Via America’s Lawyer: Media analyst David Lamb joins Mike Papantonio to explain how pre-election polls abysmally underestimated voter turnout for Trump, as many of Biden’s double-digit leads shrank to the slimmest of margins on Election Day.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: This year’s contentious election left pollsters dumbfounded, once again, as many States saw Biden’s projected double digit leads shrink to the slimmest of margins. I’ve got media analyst, David Lamb, with me to talk about this, David, you know, I got to tell you, you called this right.
David Lamb: Pretty close.
Mike Papantonio: You, you, you, you really did. The last show you started saying these numbers are, the numbers are, they’re getting thin. They’re tightening up and then you gave the reasons why. So I want to ask you, how did the pollsters get it wrong again? There’s no question, they blew it again. I, I’m not going to go to dress it up. You got.
David Lamb: You can’t.
Mike Papantonio: It’s like you got a bunch of goofballs running this whole polling business.
David Lamb: An October 28th poll just days before the election Washington Post ABC news, Biden was going to win Wisconsin by 17 points. Remember that?
Mike Papantonio: Mhm. Yeah, yeah.
David Lamb: He won by less than one percentage point.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
David Lamb: It was going to be a landslide. A number of ways, one pollster, I think he got it right. Whenever there is a, whenever the Trump name is on a ballot, all bets are off. As to why the shy Trump voters, what they said, I think it really comes down to Trump voters do not trust the media. And I don’t think they participated in the polling.
Mike Papantonio: It’s not just polling. Here, you’re, you’re hitting on, you hit a bigger issue. It’s not that they don’t trust, just distrust polling.
David Lamb: Right.
Mike Papantonio: They don’t trust the media anymore.
David Lamb: They do not, no.
Mike Papantonio: And as a matter of fact, that’s probably one reason that we’re going to see Trump and his types move into more conservative media, because that’s where people are going to go now. So that, that there’s no question, the lack of trust in the media, not just the polling business, shut it down. What, what do the numbers tell us about how Biden won?
David Lamb: There was a massive turnout as you well know, Joe Biden has gotten more votes than any presidential candidate in history and Donald Trump, second of all time. So a massive turnout, conventional wisdom always is that benefits the Democrats. It did so once again. Biden and Trump just set numbers. The turn out in some urban areas, Pap, was just off the charts and, and Biden had to do that. We talked a lot about, you know, there’s the, there was this anti-Trump vote, but would, would, was anyone jazzed for Biden, who knows what happened, but they did turn out for one reason or the other.
Mike Papantonio: Not necessarily jazzed for Biden, but it, we got to get Trump out of office.
David Lamb: Got to. Yeah, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. There was a lot of talk about the suburbs being the key to this election. We heard that all along. There were, there were a few, there were a lot of myths out there, weren’t there?
David Lamb: Right, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Tell me about the suburb issue.
David Lamb: Well, well the sub, what is interesting about the suburbs is that, and I think even president Trump had this, that, you know, a bunch of white suburban moms, that’s the suburbs. That’s not the suburbs anymore. The suburbs in places like, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, those areas in those key States that were just so crucial, really turned out. Philadelphia for one, just as an example of what took place, they turned out huge. Georgia turned blue for the first time since 92, large part because of Atlanta. Arizona turned blue for the first time since 96, Phoenix and Maricopa counties and those, those suburban those pocket communities, as they called them this election, really turned out and really turned it up for Biden.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. Does that, talk, talk about Georgia. Does that big turnout translate to the Senate races? Does that momentum? The last thing I read, the momentum doesn’t seem to be there for the Senate races.
David Lamb: See, what’s confusing, Pap, about this is the, the, the secretary of state in Georgia is being viciously attacked. There’s so much about how you can’t trust the system. Okay. So that’s the one message.
Mike Papantonio: By, by.
David Lamb: How can you also, but by the Republicans, by, by Trump and his guys.
Mike Papantonio: Right, right.
David Lamb: So how can you fuel folks to turn out and in a system, a, an electoral system that they don’t trust? So how is that going to affect turnout is a major question with that Senate race in Georgia.
Mike Papantonio: So, so as, if we look at the big, the big turning event, again, I, I even think the pollsters, when they did their recap of why they screwed up so bad, I think they even got that wrong. And, but I’m looking at the youth vote, give me your take on the youth vote.
David Lamb: Yeah. The, you know, well, you’ve got a daughter in that age group and, and historically, you know, that, that those, that millennial under 35 have not really turned out well. That was a major question mark going into this because, they did favor, they did not like Trump, favored Biden. But would they turn out? That was the big question mark. And they certainly did in key States, if you think of Wisconsin, one of the huge wins and Biden won that by less than 1%, but the bump in the Madison, Wisconsin area, it, Biden was able to do something that Hillary Clinton was not.
Mike Papantonio: Show up.
David Lamb: Show up. Yeah, yeah. The youth vote showed up.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
David Lamb: In, in, in the Milwaukee area, but also in those, you know, Philadelphia is another city with several colleges right there. Again, that youth vote, that college vote, that millennial vote was one of those groups where there was a big jump in, in 2020 versus 2016.
Mike Papantonio: We’ll see if that translates to the, see if that translates to the, to the Senate races taking place in Georgia.
David Lamb: Right. Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: But as you look at this, as you look at this overall, and you say, okay, that the criticism that in 2016, we heard the pollsters say, we’re going to change some things. We know what we did wrong. We didn’t put enough emphasis on white middle-class voters. Remember that?
David Lamb: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: And so now that we fixed it, all as well, it was worse.
David Lamb: It was, yeah.
Mike Papantonio: It was absolutely worse.
David Lamb: Yeah. And, and you’ve got to wonder if, if it’s in a sense it’s over for many of those pollsters and, and the, the, the way the media covers that, that, that has been such a benchmark, such a spectacle and a part of it. And now I think there, there’s just, there’s the integrity and the confidence in pollsters.
Mike Papantonio: Cred, credibility is shot.
David Lamb: Credibility is shot.
Mike Papantonio: For the entire media, not just the pollsters.
David Lamb: It is, true.
Mike Papantonio: David Lamb, thank you for joining me.
David Lamb: Thank you.
