‘Illusion of Competence’ Shattered Post-Afghanistan Debacle for Biden – Opinion

The opinions in guest opinion op-eds represent only the viewpoints of the author and may not reflect those of others. RedState.com.)

Marc Ang

Over the past two decades, opinion research polling was used as fodder to partisan cheerleading or food fights. The importance of data-based decision making is rarely discussed. Scott Rasmussen is a leading pollster and has won all but 2012.

These are highlights of my conversation with Scott.

Polling in the State

“People think polls they agree with are brilliant and polls they disagree with are horrible. It is important to discuss polls. For a long time, the best way to conduct a poll was through operator-assisted polling, where somebody’s actually calling you. That’s no longer the best way. However, companies who did this earned a reputation for using that technology. [Therefore], they don’t want to discuss different methodologies.”

Robocalls and Evolution of Polling

“Polling is a challenge even in the best of circumstances. In the 1980s when I first started to poll, people answering phones were the most problematic technology. Today, and this wouldn’t have been the case 30 years ago, is rural counties: the smallest counties in America, very heavily pro-Trump and Republican. They’re just harder to reach and more likely to be outside laboring [or performing]There are many different types of activities. We make an extra effort to get into those countries. If you don’t, you won’t get those voices. A special effort was made to reach out to people who don’t have a college education. They take fewer surveys. [Today,]Geography and education [need to be accounted for]”

Remove Operator-Assisted Polls from Polling Averages

“If you went to the RealClear average for 2020 and you took out all the operator-assisted polls, which were basically the big media polls, you would find out the average was pretty close. It’s those few polls that really skewed it and they had a big role because they’re done by ABC, Washington Post, etc, so they’re the ones that got all the play. Charlie Cook, the well-known prognosticator spoke about a double digit blowout, because he only looked at these polls. He doesn’t trust anything else.”

Analyzing Polls is a Needed Work

“I should also point out that if you went back into 2016, you would find out the polling numbers weren’t all that bad. The analysis was what was wrong. Hillary won the popular vote by three points. She won [the popular vote]Nationally, it is two. Three states shocked everyone in 2016, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won Pennsylvania and Michigan in the latest polls. People would have noticed something if they had looked at these numbers. The morning of 2016’s election was my first day at Fox. All the discussion was Hillary’s up by three in the polling average. Most people in the room thought she would win by five or six, because they’d say there’s a margin of error. And then a few people were saying she’s gonna win by eight, nine, ten points. Nobody thought about the margin of error going in the other direction.”

The range of polling predictions should be acceptable

“The idea of using a poll with a three-point margin of error to pick a one-point race is stupid. I went and said, ‘Here’s two different turnout models, one turnout model, a little better for the Democrat, we showed Burgess Owens losing. Another turnout he won.’ I think that’s a more honest way of looking at it, being a little less precise. Owens had been down to four by three weeks. It seemed like it was only getting worse, considering all of the media coverage. About a week or a few days before the election, I found him up by one point, and he was gracious enough to win by one.”

People who Live and Breathe Polism: 10% at Most

“Eight or 10 percent talk about politics every day, people who live and breathe it. We’re going to have this whole storyline in our minds of the 2022 election, and most voters are just starting to tune in. So when you say, ‘Six months ago, do you remember when this happened very recently?’ They just don’t. And by the way, I think it’s healthy that people have more important things to do in their lives.”

Do You Think It’s a Delayed Response for the Public?

“I would say it’s not so much a delayed response, as it’s a response to real-world things rather than political things. Some of them eventually find their way into the political realm. Afghanistan withdrawal. It was embarrassing for Americans to be left behind, and that hurt people. And that accelerated Biden’s decline, it broke through even if you weren’t a political junkie. It was a story that caught voters’ attention and trust. First, it was polled before and afterwards. It was a shift in the numbers.

The Impact of Afghanistan on Joe Biden’s Poll Numbers

“What the event itself did more than the event itself, was it shook the perception of Joe Biden. He was going to be the ‘adults back [in] the room.’ We voted him in for his foreign policy knowledge. Because he wasn’t Trump. The illusion of competence will soon fade, I believe. That will remain and every time something else goes wrong, it will reinforce that.”

