POLLS -ter

repurposed 4/15

see push-polling scam

SEE POLL POPULAR for stuff am ppl want (and pols fail on?)

BAK 1 26

-=-=

yikes omg

rww -->

10 26

Hafiz Rashid @ The New Republic: FCC Threatens Broadcasters Over Polls Predicting Disaster for GOP

The Federal Communications Commission is ramping up Trump’s war on “fake polls” as it looks to be a bloodbath for Republicans this election.

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AN 2 26

Note to the decision-makers at the Gallup Organization,which for nearly 90 years has tracked presidential approval ratings: Capitulation never works.

I learned this the hard way as a teen playing basketball on D.C. playgrounds. I regretted my fecklessness.

Gallup last week admitted it would no longer survey Americans’ sentiments on how the commander in chief was faring, though I couldn’t find news of that major switchon the company’s website.

The organization’s latest presidential barometer,in December, placed Donald Trump’s approval rating at an abysmal 36%. The worst was34%, another honorific Trump earned as he was leaving office at the end of his first term. It was right after the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Yes, other companies conduct surveys nowadays about the presidency. Gallup, though, held a unique place in the industry.

A Gallup spokesman told The New York Times the company was shifting strategy. He also used other corporate-speak that, frankly, doesn’t justify Gallup’s cowardice.

As The Times noted, the polling firm’s decades of data gave “historical context to what amounts to a monthly snapshot of Americans’ views.” The independent barometer has been valuable.

It’s curious the company didn’t make the change under then-President Joe Biden, but is doing so now under a thin-skinned president.

Trump and his administration havetargeted journalists with criminal indictments,filed lawsuits against media outlets and often lied about theactions of violent federal immigration agents – even whenvideo footage andwitness statements proved the contrary.

My questions to Gallup’s media folks, including what role Trump’s attacks on journalists played in the polling decision, weren’t returned by my deadline.

Gallup’s groveling reminds me of when I relinquished my chance to play a playground basketball game – even though I’d earned it – to a guy bigger, stronger, and a little older than me. “I’m taking your spot,” he declared, with a hint of menace.

The shame was I didn’t fight for it, even if I would’ve gotten bloodied. I couldn’t return to that court because no one would respect me. As I got older, I stood up for myself more, no matter whether it made me uncomfortable.

That a private company like Gallup would cave so dramatically to this administration is reprehensible. Why is it acting beholden to officials who disrespect law, precedent and common decency?

The capitulation is a stain on Gallup’s reputation and legacy, and it leaves Americans with less information on how we all feel our top government executive is faring.

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AN 1 26 2026

Trump fires off post accusing Fox News of 'criminal offense' over plummeting poll numbers

Donald Trump on Monday renewed his attack on polling operations as his approval ratings continue to plummet, this time even roping in conservative stalwarts like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

Throughout his second term, the president has consistently argued that stories and poll results that paint him in an overtly negative light are "fake." While this has been a common tactic over the course of his entire political career, more recently, he has started claiming that these stories and polls should be criminal acts, a move that would violate the Constitution's protections for freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

In his Truth Social post from Monday, he reiterated these assertions and argued that his false claim that he won the 2020 election proves the current polling wrong.

"Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense," Trump's post read. "As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route [sic], and 2,750 Counties to 525."

He continued: "You can’t do much better than that, and yet if people examined The Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN, or the now defunct MSDNC, Polls were all fraudulent, and bore nothing even close to the final results. Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling. Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible! There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism, but I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!"

Despite Trump's claim in the post, the left-leaning news network MSNBC is not defunct, but recently rebranded as MS NOW.

While conservative outlets like Fox News have generally been known to publish more flattering polls of Trump, his sagging popularity has proven too much for these polls to overcome. In November, a survey from the network found the president's approval was at its lowest point on record.

Trump's latest round of grievance over negative polling appears to have been brought on by the most recent poll from the New York Times and Sienna College, which found that approval rating was down to 40 percent, a three-point drop since their last poll. It also found that over two-thirds of respondents felt the country was not better off than it was a year ago, while a little over half said that Trump's policies were actively making life less affordable, the latter representing the biggest issue on voters' minds heading into the 2026 midterms.

Lashing out against the results, Trump added the poll to his defamation lawsuit against the Times. In September, a judge tossed out the original suit for being too long and taking too many pages to get to its actual allegations, accusing the administration of using the filing as a platform lob more abusive language at the paper. Trump's legal team refiled the following month.

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~ nyt

The death of the New York Times - Alternet.org

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FOCUS GP?

AN 11 25

Ronald Reagan Republican and GOP strategist Frank Luntz says the word “capitalism” has become a dirty word that Republicans must avoid if they want to win election in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani.

With communication strategist Luntz, winning elections is primarily about messaging, and the word ”capitalism” is no longer a winning message as billionaire “capitalists” accrue most of the wealth and leave Americans worrying about their rent and food pantries. Just recently, the Top 10 U.S. billionaires’ collective wealth grew by nearly $700 billion and analysts warned government policies are driving inequality to new heights.

“Is it fair that some people's children will be born billionaires without having to work a day in their life, while others will work two or three jobs just to put food on their table and a roof over their heads,” Luntz asked CNN anchor Michale Smerconish. “Second, is it fair that some schools have all the technology, all the resources, and others can't even afford books or chalk?”

“Why do I ask that? Because you can see it. You can visualize it,” said Luntz, who correctly predicted Tuesday’s off-year elections would “go badly” for the Republican Party. “And third, does everyone … who works hard and plays by the rules — shouldn’t they have a genuine shot at the American dream? These are the questions that you ask at the beginning to bring audiences over to you. And without asking those questions, you're cutting people out.”

“[Democratic socialist Sen.] Bernie Sanders is on Line 2 for you because he's finding this pretty convincing,” Smerconish responded, and then asked Luntz if the U.S. would “be properly cast as a democratic socialist nation” by 2050.

“It’s already happening,” said Luntz. “I work with young people all across the country. Under age 30, they prefer socialism to capitalism already. The 30s, they are about dead even. It's only when you get to be older 40 that you become more supportive [of capitalism].”

“We should be calling it ‘economic freedom,’ not capitalism, because capitalism is about CEOs,” Luntz added. “It's about billionaires, and it's about Wall Street. Economic freedom is about Main Street, about the workforce and about the opportunities for the future. And I want to give you one bit of language that whoever wins this wins the entire debate, whether it's capitalism or socialism.”

