Presidential polling is all over the place right now, making it hard to know who is actually in the lead. But is this because Americans are evenly split, or is the media just getting worse at polling? Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Presidential polling is all over the place right now, making it hard to know who’s actually in the lead, but it’s because Americans are evenly split. Is that the reason, or is media just getting worse at polling? Um, huh. I think it’s both. I don’t think you can trust a thing you read from polling. I remember New York Times came out with that article that the left went crazy about. My God, you would’ve thought that they were blowing up the world. The article where it showed that Biden was behind Trump in all the swing states and then New York Times goes crazy about it and every liberal progressive goes crazy about it. But it doesn’t mean anything right now, does it? I mean, the guy that wrote this, who was it, Rex Huppke?
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: Rex Huppke. I don’t know who the guy is. He says that he’s a leading progressive, a leading political progressive and he’s looking at all this, and he’s trying to say, look at the things that can change between now and the election. Rights?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And he makes a really good point here, because I want to read this, it says, Biden and Trump, as you may have heard, are up in years. One awkward fall or one health emergency, neither outside the realm of possibility, could reshape the race. And it’s just, it’s weird little things like that, that are absolutely accurate because look, anytime Donald Trump goes out there and he slurs his words, anytime Biden says he just talked to somebody who actually died 10 years ago.
Mike Papantonio: A ghost.
Farron Cousins: That’s a big deal. And it does capture the headlines.
Mike Papantonio:: You know what I got to thinking about the other day? The fact that Trump is in a trial, keeping him in a trial out of going around saying stupid stuff is probably helping him. If you really think about it, because just like you say, any given day, he’s like, God knows what he’s likely to say. Any given day, Biden is likely to run into another wall or fall off the stage. You don’t know what’s gonna happen. And that’s what this writer says. He says, look, we don’t know what’s, the economy could change. There’s all these variables that could take place, but we get so focused on what the poll is, and we talk about those polls. Now, let me be very clear.
Farron Cousins: Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Papantonio: We talk about the polls, but not for the reason to say it’s over. But to say you might want to know, this is important information, and whether it’s relevant or not, I don’t know. The war in Gaza. I mean, look what it’s doing to Biden in just the last few weeks. Trump, who would’ve thought that his trial is actually increasing his popularity? You don’t know.
Farron Cousins: Well, see, a lot of the things that I always kind of talk about in my videos is, isn’t it strange that when you look at the polling aggregates going back six months all the way to today, the polling aggregates always show that they’re usually within about half a point of each other?
Mike Papantonio: Yeah.
Farron Cousins: Like, just never changes. It’s always the horse race.
Mike Papantonio: That is.
Farron Cousins: And that’s why the media will put out this poll, suddenly Biden’s ahead today, tomorrow Trump’s ahead. Because people are, oh my God, what happened? And they click on the story and as soon as you click, boom, they get the advertising dollars. It’s a media creation at this point with the polling. And polling has become so much less accurate in the last 10 years.
Mike Papantonio: Look at the last two cycles.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: I mean, they were off so dramatically. You wonder who the hell is doing this?
Farron Cousins: They were wrong in 2016, 2020.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. It’s like a bunch of caged monkeys trying to figure out what’s going on out there. I don’t know. Maybe we stop talking, the only reason we talk about polls is because, not because that is the definitive issue, the end of the election, but people ought to know what’s being said out there. But, again, Trump can say another stupid thing. If he wins the trial, the projection is if he wins the trial.
Farron Cousins: He gets a huge, huge boost.
Mike Papantonio: A huge boost. He don’t know what’s gonna happen with Biden. He’s gonna say something that you don’t, he’s talking to dead people. He’s running into walls. What the hell? You don’t know what’s gonna affect those voters. So I don’t know that polling is the way to worry right now.
Farron Cousins: Well, you know, my degree is in political science and part of that, I had to take courses in how to conduct political polling. And the very first thing our professor said on day one, he said, if a poll ever has a margin of error of more than 3%, don’t trust it. It’s trash.
Mike Papantonio: Really? Okay.
Farron Cousins: And I see every poll I look at now, that’s the first thing I check. I’ve seen some come out this year where the margin of error will be seven or 8%, more than double what the actual political scientists say, no, this is trash.
Mike Papantonio: It’s useless.
Farron Cousins: So, if it’s over three, don’t even bother.
Mike Papantonio: Farron Cousins, the best progressive in the business.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
Mike Papantonio: Thank you for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Appreciate it.
Mike Papantonio: That’s all for this week. But all these segments are gonna be posted right here on this channel in the coming week. So make sure you subscribe. I’m Mike Papantonio, and this has been America’s Lawyer, where we tell you stories every week that corporate media won’t tell you because their advertisers won’t let ’em, or their political connections won’t allow for it, because if they’re too Democrat, they can’t color outside the Democrat lines, if they’re Republican, they can’t color outside those lines. We hope we make you mad every week. That’s part of what we want to accomplish. We want you to think, and if you get mad doing that, we feel like we’re a huge success. Hope to see you next week.
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