hello and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle is there such a thing as public opinion anymore after all after 2 election cycles in a row data has been largely imperfect is there is more than just one public and are there good reasons not to trust the polls. to discuss these issues and more i'm joined by my guest and martin in washington he is president of the national conservative organization that was shot the eagles as well as co-author of the conservative case for trunks and new york we have sarah norman she is a democratic strategist digital marketer and data scientist and in pasadena we cross to greg john who well he is co-host and co-creator of the independent media

show congo or across up rules and effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i was appreciate it ok let's go to it and and you know when i look at the last 2 election cycles and how the the polling was off i think it's it's more than methodology it's what we think about polls and and it seems also to me that the embedded in that is that there should be a certain kind of voter and i think that the polls that are written looking for a certain kind of voter and when you do that you don't get the results that you want or people simply just won't answer honestly because they don't trust people they don't trust polling and politics. fortunately and so divisive so head well i you know i am a little bit more cynical if you can believe it i actually think my old boss phyllis schlafly for whom i worked like phyllis schlafly who had such a long career in politics she used to describe that one of the key things for her was running for office she ran twice for con. and last and i ran for congress and

attorney general missouri lost but you learn a lot one of the things i learned that pollsters come in and try to charge you money and give you an answer that you want and i just want to say very clearly i believe the posters especially in 2020 had a had a vested interest in making sure that the election was headed the way they thought because biden raised billions i well maybe billions or hundreds of millions in august and september to pay the posters right the posters are paid because he buys t.v. ads i mean the system is so corrupt now it's a corporate system it's a racket you know the other famous eric hoffer phrase that every good cause begins as every good cause begins as a movement becomes a business and eventually degenerate into a racket in iowa alone we spend over 100 $1000000.00 on t.v. ads for the caucuses where $150000.00 people vote in caucus who makes money the consultants pollsters television companies and ad makers and my point here is that i think the polls are playing a a role in that system and it's

a broken system and that's what you're seeing. you know a lot about this i mean how do you look at i mean i think we should be clear here that you know campaigns have internal polls and then there's external polls that people pay for and i'm willing to buy into some to some extent what and had to say their internal polls or something else here but again i'm more interested i'll give an example i think i worked for colgate palmolive in the 1990 s. in poland and i was i was taught how to write a questionnaire how to ask questions for consumers and i'm sure it's just a variation on a theme here because you know you could you know it would be a company would say i want to find out this is this and this and they would write out the questionnaire and i say no because you get looking for the answers that you want but that's not going and you. you know i would have to say respectfully i disagree i mean the whole series had every incentive to take a day as right at high. astable you know they want to be hired again and as

a data scientist myself i can tell you we like getting it right. since possible i think where the misunderstanding is is no one is saying that polls are perfect there is there's always a margin of error and there's always going to be some human made assumptions going to be pulled which make them imperfect you know for example if someone says i'm definitely going to vote do i count them the same or more as someone that says i'm very likely going to vote that's a human decision then i'm going to make and the poll may be as good as that decision was such as one example but i think what's happening is there's a misunderstanding among the public on how to read the polls what exactly they're saying and you know i do think that we need to be more transparent household work done and what the margin of error is and there's also one thing on

a smaller note that i don't think is talked about enough there's some lot of important based on how you ask a question and so i personally like all of that ask this thing question in a few different ways to make sure that they're not biased you know before the election i think it was gallup who came out with a poll where like 54 percent of americans said that they were better off than 4 years ago well the same company came out with a poll about a month earlier were only like 14 percent of americans said that the country was heading in the right direction over the last 4 years so they asked the wrong question you know republicans were touting this means that trump's going to win well apparently american you know maybe they don't always vote just for their interests but where where's the country's going so we have to ask the right questions too and i just wish that there is more understanding about what polls we're still looking at and i do think the media needs to cover that. that's the

whole point of asking the right questions because the polls were really i mean we we don't you know went into 2020 thinking well that the 2016 was was not a good year for pollsters that 20 to 20 was an awful year i mean it was not i mean they're asking the wrong questions which i truly believe because i think they're ideologically driven but but but also. point there is an incentive here you know to tell people what they want to be there in the paymaster here. well you know i really don't think that a lot of these polls posters out there really are posters anymore they seem want to be like like propagandists of sorts and i don't think they're there to judge public opinion i think is there more to sway public opinion and when you have a society that's so free it's going to require a lot more propaganda to get people in line and you know the really thing about these polls is that a lot of people i know never get called for these polls why because i think a lot of these pollsters have what's called a selection bias so they choose the people that's going to give them the answers

