley.  49% say their minds are made up and 46% are still open.

Let’s apply some logic to this.  Donald Trump has universal name ID and only 1% were not sure whether they had an opinion of Trump.  The idea that 46% haven’t made up their minds, they already have an opinion of Trump and then claiming he is at 51% just doesn’t add up.  People do not operate that way.  If they are still open, then that means Trump hasn’t sold them, in which case he is not at 51%.  Or there really isn’t 46% that are open.  They can’t both be true due to human nature.  Trump is a completely known quantity.

Then let’s look at endorsements.  DeSantis won the endorsement of Reynolds and Vander Plaats in Iowa and had two outstanding debates against Newsom and Haley (the latest Jan 10 debate wouldn’t be reflected in any poll numbers).  The idea that Haley stayed flat, Trump gained 8% and DeSantis gained 3% doesn’t pass the smell test.  Furthermore, the more recent polls work out to Haley gaining another 3% and DeSantis dropping 3%.  Her campaign has been flailing about, with one unforced error after another.  The only people propping up Haley are the media and the establishment, at least in Iowa.  Her ground support is almost non-existent.  Endorsements aren’t worth 30%, but they aren’t worthless either when you are talking about the most influential Republican politicians in Iowa in decades and the most influential non-politician in the Iowa caucus history.  There is no reason other than media hype that would justify these movements.  So either caucusing Republicans in Iowa are just puppets of the media or the polls are garbage/psyops.

Let’s also consider how Trump is acting.  Does he act like a man leading the national polls by nearly 50 and Iowa by 30?  Like him or not, he has been very dishonest about his attacks against DeSantis.  Either Trump doesn’t think he has this big of a lead or he is one of the dumbest people to ever seek the office.   Attacking people in your own party is incredibly stupid if he really had that big of a lead.  He needs all of their support and the votes of their supporters.  He has reinvested a lot of resources in Iowa running ads and even done a few rallies lately.  This is a man concerned about winning the state.

I conclude that the polls are laughable psyops. I do think Trump has a lead, in Iowa and an even larger lead nationally.  The polls are just garbage. Their own internals disagree with the results.  Either the top line numbers are wrong or the internals are wrong.  They defy human nature and how people behave.  Some polls are most likely psyops.  They are pushing the GOP to nominate Trump, just like they tried to push the massive Biden leads in 2020 to try and depress Trump’s turnout.  They want to run against Trump just like we want to run against Biden.  They want Haley to be the alternative to Trump because they know she can’t beat him and even if she did, she would cave to the left just like the GOP of old.  Some polls are just garbage.  They are cheaply and poorly done and nothing worthwhile is produced from the results.  They are done just to generate headlines and content, not to get an accurate poll of the current state of the race.

I don’t expect the polls to get better for DeSantis.  I don’t believe anything these polls have in them.  The same people who lie to me on everything else are probably also lying to me when they generate poll numbers.  Why do so many on the right believe the media’s polls and then agree that everything else they tell us is a lie? Why would their polls be more honest than the rest of their “facts” and “news”?  There are some right leaning pollsters as well.  Go look up their X feeds and see the bias.

Robert Salvador, the CEO of DigiBuild: AI + Construction, is developing an AI, data and tech driven poll.  His background is using AI for procurement in the construction industry.  He is still in the beta phase of the process, but his results are drastically different from the current media polling.  He has the following for Iowa:  Trump – 40%, DeSantis – 34%, Haley – 16% and Ramaswamy – 10%.  I do not know if this new approach will be more accurate.  We have to try something as the media is addicted to polling and I don’t see that ending anytime soon.  The whole race is being covered under the assumption that the polling is accurate when it is not.

I have a novel idea.  How about we vote?  If Trump wipes the floor in the primary voting, I’ll tip my hat to him as the inevitable nominee.  I want to actually see what Republican voters say.  Too many in this party want to allow polls to declare our candidate.  That isn’t good for the party or for Trump.  He needs to show strength in the party by winning primaries by large margins, not having them canceled and buried to try and protect him.  That is what the left does for Biden, which makes him look weak.  By trying to avoid the primaries and declare them over, it also makes Trump look weak.  Nothing looks stronger than walking into an election and winning it big.

We will have results in a few days which will allow you to laugh at this column or acknowledge that I’m seeing what is being pulling on the GOP base.  It will show if Robert Salvador is onto something here or if traditional polling is the best we have.

 

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