Whether or not they vote that way, Luntz advised Republicans to sell America as “a place for new ideas, better solutions and where good people thrive if we want to move forward as a country … and no one is left behind.”

“Whoever controls that language wins the debate,” he said.

“I think AOC, Mamdani and Bernie are all going to be clamoring for your services after the first part of our exchange,” said Smerconish — but Luntz jettisoned any notion that he stood behind the policies of the three politicians.

“They won’t get it,” Luntz said.

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AN 10 25

President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News in a Truth Social post on Sunday, criticizing the network for airing an interview with Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) on the topic of healthcare.

Trump accused Fox and correspondent Peter Doocy of giving Kelly a platform to speak "totally unabated or challenged," while ignoring Republican perspectives and diminishing his own popularity in their coverage.

“Why is FoxNews and Peter Doocy putting on Democrat Senator Mark Kelly to talk about, totally unabated or challenged, Healthcare?” Trump wrote. “The FAKE SPIN is so bad for Republicans that it is hard to believe that we WIN.”

The post, laden with Trump’s trademark all-caps emphasis and grievances against media bias, continued with a warning to the conservative network: “Fox should either get on board, or get off board, NOW, but at this point, it just doesn’t make any difference to me.”Trump also claimed Fox News benefits from his popularity and presence in the Republican Party but allegedly distorts coverage to favor Democrats.

He also slammed the network’s polling practices, stating they “refuse to put up Polls that correctly show me at 65% in Popularity, a Republican RECORD,” and labeled the Fox News Poll as “one of the worst 'Pollsters' out there.”

IFrame Content

The president’s remarks were criticized on social media.

Democratic influencer Brian Krassenstein wrote on the social platform X: “Trump flips out at Fox News for not completely sucking up to him.

He wants Fox News to be an arm of the government, and he just told America that.

He said the quiet part out loud.”

Podcaster Spencer Hakimian wrote: “Trump is very angry at Fox News and Peter Doocy.”

“Every single hour of every day, he is more unhinged and lives in a delusional fantasy world filled with made up numbers and complete nonsense that doesn’t exist. Despite this being the kind of rant an escape mental patient would spew out, its become normalized & it gets ignored,” wrote an account on X.

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an 10 25

Now eight and one-half months into his second presidency, Donald Trump is being inundated with polls that show him with weak approval ratings — including 38 percent (Leger), 40 percent (YouGov and Pew Researcher Center) and 41 percent (Marist College).

Trump and his allies continue to insist that he has a "mandate" for his far-right policies. But the 2024 election was close, and Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 percent in 2024.

In a conversation published in Q&A format on October 4, three New York Times opinion columnists — Never Trump conservative David French and liberals Michelle Goldberg and Jamelle Bouie — observe that many of Trump's policies are wildly unpopular even though more U.S. voters than not chose to put him back in the White House.

Goldberg told French and Bouie, "Look, we have a president who is completely lawless. We are in a free fall toward authoritarianism. You have a Democratic Party electorate that is absolutely furious at their leaders. I mean, I cannot overstate the amount of anger there is toward (Democratic Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer in particular."

Bouie lamented that many Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 didn't fully realize what all they were singing up for.

IFrame Content

"If you don't want this consequence, don't vote for Republicans," Bouie told French and Goldberg. "I think part of what's broken in American politics is the feedback mechanism. The choices voters make don't reliably result in feedback that helps them understand or contextualize those choices. So, for example, a Republican voter receiving Medicaid may not necessarily see it as the same Medicaid that a Black voter in New York receives. They may perceive those as two different things."

French argued that the "classical Republican Party" no longer exists.

The Never Trumper told Goldberg and Bouie, "The Republican Party is becoming much more working class, while educated voters are moving more toward the Democrats. So, in fact, Medicaid cuts now impact more Republicans than they used to. Is there a scenario where Republicans are not really reading their own room? As their base becomes more working class, is playing games with health care subsidies, or with Medicaid cuts — or financing tax cuts partly through Medicaid cuts — just not going to be a successful strategy anymore?"

*Read the full New York Times conversation at this link (subscription required).

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AN 10 25

Devastating poll shows Trump 'underwater' in all 7 swing states he won

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an 11 24

With Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his allies in key swing states already questioning voting processes and claiming Democrats and election officials are "cheating" days before Election Day, one policy strategist said Thursday that election deniers took one lesson away from their attempts to overturn the 2020 results.

"We saw it in 2020 and I think the lesson Trump and his allies have learned since is that they have to sow these ideas early," Kyle Miller of the advocacy group Protect Democracy toldReuters.

Trump wrote on social media Thursday that "we caught them CHEATING BIG" in Miller's home state of Pennsylvania, and calling for criminal prosecutions, but election officials have said there is no evidence of fraud in early voting processes that took place in October.

Trump's campaign took legal action on Wednesday against Bucks County election officials, saying voters wanting to submit early mail-in ballots had been unfairly turned away when authorities told them the early voting deadline had passed. A judge ordered the county to extend voting by one day.

"This week, we are seeing that Donald Trump is clearly worried that he's going to lose the election," said a campaign official for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday. "How do we know that? Well, we know it because he's ramping up baseless claims of election fraud and irregularities."

Election officials discovered potentially fraudulent registrations in Lancaster and York counties, which appeared to have been filled out in the same handwriting. But authorities said the flagged registrations did not raise the risk that ballots would be cast fraudulently and were likely tied to a paid "large-scale canvassing operation."

"This is a sign that the built-in safeguards in our voter registration process are working," Al Schmidt, secretary of the commonwealth, told Reuters.

Nevertheless, Trump and his allies have seized on the incidents as evidence that Democrats are attempting to steal the election.

Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have both continued spreading the "Big Lie" that Trump did not lose the 2020 election, and both have expressed doubt that they will accept an election loss if Harris is declared the winner.

The former president said he will accept the results only if he finds them to be "fair and legal and good," and told rally attendees in September that "the only way we're gonna lose" would be if Democrats cheat.

Vance said in October that he would accept the results in Pennsylvania, a primary focus of election deniers in 2020, if "only legal American citizens vote," alluding to a push made by Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this year to claim voting by noncitizens is rampant in U.S. elections—even though it is prohibited by federal law.

Republicans in the U.S. House passed a bill earlier this year to stop noncitizens from voting—legislation that experts say was designed to spread a false narrative that could then be used to deny the election results.