they want to put at the data they want for the client that they work for i mean they've got to get paid to as well so it really did say the truth nowadays i don't think these pollsters are really even trying the judge public opinion is more is lester trying to sway public opinion ok i want to go back to say here because we're stepping on our toes. you know i i i disagree i think there's a couple small examples that i can think of 'd that maybe calls you sway public opinion but not in the way that i think was insinuated there you know one example that it. went to trump in 2016 sorry but no one really thought he had a real shot in the polls started i did over oh about well done. to uncover oh maybe he does and maybe a voter group before we don't want to vote for it because in the primaries because it be racing or that he's not going away and then all start to say hey you. it

seems very sad if people sit for him and then 20 and so on and so maybe that does influence a vote in some way but i disagree with you know the large scale of polls 7 admittedly are not perfect they often can catch public opinion fast enough you know one example of this in the final days before the election in florida you know like a week before we thought that florida was don't quote me on this but about 10 points ahead for team blue and then the last couple of days we saw that start to shrink not down to where it was but it hurt and i thought the fact that in the last couple days you're the same couple points that probably means that it actually dropped a lot more because polls are back and so as long as we're being communicated about that i trust polls and i don't think that they have the power to have

a large impact on public policy i think he has a public opinion has an impact on polls it makes it a lot of strange things happen during the elections not just the polls here and i mean that you know it's interesting i think to say brings up a really great point particularly during the primary season in 2016 and i'm very curious with the pollsters what they deem to be republican because right and they were in the they were there were a lot of people that were like strumpet maybe not just didn't have much an affiliation with the party i mean so you know look he won't group of people here and they were very much surprised because i mean the 2016 simon. is just a whirlwind i mean nobody copped out because i think they were looking at the wrong people and they were asking the wrong questions go ahead and well i'm i think you're right although the primary process is as you point out is is particularly chaotic by design i mean again i was sitting on the. aaryn see the republican

national committee and i looked at the process they were getting ready to go roll through and again iowa has a disproportionate effect you know the boston media market because a new hampshire disproportion effect basically you're you're paying to get a name i.d. what trump did that was different was he had name i.d. and he came in but i look i just want to i really am sorry i can't resist hammering home in 2016 i was doing t.v. on the day before the election i said i'm from missouri the poll says trump's going to win by 4 he won by 1000 and i said that i said he's going to win by a lot more so whatever we're missing and but let me be clear i don't want to debate trump and his presidency i do want to say this president trumps candidacy and presidency has exposed in my opinion corrupt institutions now i mean small c corrupt meaning institution that's not working right like it's supposed to and one is pollsters the pollsters are either lying and to your charity or point the posters always get a little closer and the old days they got a little closer as election day came because they want to get hired again but across america they were wrong in every place except trump versus biden perhaps and

also like kelly versus mick sally and the reason why is because the system is corrupt now they're paid and by the way i meant internal polls when i was a candidate they would tell me a poll that explained they would ask the questions and in such a way to tell me oh yeah you're getting close now if we just buy one more t.v. and you'll get there the system is broken and sarah you have to believe that when someone does a poll that says biden's winning binds when bynes winning and it's amplified by television happily and by big tech happily that persuades people either it does or it doesn't one last thing the nielsen ratings were are the example of this they go 21200000 whatever number of households and tell us what america watches and americans bought that until now when they say we're not buying that anymore so the system has been shown to be small c corrupt and my fear is when government and corporations use those tools to roll the american people in a direct. should they think it's better for us that's what's disturbing and go back

over a bike crash. their time their own private jet jumping well i just want to say that if you just think about what the pollsters are really trying to do where the propaganda says i like to call them they're trying to get to that low hanging fruit we know there's people on the left i vote for biden it was people on the right that's going to vote for donald trump but it's those persuadable in the middle and how do you get them you say well public opinion is this and that right always for medicare for all and what not and you get them to believe that this is the way you should vote or this is the way you should act or these are the policies you should follow so i think they did it to a tedious time too as well and you also got to remember who's paying these people it's the establishment you know so this was a big tool a mechanism they use to kind of shame people into thinking a way that says hey if you don't think in a way that public opinion thinks the way society thinks there's something wrong with you you should go vote for team blue ok i'm going to go to a break right now but great you bring up such a fascinating point is exactly where i want to go is boater shaming and i think

that that's making the last 2 election cycles here ok i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on polling in america say. as the u.s. economy was booming growing numbers of people were made homeless. you can work 40 hours a week and still not have enough to get housing everybody believes america still is the link up it's a reality that we're not financially equality and a lack of affordable housing living minimum wage many people no choice. that's been a problem with the city has turned their backs on coal to stay way out of homes. this is the forward if there is more it's because you're free for its resources the most vulnerable were abandoned on the streets to become the invisible comes. universal. in the. information crisis. that is the reality

of this thing we're. here to give. 'd the galaxy poll about inflation led. television some to demonstrate is right now the propaganda machine. is russia. going to go go go go. i'm sure.