Are Texas and Arizona trending away form Republicans? 

“I still think they are leaning [red]. My belief is that the Democrats are making a huge mistake in their dealings with Hispanic voters. The Census Bureau considers a Hispanic individual anyone with any Hispanic background. So if your parents were both born in America, but their parents came from a Hispanic country, you’re counting that way? It turns out that about half of Hispanic voters consider themselves white. This is especially true in West Texas and South Texas. It really depends on if you live in a community which is heavily Hispanic that has strong ties to new immigrants coming in.”

Democrats Spin The Fictional Homogenous Coordinations

“We’re seeing Democrats want to present is this notion of persons of color, that they are all the same. Each person is a human being of color. That’s just not true. This coalition does not exist in real life. And when you appeal to a Hispanic voter who thinks they’re white, and is trying to make their life in America, and you say you should be fighting for civil rights, but it doesn’t connect in any way, shape, or form.

And what we’ve lost in that narrative is there have always been divisions in America. They’re just divisions we don’t recognize after the 20th century. It was not acceptable to consider people from Poland, Italy and Ireland white. Jews weren’t acceptable. If you go back to the 19th century, and actually in much of the 20th, Catholics were not accepted.“

Is there a post-racial world? But not yet.

“Now, we have a situation where about one out of every five marriages is mixed across racial and ethnic. It’s huge. About 10 percent of voters plus or minus, can’t claim some kind of ethnic mix. They are American by heritage. Statistically, that’s almost true. But it’s not quite there yet. But it’s true to that degree, and it’s not people assimilating into white culture. It’s people assimilating into a mainstream American culture that believes in our founding ideals. White communities are the only group that has not done this. And there’s an historic issue there that has not been resolved in a way that we know how to deal with. It’s come a long way since the 60s. My grandparents were both Episcopalian and Catholic, and they got married in 1924. They were disowned by their families for a long time.”

Egos prevent data-based campaigns from being implemented.

“Some clients who I tell them news they don’t want to hear, and they don’t want to talk about it. And within six months or so, they’re not my client anymore. They’re not ‘numbers’ people, they have an emotional reaction. The cost of polling is high. People also don’t know how to interpret polls. In 1972, a book called ‘The Election Game and How to Win It’ was written by a guy named Joe Napolitan, who had worked on John Kennedy’s campaign. His name was the first to be called as a consultant in politics. Every question I asked him, the answer was ‘Do a poll.’ What he was saying is, ‘It’s not your views that matter, right?’ If you run for city council, because you want to fix things in your neighborhood, the idea of poll testing everything feels wrong. You can still apply this principle to any area of your life. It doesn’t matter what you say to get someone to go on a date.

If you’re a pollster, your job is not to give people numbers. It’s to explain it in terms they can understand. It’s hard work because first of all, you have to ask questions to understand the public mood. Then once you’ve done that, you have to think about ‘What does it really mean? What am I getting out of this?’ Then you have to find a way to accurately translate it to a person who may not be comfortable.”

Try to Find the Key Opportunity or Probe for Nuance

“Joe Biden gives a speech on vaccine mandates. After the speech, I conducted a poll. It was supported by 54 percent of the voters who liked it. However, I asked them how they felt the mandate should be administered. Only 21 percent said, ‘by the federal government.’ A majority said ‘either by companies or by individuals.’ People want others to be vaccinated and think vaccination is a good thing. So they kind of like the mandate idea, but are not really sure that’s the right thing. But ‘if it would help the supply chain crisis, we should pull back mandates. Oh, and if it would help firefighters, health care workers, and police officers, well, then let’s see.’”

View the complete interview with Scott Rasmussen by clicking here.

Marc Ang[email protected]() is an organizer for Southern California communities and founder ofAsian Industry B2B. Marc is an avid polling geek who loves analysing demographics and sociological trends. Marc’s book “Minority Retort” will be released in early 2022