"This will be one of the primary, but among many, false claims made if Trump loses," David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, toldThe Guardian. "And it will be false, but it still could be dangerous because it could incite his supporters to believing a totally secure election was stolen."

In Michigan on Wednesday, The New YorkTimesreportedthat a "well-organized network of election denial activists" amplified the news of a small glitch in voting report which made it appear that a single voter's name was used to cast multiple ballots. The error was quickly corrected, but the far-right website* Gateway Pundit* claimed it had a "bombshell" report about absentee ballots in the state.

The Guardianon Friday also reported on dozens polls being conducted by Republican-aligned groups in the last days before the election, which have shown Trump with a decisive lead—contrasting with highly regarded nonpartisan polls that have consistently shown Trump and Harris in a dead heat.

GOP-aligned groups have released 37 polls in recent days, according to a New York Times study, with all but seven showing Trump in the lead.

One survey by the Trafalgar Group had Trump winning by three points in North Carolina, while a CNN poll showed Harris winning by one point in the battleground state.

Trump told supporters at a New Mexico campaign event on Thursday that he is "leading big in the polls, all of the polls."

With 63% of Republicansreporting earlier this year that they believed Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election, Trump's claims about polling may be enough to garner significant support for another attempt to overturn the election results after November 5, experts say.

"It is vital to Donald Trump's effort if he tries to cheat and overturn the election results, he needs to have data showing that somehow he was winning the election," Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told The Guardian. "The reason we have to call this out is that Donald Trump needs to go into Election Day with some set of data showing him winning, so if he loses, he can say we cheated."

On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said it is all but certain that Trump will declare victory on November 5 and that he is setting the stage to accuse Democrats of "vote stealing."

At least 35 election officials who have refused to certify elections since 2020 are now serving on election boards, according to a report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Pro-democracy advocates say the recent GOP-aligned polls, baseless claims about illegal voting, and laser focus on minor errors in voting processes are all likely to be used by Trump and his allies to stop the certification of a potential Harris victory.

"The effort to try to subvert the outcome," Sean Morales-Doyle of the Brennan Center for Justice told The Guardian,"is more thought-out, more strategic, more organized, more coordinated [than] in 2020."

===

The Trafalgar Group is an opinion polling and survey company founded by Robert Cahaly and based in Atlanta, Georgia. It first publicly released polls in 2016. Trafalgar has been questioned for its methodology and for an apparent bias towards the Republican Party.^[1]^

Notably, Trafalgar successfully predicted the result of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Although they incorrectly predicted the result of the 2020 U.S. presidential election for Trump in several states, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis, their state polling margins were some of the most accurate that cycle.^[2]^

Trafalgar's polls for the 2022 midterms were inaccurate, predicting Republican wins or close races in multiple states where Republicans ended up losing by significant margins.^[3]^

Trafalgar does not fully disclose its polling methodology, which has drawn criticism from conventional pollsters. FiveThirtyEight has found that Trafalgar typically overestimates Republican Party performance by two points.^[1][4]^

Methodology

[edit]

Trafalgar Group conducts polls through six methods, including live calls, interactive voice response calls, texts, and online opt-in platforms, and two proprietary methods. It uses relatively short questionnaires of nine questions or less.^[5][6] Trafalgar usually utilizes a voter contact pool of about 75,000 potential respondents, and contacts individuals on the pool until they obtain a desired sample size. Trafalgar states that it researches its pool of voters to determine characteristics such as likelihood to vote. This differs from traditional polling methods, which have typically do not have fixed contact pools. Trafalgar's sampling methods have resulted in consistent response rates of around 1.37-1.46% for recent Trafalgar Group polls.^[6] Trafalgar Group creates its samples intending to account for a "social desirability bias" effect, the hypothesized tendency of some voters to calibrate their responses to polls towards what they believe the survey taker would like to hear.^[7][8][9] The methods Trafalgar has used in its polling includes identifying low-engagement voters through data on lifestyle characteristics and asking respondents how they plan to vote, but also how they think their neighbors might vote.^[9]^

Trafalgar says that it applies minimal weighting to its poll results.^[6] In presidential polling, Trafalgar Group only conducts state-level polls; according to Cahaly, "we don't do national polls, and that's for the same reason I don't keep up with hits in a baseball game: It's an irrelevant statistic".^[10]^

According to The New York Times, there is almost no explanation of the Trafalgar Group's methodology: "the methods page on Trafalgar's website contains what reads like a vague advertisement of its services and explains that its polls actively confront social desirability bias, without giving specifics as to how."^[1] Responding to criticism of Trafalgar's polling methods and its lack of transparency about its methods, Cahaly said in November 2020, "I think we’ve developed something that’s very different from what other people do, and I really am not interested in telling people how we do it. Just judge us by whether we get it right."^[1]^

Performance and accuracy

[edit]

Before the 2020 election, FiveThirtyEight gave Trafalgar a grade of C−.

Afterwards, until March 2023, FiveThirtyEight had Trafalgar at a grade of A−.

As of March 9th 2023, FiveThirtyEight has Trafalgar at a grade of B.^[11]^

As of September 17th 2024, FiveThirtyEight has Trafalgar at a grade of 0.7/3.^[12]^

Split Ticket does not include Trafalgar in its polling averages.^[13]^

2016 US presidential election

[edit]

During the 2016 United States presidential election, Trafalgar Group was the only polling firm showing Donald Trump winning the state of Michigan, which he ultimately did, and – according to RealClearPolitics – "nearly the only" one correctly predicting Trump's win in Pennsylvania.^[14] According to the New York Times, Trafalgar correctly predicted the number of electoral votes each candidate would receive, but not which states would provide those votes.^[1]^

2018 US midterm elections

[edit]

Trafalgar was an outlier in polling in the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election, with its final poll showing Brian Kemp leading by 12 points, a race he ultimately won by less than two points; every other poll showed a one or two point difference in the race.^[15]^

2020 US presidential election

[edit]

Before the 2020 United States presidential election, Trafalgar Group said that Trump would win the election, estimating that he would win Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.^[1] FiveThirtyEight ranked Trafalgar as the second-most accurate pollster of the 2020 election in terms of lowest error, with a statistical error of 2.6 points, in an election where pollsters generally had an average error of 6.3 points. It also noted that Trafalgar received less credit for its accurate polling due to missed "calls" of electoral winners in several close swing states.^[2]^

2021 Georgia Senate runoff elections

[edit]

Leading up to the 2021 runoff elections Trafalgar Group showed both incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue initially ahead of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff yet by December they were both trailing a few points behind.^[16] On January 5, 2021, the day before the 2 Georgia Senate runoff elections, Trafalgar predicted that Ossoff was leading by 0.9 points over Perdue and that incumbent Loeffler was leading 1.3 points over Raphael Warnock.^[17] Ossoff won by a margin of 1.2 and Loeffler lost by a margin of 2.1 percent.[citation ^needed]

2021 gubernatorial elections

[edit]

Aside from Fox News, Trafalgar had reported the most accurate poll in Virginia, predicting Glenn Youngkin would win by 2, which he did by 1.9.