they still won't come. to the way. well i'm a process where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle remind you we're talking about public opinion.

hey let's go back to sarah we just talked about at the very end of. the 1st times of the program before we went to the break about voters' shaming i mean really take it in because i mean if a pollster comes up to you you know you would benefit yourself as a republican you know and most people and correct me if i'm wrong then most pollsters are quite liberal ok exact it's the exception that are conservatives here i don't know why it should be liberal conservative because you just plundered by i don't what people want to know but that's beside the point i suppose you're just you know being identified and if you find yourself as a republican there is an awareness now is a very acute awareness is that there's a lot of people out there that don't like you because of your politics here and that's something that's relatively new in politics for them for me ok i mean i was brought up in a and a republican home i was by liberal and i was in university and i want to be conservative in my own right here but you know you didn't cast aspersions on people because of their political family affiliation now that is the case and i think that

people are wary of pollsters when they when they were approached remember own go ahead you know that there's no evidence that conservatives are lying to pollsters when they do answer poster question what about the the shy trump voter i mean we've heard that so doll try and attack the media in our institutions and because the media is the one reporting on these calls naturally people that support trot may have less trust in the polls and pollsters themselves and we do see some evidence in that and if we knew how many conservatives rearrest likely to answer polls we would wait for it but unfortunately to find out that number we have to take a poll so probably air we're trapped on it but we're not yet we don't know how much of that is actually happening but we do have evidence that it is happening and trying to attack and they need as an institution is having. impact of people's

trust ulster one thing that i do want to go back to where we agreed earlier is i do think that there's a financial incentive for pollsters but where i disagree if i think being offensive is to get it right mind you there's competition there is there is about 50 companies could do that i will call this year and if they don't get it right it's a really long 8 it's a bad long term business plan because they're not going to get hired again and another thing that i would say is i disagree with the idea that pollsters you know want to say if biden so that people feel obligated to vote for biden i mean you know i'm personally a democrat and i'd be a scientist i want polls to be as spot on as possible but if we were going to say that i'm going to be a bad actor and try to try to sway public opinion in anything i would want to show that biden would have less of a chance because i want his base to feel like they have to show up you know in 2016 a lot of people didn't show for hillary to think she had it in the bag and i don't

need to and so i just disagree that pulses are incentivized that way they really do want to get it right. ok well and i mean bobbie. rehired for the iowa caucus of course of course you know how that money got rehired everybody. who lost a job i mean look at sort of ok but if i mean one of the things i think it's really quite fascinating and it's kind of a reflection of what's going on in the country not just before the election but certainly since here you do have to. say that there's more than one public there are public because you know such a polarized politics that you have really countries down the middle looking at things very very differently and i'm not convinced that the public opinion question you know really works anymore ok because you know there's certain words about how we express about what kind of public policy we want and they're in their dog whistles bullet and in the end and no but i'm not casting aspersions on the

pollsters is that you know people think very very differently and. find it's getting deeper and deeper go ahead well i mean let me let me talk to that notion i mean you know the a lot of times it's start out to the present trump attack the media institutions i what i want to concede right now is that fox news is in the same place as c.n.n. they're persuading people to think about things in a certain way and they're very good at it and their number one of the things that people that pay them the most are pharmaceutical companies and other companies that that make a lot of money on this and they have an interest in the business model to a service point earlier about a business model the incentives but what they did for the last what the mainstream media the fact all the fake news did for the last 4 years was called trump something something like hitler and even joe biden said people like me were and he said were nazis now that's different than we've ever seen in america and if you don't think that makes normal people shy i'm a new york times best selling author of

a book on trump i'm out there publicly if i go to a cocktail party i don't start with that because i. i know that what the culture has been conditioned to not just think i'm wrong but think i'm a nazi so you can say sarah that people are not shy and not intimidated they certainly are now i would say this peter about the 2 americas there's 2 americas but one america whether it's the left or the democrat party thinks they know a lot about the people and they have a position set of positions there's another america that's leans republican that's conservative it's much more populous now it's much more working class now it's actually much darker than it was meaning color of the skin than it was before it's actually got look this president who is hitler had prominent gay americans say he stood up for us he was on our side you don't hear that no my point is only this the movement in america peter that is being missed by posters is people that don't want to say about what they believe because tech and the media are saying your bad if you believe that the fine people hoax is supposed to make me not talk about

president trump's record on freeing people who are in prison for too long and being kind to and being aggressive to protect gay rights overseas and other places so it's a it is a we're in a moment where that 2nd piece of america you're describing i think it's a bigger than a majority and i think it's angrier now about how it's being treated than ever and i think it's very dangerous i think that's actually the danger here not because by the way there's never been a riot i was at the trump rally on saturday organized and there's never been a riot of trump people they said the trump of and turned into violence it's what they had teach the people showed up and there were fights the trump people don't riot we don't do it we don't go target people and the media tells us we do this is a very very strange that we're not having real honest people like sarah say the media is not being fair again i'm not saying the trump people are perfect or his policies are but there was no muslim ban there was a ban on countries and it was struck down by the courts so we have

