Fake Polls. The President is right. The public polls you see on TV or web sites, are flawed and in most cases deliberately rigged. The RNC brought in experts to do a study and just released these results;
Overview
Over the past month, many news outlets have published polls regarding the impeachment inquiry with highly inconsistent and inaccurate methodologies that lead to inaccurate top line results.
This memo seeks to breakdown the methodology in recently released polls and provide insight in what to watch out for in these releases, especially when compared to the RNC’s proven internal polling. We took a look at three common issues with recent public polling.
Flawed Sampling Methodology
Many of the recently released public polls don’t poll registered, or ideally, likely voters, they poll all adults, often not even verifying that they’re eligible voters. For instance, the recent Gallup poll released last week, that fielded from October 1st through 13th , they admittedly surveyed 1,526 adults 18+ living in the US – this does not mean that these people are even eligible voters, much less registered or likely voters.
Similarly, the recent Fox News poll that fielded October 6th through 8th, while they intended to survey Registered Voters, they used a wildly outdated methodology to do so – Random Digit Dialing. With this methodology, there is no way to ensure that the voters contacted are actually registered voters – much like with self-reported vote intention, voters lie when asked about self-reported voter registration, and many more do not know if they are registered to vote in a given jurisdiction.
Bad Partisan Split
Many of the recent polls released used a wildly inaccurate partisan split. For the more egregious example, look no farther than the aforementioned Fox News Poll that fielded October 6th through 8th. The self-identified party breakdown of the poll is 48% Democrat, 40% Republican, and 12% Independent. In this poll, the high number of Democrats and low percentage of Independents drives support for impeachment.
Looking at another recent poll that Pew released – fielding from October 1st through 13th – we see a similar issue with the partisan split. This survey counted 1,942 of their respondents as Democrat or Lean Democrat out of 3,487 (56%), which is a significantly higher percentage of self-identifying Democrats than is representative of the national electorate.
Historically Incorrect
If the flawed methodology this cycle weren’t enough, many of these pollsters do not have a strong track record. For example, Fox News, in 2016 projected that Hillary Clinton would win the popular vote by +4%.
Additionally, Pew, who also released a recent poll, projected Clinton would win the popular vote by +6 points, which was -4 points off the actual result.
Another one, Survey USA, who just recently released a wildly flawed poll, projected that Clinton would win the popular vote by +10 points – a result -8 points off from the actual result.
An even worse offender, Gallup, starting at the beginning of October in 2016, just flat out refused to poll the head-to-head match- up in the Presidential race.
What RNC Internal Data Shows
The RNC is tracking support for impeachment on a weekly basis using our sophisticated, battle tested voter score program.
Our data has found that Independents oppose impeachment – with 54% disagreeing with impeachment, and only 34% in support. We have seen public polling drastically under sample Independent voters, which is one of the many reasons for so much incorrect public data over the past month.
Internal RNC data from the past week shows:
- Support among Democrats for the ridiculous attempt to remove the President from office is down 10 points over the past week.
- Support for impeachment hearings is down 5 points among all voters.
- Support for the President has increased in the face of the impeachment charade.
- 90% of Republicans still approve of the president.
- Summary
- Overall, recent public polling on the subject of impeachment has been widely flawed, and it’s coming from pollsters who do not have a strong track record of accuracy.