In New Jersey, Trafalgar had Phil Murphy winning the election but gave him the smallest margin of the polls, with only 4%, while Murphy won by 2.8%

2022 US midterm elections

[edit]

Trafalgar's polling numbers were considerably off in the 2022 United States midterm elections.^[18] Trafalgar's polls incorrectly suggested that Republican candidates such as Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Kari Lake, Tudor Dixon, Adam Laxalt, Blake Masters, Christine Drazan, and Tim Michels would all win.^[19] Their polls also suggested that Republican candidates such as Don Bolduc, Lee Zeldin, Mark Ronchetti, Doug Mastriano, Scott Jensen, Heidi Ganahl, Joe O'Dea, and Tiffany Smiley, were within striking distance, but some lost in landslides.

Yet right-wing media outlets are painting Donald Trump as the presidential candidate with the momentum, and they typically point to GOP-associated pollsters to make their case. American Greatness, Quantus, Trafalgar and Rasmussen are among the right-wing pollsters who have been providing Trump-friendly polls.

In a New York Times article published on October 31, reporters Ken Bensinger and Kaleigh Rogers describe the way right-wing pollsters are helping create the impression of Republican nominee Trump as having stronger momentum than Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

"The torrent of polls began arriving just a few weeks ago, one after the other, most showing a victory for Donald J. Trump," Bensinger and Rogers explain. "They stood out amid the hundreds of others indicating a dead heat in the presidential election. But they had something in common: They were commissioned by right-leaning groups with a vested interest in promoting Republican strength. These surveys have had marginal, if any, impact on polling averages, which either do not include the partisan polls or give them little weight."

The reporters continued, "Yet some argue that the real purpose of partisan polls, along with other expectation-setting metrics such as political betting markets, is directed at a different goal entirely: building a narrative of unstoppable momentum for Mr. Trump."

These "partisan polls," according to Bensinger and Rogers, "appear focused on lifting Republican enthusiasm before the election and — perhaps more important — cementing the idea that the only way Mr. Trump can lose to Vice President Kamala Harris is if the election is rigged."

Joshua Dyck, director of the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, told the Times, "Republicans are clearly strategically putting polling into the information environment to try to create perceptions that Trump is stronger. Their incentive is not necessarily to get the answer right."

READ MORE:[Wall St. CEOs betting on Trump victory — but stock market may favor Harris

*Read the New York Times' full article at this link (subscription required).

===

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ISLAMOPHOBE : CNP

SPLC:

...

Another anti-Muslim figurehead involved with CNP is Frank Gaffney.A former Ronald Reagan administration staffer, Gaffney has since become one of the most prolific anti-Muslim propagandists in the country. He is gripped by paranoid fantasies of foreign entities such as the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating and supplanting the U.S. from within. Gaffney founded the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy and now serves in an executive chairmanship role at the group.

[pix Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the Center for Security Policy,testifies during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2013in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Hatewatch first reported on Gaffney’s CNP membership in the publication of the group’s 2014 roster. He is listed as a “Gold Circle Member” in CNP’s September 2020 membership roster. Gold Circle Members pay a yearly fee of $10,000, as shown by nomination documents. Like Gabriel, Gaffney’s listed interests at CNP include “Radical Islam.”

Gaffney and the Center for Security Policy did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2016, candidate Trump used data from a shoddy survey commissioned by the Center for Security Policy to justify his call for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The survey was done by The Polling Company, Kellyanne Conway’s company. Conway served as Trump’s senior counselor and was a member of CNP’s executive committee from 2014 to 2015, tax records show.

Like other anti-Muslim and far-right actors, CNP has begun to frame China as a new Cold War-style adversary. Gaffney and his group are active in stoking alarmism about the supposed threat from China. At a CNP conference in August 2020 in Arlington, Virginia, the coalition’s sister lobbying arm CNP Action, Inc., hosted a panel titled “Reckoning with China: Action Steps,” according to a leaked copy of the agenda obtained by the watchdog group Center for Media and Democracy. The panel featured Gaffney as a participant.

Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a right-wing activist who is married to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is also a CNP member and counts “Radical Islam” among her interests. In 2013, Mother Jones reported Ginni Thomas and Gaffney were part of another right-wing strategy group known as Groundswell....

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/big-pharma/

Dozens of vulnerable House Democrats are worried that the party's stalled spending negotiations with Joe Manchin will cost them seats in the midterms — and hand Congress to the Republicans

Democrats planned to include legislation allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, fulfilling a campaign promise that helped them win control of the House in the "blue wave" of 2018, as part of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better legislation. The plan ran into an expensive lobbying blitz from the pharmaceutical industry, prompting Democrats to significantly water down the bill to limit the number of drugs Medicare could negotiate amid pushback from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and other industry-aligned Democrats –– and that was before Manchin blew up the Build Back Better package entirely.

"We cannot overstate the paramount urgency of fulfilling the promise of lowering drug prices now for the American people," a group of 40 House Democrats, led by Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., said in a letter to party leaders on Monday.

The letter came after pharmaceutical companies hiked prices on hundreds of medications to start the year. A recent report from the patient advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs found that drug companies have increased prices on more than 550 drugs, including 183 drugs whose prices were raised by $100 or more, and 118 drugs that now cost more than $5,000. Pfizer alone raised prices on 125 drugs, more than any company, even as it shattered profit records thanks to $36 billion in sales from its widely-used COVID vaccine.

"Even as we enter the third year of a pandemic, Big Pharma continues its practice of targeting American patients and consumers with price increases, completely undeterred by the financial and health challenges facing American families," David Mitchell, the founder of Patients for Affordable Drugs, said in a statement.

