Should a certain famous saying now be, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies — and polls?” This is a good question not only after the 2016 presidential race, where “expert” prognosticators said Donald Trump had “no path to 270,” but with some recent congressional midterm polls.
Less than two weeks ago, polling outfit Rasmussen — perhaps the most reputable of them all — had the Republicans and Democrats tied on the congressional generic vote. It’s not surprising that this has changed: Rasmussen now has the Democrats up by five points. More curious is the spread between this and many other polls, an example being an ABC/Washington Post survey that gives the Democrats a plus-14 advantage. The nine-point difference is outside of any “margin of error” (a factor in polling); clearly, some very different methodology is being used. And, maybe, abused?
The numbers certainly have alarmed many conservatives. As American Thinker’s Carol Brown warns, “We’re two months out from the midterm elections, and the trend doesn’t favor our team — in the Senate, the House, or governorships.”
“Despite a roster of Democratic candidates promoting socialist ideas, a lot of Americans don’t seem to find the line-up of loons particularly crazy,” she continues. “Many of these candidates are young, energetic, and charming, packaging socialism in a nice box with a neat little bow.”
With our country continually gravitating left, this analysis should be no surprise. Speaking volumes is that we elected Barack Obama not once but twice, which, as an Internet commenter once put it, was a bit like if the Titanic had backed up to hit the iceberg again.
Yet there are reasons to distrust the polls, with the 2016 election being Exhibit A. Just consider what former Democrat political consultant Pat Caddell said in 2016, exposing a Reuters poll that was altered to manufacture a Hillary Clinton surge. As Breitbart reported on August 1 of that year:
“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.”
“Never in my life have I seen a news organization, and a supposedly reputable poll, do something so dishonest,” Caddell continued. “What they have done is, they decided the people who said, ‘oh, I’m never for someone’ — oh, those must be Hillary votes. They used to be Trump voters.”
“They made a switch, as much as nine points, in their results from the beginning of last week, the 25th and 26th. It is, beyond doubt, the most outrageous thing,” he declared, noting that results in three- and four-way polls that include independent candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein were also skewed.
“This is what the media is willing to do, to try to elect her,” Caddell said. “This poll is nothing but a part of a media offensive. In the 45 years since I was a child, in top-level presidential campaigns, I have never seen the media on such a jihad, and so involved in hiding facts, and not following up. This is a crisis of democracy, what the press is now doing.”
Here’s a video of Caddell discussing the matter on Fox News:
The question is: With Trump Derangement Syndrome even more advanced now, should we expect greater honesty from today’s pollsters?
As American Thinker’s Thomas Lifson recently wrote, addressing midterm polls, “I think it is obvious that the 90% of the media operating as adjuncts of the Democratic Party intend to discourage Republicans so deeply that they do not turn out and vote…. Republicans are doomed! That’s the media’s story, and they’re sticking to it.”
For sure. Create a sense of inevitability regarding Democrat resurgence, and this may help it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there are other factors.
First, exaggerating Democrats’ numbers is a great cover for vote fraud. If you believe the establishment media line that this is a tin-foil-hat concern, note that Democrat operatives have been caught on hidden camera planning vote fraud, a Democrat NYC election commissioner admitted in 2016 that there is a “lot of vote fraud,” and a 2014 study found that enough illegal aliens cast ballots to sway close races. This, not to mention that there have already been more than 1,000 cases of proven vote fraud, according to the Heritage Foundation.
Second, getting the Left’s heart set on victory with cooked polls is a good way to ensure outrage and tantrums after, and resistance to, the “surprising” election of their opponents. It increases the chances that defeated grassroots leftists will think they’ve been cheated — e.g., “The Russians must have stolen the election! Hillary was ahead in the polls!” — and cause disruption. Lies have consequences.
So, yes, the media has become an “enemy of the American people.” Oh, and for the journalists scoring Trump for leveling that accusation, know that I was quoting Pat Caddell from 2012. The charge has been made by many because it’s true.