a system that hemmed in hitler but we don't have people that acknowledge it they just call me and i. you know i mean i just brought up something i think is really important and i want sarah to comment it out for you is that you know so much of these public opinion polls it's about the cultural wars ok it's for me it's class and i'll tell you everybody just runs to the hills you know including republicans i wish the republicans have an open lane right now i hope they take it ok because the divisions in america are class driven and that's something that the country leading a leads do not want to address because it if you admit that then you have to enact policies ok well look at the stimulus that is being discussed in washington here it's like a 9010 issue people are for it ok but if you listen to the inside the beltway public opinion doesn't matter ok so that's a poll i would really like everyone really talk about because it might have been

influence on policy because a lot of polls don't get into that that issue there because i think it's you know if the pollsters address the class divisions or let me hungry i think all that calling people hitler and all of that would go to the wayside go ahead well we can't have that we got to keep people divided so the elites can run off with money and have all the control you get about talking about any class issues and i agree with you 100 percent over here they purposely don't talk about it so they can divide us up on the other things one race religion ideology and that's what i think a lot of these pollsters go after when you think about you know the left this out in the street the progressives that i started out there with that are still out there working to feed people and help people what not they're so driven on their emotions so if you can find a way to get them on their emotions you know i'm saying then you can get them to come over and vote for you as if the republican side of the conservative side tends to be a little bit more pessimistic about the polls and look at them and say what are they trying to say how they tried to control us what are they trying to do but i

mean that's the whole game of what the pollsters are doing right now they're not out there to give you real you know real public opinion. they're out there to sway public opinion and that's why they stay away from the class issue because they want to keep us divided and they talk about the things that really just matter the feelings of the progressives and that's how they get them and pull them in there. you know and i plainly disagree i think that pollsters desperately want to understand everyone else specially that those that they naturally don't identify as much with and they want to wait it correctly and get it as spot on as they can but i think you bring up a really interesting point here which is that oftentimes public opinion does not have as big of its way on public policy as we may like or think you know and i think there's a few reasons why this it line is that those with the extremes you tend to be extreme without them and they lobby loud and with their wallets which of course

influences politician you know one example of it is abortion rights most americans support a fascist abortion but anti choice that ticket have been successful in many cases because they are spending their time and money lobbying this issue another common issue that stop public opinion from swaying public policy as much as we would think or like is a niche it is are often wrapped up in bigger initiatives so you brought 8 up health care you know one example of that is birth control most americans support birth control being covered by health insurance now before obamacare i was paying $600.00 a year for birth control and mind you there's plenty of legitimate health reasons to take birth control well if obamacare were to be struck down i would move that creek up rich and i would go back to paying $600.00 a year for birth control which is almost as much as trump paid in taxes and it's something that most americans want women to have adam on. another

if i could. baker point and still go on. and the other major reason that public opinion sometimes i don't translate the public policy is an issue of gerrymander and this is when people who officials who are in charge of drawing the district lines do so in a way that have bandages their party so it's it's drawing a map so that you choose your voters rather than your voters choosing you pennsylvania which is the state that you know has had a huge impact on several of national elections including this this last one is a great example of that in 2012 pennsylvania was the voters gave republican 49 percent of the congressional seat vote but republicans and it up were 72 percent of their of their congressional seats so that that's an example gerrymandering getting republicans a huge advantage and personally there is one thing that i could change about

american politics that would call to the end of gerrymandering and then i think the public are running out of time here but you know. i think the policy makers listen to these good public opinion polls like in these foreign wars things like that that need to be translated into policy all right i want to thank my guests in washington new york and considine and one of the interviewers for watching us here r.t.c. i'm excited remember across cycles. the analysis so seems wrong. why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to see how it does this time. and indeed it was betrayed. when some find themselves worlds apart we just in the common ground.

please name this mom when you will. need to look good to. see usual love just sort of well mom you know she's good with that isn't mobile joey. votto would not. even get. his feel good if she were to. believe you know if i'm.

lucky. that it was me but it was. my. exclusive wiki leaks confirms the authenticity of the recording that could spin the narrative on julian a song it shows the whistleblower did try to prevent not facilitates the release of thousands of sensitive u.s. cables it came to the courts knew about the tape one designed to finding on his extradition to america. this is. new to the courts in the u.k. transcript of this conversation was presented to the porch and so. also with covert 19 cases creeping closer to 3000000 in russia experts say the infections are weak.