"Drug corporations can do this because we let them — unlike other nations that use their purchasing power to get a better deal," said Mitchell, who suffers from an incurable blood cancer that is treated with a cocktail of drugs carrying a list price of more than $900,000 per year. The original drug-pricing agreement in the Build Back Better Act, he said, "would curb rising drug prices for millions of patients and halt abusive annual price hikes by limiting increases to the rate of inflation, which is projected to return to 2.3 percent in 2023."

Election forecasts generally suggest that Democrats will lose control of the House in the midterms, making the popular drug legislation a key priority, especially after Manchin and Sinema effectively killed off several other popular Democratic proposals, including a rollback of the Trump-era tax cuts, an extension of the expanded Child Tax Credit, and paid family leave.

A Data for Progress poll last fall found that likely voters support the Medicare legislation by a 55-point margin, including 83% of Democrats, 71% of independents, and 65% of Republicans.

"Taking action on prescription drugs is one of the most popular political issues Democrats can pursue — it's overwhelmingly supported by a bipartisan majority of voters," Sean McElwee, the founder and executive director of Data for Progress, said in an email. "Democrats need to take every opportunity to lower costs for voters and deliver popular legislation that visibly improves their lives this November."

Manchin, who walked away from Build Back Better negotiations in December after the White House called him out by name in a statement over the bill's delay, said on Tuesday that the Build Back Better bill is "dead" and any negotiations on potential spending programs would have to start from scratch. Biden has said that he hopes to include "chunks" of the original bill in a potential compromise package with Manchin.

Last year, Manchin said he supported the drug-price legislation, calling it the "one thing that should be done for sure." But the West Virginia senator appears to be prioritizing bipartisan negotiations to reform the Electoral Count Act over any would-be spending bill, leaving a key Democratic campaign promise in limbo.

"President Biden supports this plan. We support this plan," the House Democratic group said in their letter. "Every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate supports this plan. And most importantly, the American people support this plan. It is time to enact it into law. Already this year, drug corporations have raised prices on more than 400 drugs. Action can't happen soon enough to make medicines more affordable for the millions who need them."

The price increases came after the pharmaceutical lobby shattered its own record for lobbying spending as it rallied around the cause of defeating Biden's legislation. Democrats like Sinema and Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., two of the biggest recipients of Big Pharma donations, led an effort to cut the number of drugs that could be negotiated by Medicare. Even so, the compromise legislation would save taxpayers an estimated $80 billion while capping price increases on certain medications, capping out-of-pocket costs for seniors, and capping the cost of insulin at $35 for people on Medicare and on private plans.

Medicare is the only government agency that is barred from negotiating bulk pricing discounts — the result of an infamous scheme hatched by Big Pharma lobbyists and a Republican leader who rammed the provision into a bill that required Medicare to cover the cost of prescription drugs, shortly before he left Congress and became the top lobbyist for the industry. A three-year investigation by the House Oversight and Reform Committee last month found that pharmaceutical companies exploit the Medicare program to boost revenues, noting that taxpayers could have saved more than $25 billion over five years if Medicare was allowed to negotiate the cost of just seven popular drugs such as Humira and Lyrica.

The investigation also found that drug companies "aggressively raise prices" to hit revenue targets and incentives for executives and have targeted the U.S. market for higher prices while keeping costs lower overseas. The report also concluded that drug companies "abuse the patent system" to suppress competition and maintain monopoly pricing. Drug companies contend that their huge profits are necessary to fund research and development, but the investigation found that the 14 leading drug companies spent $577 billion on stock buybacks and dividends over just five years, $56 billion more than they spent on research and development over that same period.

The limited Medicare negotiation bill approved by the House last year would allow Medicare to negotiate the cost of 20 popular drugs and dozens of insulin products used by 8.5 million Medicare beneficiaries,according to a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, although many of the drugs with the highest Medicare spending would be exempt.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus, which pushed for a more expansive bill that would have saved taxpayers an estimated $450 billion over 10 years but ultimately agreed to back the scaled-down version, set a target date of March 1 to pass the revised spending plan ahead of Biden's State of the Union address.

"This is both achievable and necessary,"CPC Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in a statement, noting that in the weeks since negotiations had stalled out, "the case for this legislation has only become more urgent."

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/georgia-senate-race/

kennis, really about camp fin ref need

On the eve of the general election, Russ Silva and his family, like many fellow Georgians, watched as the results started slowly pouring across his television set. It was becoming more and more apparent that Georgia was destined to become a focal point for the entire country, not just because it was a contested battleground state between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, but also because it was setting the stage for an unprecedented situation.

As election night came to an end with many results still uncertain, Silva let out a sigh as he bemoaned to AlterNet what he suspected was inevitable: "Now I pretty much know I'm going to be barraged by endless ads."

By the time incumbent Senator David Perdue's slim advantage over challenger Jon Ossoff dipped to 49.9997 percent of the vote on November 5, it became all but official: a double-header runoff for two Senate seats and ultimately control of the chamber was going to happen in early January.

John Nichols, a veteran journalist,explained to AlterNet that, "We've never had a circumstance like this before with two seats up-in-the air while two seats are also needed for control of the Senate in two runoff elections before an inauguration with these kinds of stakes at play."

Unsurprisingly then, Georgia's unique double-header runoff has rapidly become ground zero for a legion of political consultants, pollsters and a blizzard of television advertising.

"There's a whole industry that does this from Washington and everyone is able to go to their donors and say, 'hey, I need 20 million dollars,' and then that money will then be found," says Nichols.

This unprecedented spending frenzy led Christian-right activist Ralph Reed to dub Georgia "crazytown" to the New York Times. It became that after Democrats suffered rough defeats in North Carolina (a race they lost by a mere 1.8 points), Iowa (where various polls showed the Democratic challenger leading through election night), Kentucky (where tons of money was spent in an unsuccessful effort to unseat Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader) and most devastatingly, in Maine (where the New York Timesprofiled the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins, as being a dinosaur out of touch with more polarized times and quite vulnerable to defeat).

Because of this string of defeats, Georgia's old southern-styled campaign system, which was originally fashioned to advantage white Democratic candidates in the Jim Crow era, wound up having greater relevance than ever before. No more than a mere percentage point separated the total Democratic and Republican Party votes in both Senate races, with all sides acknowledging that the Democrats are still facing steep odds of sweeping. By January, the double-header will decide not only party control of the Senate but also the future path to a potential economic recovery for both the U.S. and to a significant extent, the rest of the world.

While the anticipated record-breaking spending in Georgia's twin runoffs has gotten a lot of media coverage, the ramifications of so much hinging on contests that will likely be decided by a relative handful of voters is an under-explored aspect of the story. Leading researchers on politics, campaign finance and the media told AlterNet that the Georgia campaigns exemplify a system that is anti-democratic to its core.

Consulting and Pollster Industry Descends Upon Georgia

The numbers so far have been dizzying, and the campaign has only just gotten underway. According to AdImpact, by Thanksgiving week, $220 million had already been spent between all four campaigns (Ossoff has spent $41.6 million; Loeffler, $40.8; Warnock, $34.2 and Perdue, $30.1) while another $214 million in future buys had been reserved.

With this rate of spending, the campaigns are collectivelyon pace to reach a half a billion dollars in spending by Election Day or perhaps even more,according to Professor Thomas Ferguson, author of The Golden Rule.

"One private equity investor put a couple of million into the Maine senate race which clearly came during a late influx of money," Ferguson said. As a result, when it comes to Georgia, "you very well may not see what the real total spending will amount to until the end December."

You may be wondering what all of this money is even being spent on.

As Nichols explained to AlterNet, "party campaign committees, leadership PACs [political action committees], special interest PACs, political television advertising and hired gun political consultants and pollsters," form the bedrock of what he dubbed, "the media and election industrial complex, which Bob McChesney and I have written about because the truth of the matter is that there really is a huge industry that is solely dedicated to this."

The Atlanta metro area's television market, where three-fourths of Georgia's voters reside, is already approaching near total ad saturation well over a month before Election Day. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who has embraced Trump even more than her fellow Republican incumbent, has already spent 23 million of her own personal funds on television advertising and has already reserved an additional 40 million.

Georgian voters have already registered their fatigue with the advertising onslaught. Echoing the thoughts of many Georgia users in the Twittersphere, one posted, "Here in Georgia, I can't watch anything without being POUNDED with political ads. I get it, but I'm sooooooo tired."

Rich Campaigns, Poor Democracy?

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that campaign spending is the equivalent of protected political speech. As a result, each election year records for campaign spending set in previous cycles routinely fall, according to Gerald Sullivan, the author of Global Electioneering.

"Overall, more than $14 billion will have been spent on all Federal-level campaigns this year, doubling what was spent in 2016. The amount of money is abhorrent and disgusting," Sullivan told AlterNet, while adding that "the more professionalization of campaigns intervenes into the electoral process, the less democratic it will be."

To a whole generation of young people, it has become a fact of life that elections are synonymous with big spending. But to Sullivan, this is not consistent with a healthy democracy. "In the 1950s, things were done on a retail basis as politicians would have district and ward captains and everything was done locally." In modern times, however, "political consulting firms have centralized the whole process. Now it's just left up to the experts and professionals." Sullivan added that spending doesn't dominate the process in most democracies, which have relatively short campaign seasons. He pointed to the United Kingdom's six-week long election campaigns as a better model.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/report-shows-that-americans-are-worried-about-climate-change-even-if-they-dont-vote-that-way/

Polls suggest that the majority of Americans think climate change is real, is caused by humans and needs to be addressed. But climate change isn't a priority when Americans go to vote.

###

According to a January public opinion survey, “Record numbers of Americans say they care about global warming.”

For several years, newspapers, citing Pew and Gallup polls, have proclaimed that the majority of Americans are convinced that climate change is real, is caused by humans and needs to be addressed. These polls also suggest widespread support for policy measures to combat climate change, such as a carbon tax.

But when it comes to elections, voters do not identify climate issues as key drivers of their voting decisions. In 2016 exit polls, neither Republican nor Democrat voters listed climate change among the most important issues that influenced their votes.

Even in the 2018 midterm elections, the exit polls did not place climate change among the electorate’s top concerns. Instead, 41 percent of voters ranked health policy as the most important issue driving their vote, followed by immigration, the economy and gun control.

What explains this disconnect between surveys and voting? Many issues may be baked into the polls themselves.

First, measured support for environmental issues may suffer from a social desirability bias. In other words, survey respondents might express support for policies to address climate change because they perceive this to be a socially appropriate response.

Inflated support also reflects problems in survey design. Some surveys ask respondents about their support for climate policy only, without placing it in the broader policy context. In isolation, respondents might express strong concern about climate change. But when surveys include other policy priorities – such as jobs, health care and national security – respondents often relegate climate policy to a much lower position on their agenda.

Some climate surveys are also susceptible to the issues of question order effect and anchoring, where responses on earlier questions influence answers to subsequent questions.

For example, the 2018 National Survey on Energy and Environment poll, conducted by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College, asked respondents about their support for various versions of carbon taxes that differed in how the tax money would be used. Forty-eight percent of respondents said they supported a generic carbon tax, where no information about how the money would be spent was provided. Even more said they would support a revenue-neutral tax, where tax money is returned to citizens in the form of lower taxes or a dividend, or a tax that funds renewable energy projects.

In all cases, the responses were anchored to the level of support for a generic tax; the support for a specific tax probably would be higher, not lower than that 48 percent. If the survey hadn’t first asked about a generic tax, then the recorded support for different versions of the carbon tax might have been lower.

Furthermore, the order of response categories influences the level of support. When response categories start with positive values, like “strongly support,” the level of support tends to be higher then if response categories started with negative values, like “strongly oppose.” So, when a pollster first asks if a person strongly supports a policy, the results could come out differently than if they ask the exact same question, but reverse the order of possible responses.

Finally, most surveys ask for support for climate policy without spelling out its cost implications or any design flaws. But, in an electoral setting, policy opponents probably would highlight these exact issues.

For example, in the case of Washington’s Carbon Emissions Fee Initiative I-1631, many TV ads by the I-1631 opponents focused on how this fee would increase the energy bills for households. They also criticized I-1631 for failing on transparency or accountability, because an unelected board appointed by the governor – as opposed to the state legislature – was given the power to decide on how the tax money would be spent. While the Elway poll in October 2018 suggested that 50 percent of the respondents supported the initiative and 36 percent opposed it, the story turned out different in the November midterm election, when 57 percent of voters voted against it.

As researchers who study environmental policy and public opinion, we believe that surveys could better predict policy support if they start providing information to the respondent that closely matches the information that they’d consider during an election. For example, surveys could provide respondents with information about the possible problems with and costs of the policy, thereby allowing respondents to consider policy trade-offs. Pollsters might also randomly change the order in which support levels are listed across respondents.

Absent such changes, public opinion polls will probably continue to provide an incorrect assessment of the public support for climate policy.

https://www.alternet.org/environment/republican-climate-denialism-has-sunk-staggering-new-low-under-trump

Climate and weather are not the same thing, but good luck convincing the president of the United States of that basic fact. As if his tweets dismissing global warming as a “hoax” manufactured by the Chinese and his decision to pull the U.S. out of the multinational Paris Agreement on climate change weren’t depressing enough, now there is evidence that Donald Trump’s determination to make the Republican Party the “stupid party” has been a wild success.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!

5:01 PM - Dec 28, 2017

205K

199K people are talking about this

As Americans have drifted further apart on a wide variety of issues over the past few years, perhaps nothing exemplifies the growing gulf between supporters of the two major parties more than climate change. (Gun control is a similarly divisive issue, especially now.) In the Trump era, Republicans appear to have significantly regressed in their beliefs about climate change -- which is admittedly saying something.

Fewer Republicans say they believe in a scientific consensus on climate change, a year into Trump’s presidency, than said they did shortly after he took office, according to a new Gallup poll. Released this week, Gallup's annual survey on the environment found that Trump has pushed Republicans to be more extreme on issues concerning the environment, specifically climate change.

While more Americans think that climate change will pose a serious threat in their lifetime than at any other time since 1997, according to Gallup, Republicans remain more skeptical than ever.

Only a third of Republicans said they worry about climate change or even acknowledge that it is already happening, down 3 percentage points from the year prior. Just 35 percent of Republicans believed global warming was caused by humans, compared with 40 percent at about this time in 2017, a few months after Trump took office.

In 2017, 53 percent of Republicans agreed that most scientists believe climate change is occurring. That number declined 11 percentage points during Trump’s first year in office to 42 percent in 2018. Just to clarify that: A majority of Republicans now reject not merely the idea that climate change is real, but the idea that most scientists believe it is real. That suggests an imperviousness to fact that goes well beyond unorthodox opinion into outright delusion.

“President Donald Trump, who has called global warming a ‘hoax,’ may have contributed to this widening divide by reversing a number of government actions to address the issue,” Gallup said regarding the data.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

12:15 PM - Nov 6, 2012

67.1K

117K people are talking about this

In fact, 97 percent of climate scientists believe that global warming is caused by human activities. But according to a new report on Perceptions of Science in Americafrom the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, only 39 percent of U.S. adults trust climate scientists “a lot” to provide full and accurate information about the causes of climate change. Although last year was the second warmest year on record, behind only 2016, nearly 70 percent of Republican respondents told Gallup that the threat of climate change is "exaggerated," an increase from 66 percent last year. Only 4 percent of Democrats shared that view.

Trump has waged a successful war against the scientific consensus on climate change, but as with nearly all his most popular positions, he simply rebranded a belief that was widely held by many conservatives well before his ascendance.

Beginning with the Tea Party, the grassroots movement against the Obama administration that was heavily funded by GOP megadonors with personal investments in the fossil fuel industry, conservative Republicans have long embraced climate-change denialism. In 2013, Pew found that while 61 percent of Republicans who did not align with the Tea Party believed in climate change, 70 percent of Tea Party members did not.

Since then, Republicans have only grown more unified in their denialism. Now more than 59 percent of Republicans in the House, and 73 percent of Republicans in the Senate, doubt humans’ impact on climate change, according to a ThinkProgress analysis. During Trump’s first 100 days, the House and Senate voted against environmental protections 42 times. Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has removed numerous references to climate change from EPA documents, and reportedly ordered staffers to cast doubt on the scientific consensus about climate change and mankind’s role in the crisis.

:{:{}:

Partisanship soaks into every public discussion in America, and Republicans’ response to their party’s denialism is to be expected in these increasingly polarized times. But the Trump administration's anti-scientific and counter-factual stance on climate also seems to be swaying the opinion of voters not affiliated with the Republican Party. Independent voters have grown more doubtful of scientists’ warnings about climate change over the past year, according to Gallup.

Even as the U.S. spent more money on weather-related disasters in 2017 than in any previous before, as devastating hurricanes battered several southern states and the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, independents who believe global warming is caused by human activities fell to 62 percent from 70 percent the year before.

Scientists believe that warming temperatures likely contributed to the destructiveness of last year’s storms, and the cost of climate change is only expected to increase. Still, in a strange and notable finding, conservative Republicans become less likely to agree that “there is ‘solid evidence’ of recent global warming due ‘mostly’ to ‘human activity such as burning fossil fuels’” the more educated they are, according to the report from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Trump’s campaign against climate science is working on conservatives and independents, and that is certainly worrying. But there is some good news for climate sanity buried in the latest public opinion surveys. A majority of Republicans in swing states won by Trump in the last election — namely Ohio and Pennsylvania — said they were more likely to support a candidate committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, according to a poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research conducted in conjunction with the Sierra Club.

Trump has led the Republican Party to become the only major political party in the developed world to reject the science on climate change, which leaves the door wide open for Democrats to take bold positions to tackle the crisis. As polling shows, moderation simply won't work to win over Republicans who are trapped in denial.

Sophia Tesfaye is the Deputy Politics Editor at Salon.

no link

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Chamber of Lies

Ari Rabin-Havt, host of The Agenda, on his recently-released book, “Lies Incorporated: The World of Post Truth Politics" (Starts at 5:05)

Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy, on CMD’s recent expose which revealed how a top GOP polling firm worked with the Chamber of Commerce to help defeat initiatives like raising the minimum wage.(Starts at 20:15)

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/6/3/8/638466cf0a5cce82/TZH_04-30-16_H2_Podcast.mp3?c_id=11592039&expiration=1462553643&hwt=ce702ec20714d773b80016bf3e88cf8e

http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/files/Global-Warming-CCAM-March-2015.pdf

Key Findings Beliefs & Attitudes • About two in three (63%) Americans think global warming is happening. By contrast, only about one in five Americans (18%) thinks global warming is not happening. • One in three Americans is either “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is happening (37%). One in ten Americans is “extremely” or “very sure” global warming is not happening (9%). • About half of Americans (52%) think that global warming, if it is happening, is mostly human caused. Three in ten (32%) say they believe it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment. • Only about one in ten Americans understands that over 90% percent of climate scientists think human-caused global warming is happening. • About half of Americans (52%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming, but only 11% say they are “very worried” about it. • Only about one in three Americans (32%) thinks people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming. Communication • Most Americans (74%) say they only “rarely” or “never” discuss global warming with family and friends, a number that has grown substantially since 2008 (60%). • Only four in ten Americans (40%) say they hear about global warming in the media at least once a month (21%) or once a week (19%). Only 16% say they hear people they know talk about global warming at least once a month. One in four (25%) say they never hear people they know talk about global warming. • Two-thirds of Americans are at least “a little interested” in hearing about global warming, whether in the media, in conversation, or somewhere else. Policy Support • Americans see benefits from world action to address global warming. Majorities think that such action will help the natural environment (63%) and future generations of people (62%) “a lot” or “a moderate amount.” • Two in three Americans (64%) think developing clean sources of energy should be a very high or high priority for the president and Congress. Fewer (12%) say it should be a low priority. • Nearly half (45%) think global warming should be a very high or high priority for the president and Congress. About one in four (24%), however, say that global warming should be a low priority. • About two in three Americans say corporations and industry (68%) and citizens themselves (64%) should be doing “much more” or “more” to address global warming.

Key Findings Beliefs & Attitudes

About two in three (63%) Americans think global warming is happening.

By contrast, only about one in five Americans (18%) thinks global warming is not happening.

• One in three Americans is either “extremely” or “very” sure global warming is happening (37%).

One in ten Americans is “extremely” or “very sure” global warming is not happening (9%).

• About half of Americans (52%) think that global warming, if it is happening, is mostly human caused.

Three in ten (32%) say they believe it is due mostly to natural changes in the environment.

• Only about one in ten Americans understands that over 90% percent of climate scientists think human-caused global warming is happening.

• About half of Americans (52%) say they are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming, but only 11% say they are “very worried” about it.

• Only about one in three Americans (32%) thinks people in the U.S. are being harmed “right now” by global warming

nbcc accce hired

paragon insights

oct 2014

A new “poll,” with some state-by-state results, is part of a larger, polluter-coordinated, national disinformation campaign to keep our air dirty, our health in jeopardy and our country paralyzed in the face of real and growing threats from climate change. It won’t work. Why?

Simply put, a strong majority of Americans consistently say they are worried about climate change and they want action, and now.

We probably shouldn’t expect anything more honest from polluters and their allies. This poll is just another of their tactics to try to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’sClean Power Planthat will set the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from America’s biggest source, power plants.worried about climate change and they want action, and now.

Conducted by Paragon Insights, the poll presents a paragon of misinformation, drummed up by asking intentionally leading questions designed to get negative responses.

This flawed ‘poll’ flies in the face of every other poll that shows strong public support for limiting dangerous carbon pollution and protecting public health. It’s nothing more than a brazenly biased -poll intended to achieve a predetermined outcome, paid for by wealthy polluters.

How is the poll biased? The survey takers read a list of the most common polluter claims – including that carbon limits could lead to energy rationing, blackouts, job losses and higher electric bills – just before asking respondents whether they support the standards or not.

Now THAT’s how you cook a poll! But even with that massive bias, the pollsters could only show 3% more people opposed to carbon limits than support them. But the poll’s margin of error is 2.7% - meaning that the polluters’ own pollster admits that they might only have .3 % more people saying they don’t support the standards than those who do.

All of their common claims are untrue, by the way, according to analysis from the EPA and research conducted for NRDC.

Furthermore, when the backers released the poll they declined to release information that most credible polling firms release with their polls, such as the demographic breakdown of respondents, with age, sex, income.

So, if you ask biased questions to a mystery group of “likely voters” you get highly suspect results, and that’s what we have here.

Let’s look at just how far off base the Paragon poll—paid for by the Partnership for a Better Energy Future, a front group for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers—really is.

A Quinnipiac University poll, June 24-30, 2014 sample, 1,446 of registered voters found:

58 percent of voters support federal government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
30 percent of voters do not support federal government limitations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

A NBC News:(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:**/Wall Street Journal**:{ poll, June 11-15, 2014, sample of 1,000 American adults found:

67 percent of Americans support the carbon regulations proposed by President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency.
31 percent of Americans believe immediate action should be taken to combat climate change
57 percent approve of a proposal that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from companies, even if it leads to higher energy bills.

Bloomberg News Poll, June 6-9, 2014, sample, 1,005 adults, found:

62 percent of Americans say they would pay more for energy if it meant reducing air pollution from carbon emissions.
33 percent said they were unwilling to pay more for energy if it meant reducing air pollution from carbon emissions.

A Washington Post-ABC Poll, May 29-June 1, 2014, sample of 1,002 adults, found:

70 percent, support regulating carbon from power plants
63 percent of Americans said the federal government should power greenhouse gases even if it meant their energy expenses would rise.

The Paragon state polling is in direct contradiction with findings from the Washington Post-ABC poll, which included interviewing adults in states where coal represents the majority of electricity consumed: West Virginia, Kentucky, Wyoming, Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico, Maryland, Michigan, Colorado, Iowa, Tennessee, Arkansas and Montana. The sample size for respondents in these states is 280, carrying a margin of error of seven percentage points.

The poll found that 69 percent of Americans in these states say the government should place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

And no amount of phony polling can deny that’s the message Americans are pushing right now as the EPA moves to tackle the biggest environmental threat of our time.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/polluters_push_a_paragon_of_mi.html

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Climate Change Beliefs, Parsed on a Local Level, Paint a Valuable Portrait

A publicly available tool allows users to look up national, state and local opinions on climate change. It shows that nationally, 63 percent of Americans agree that the climate is changing. A majority thinks so in every state—even in coal hotbeds West Virginia (54 percent) and Wyoming (55 percent).

Survey weighting methodology

Magellan Strategies maintains and uses a national database of registered voters to determine their survey sampling weights by gender, age group, party registration and race. The firm does take into account past exit polling for a state or district when determining final survey weighting, but the principals of the firm consider exit polling data secondary and much less accurate than aggregated vote history from a complete and accurate voter registration database with solid vote history.

Public polling track record

Magellan was criticized for making an inaccurate prediction that Tom Tancredo would win the 2010 Colorado Governors Election. 2010 gubernatorial election in Colorado. Magellan CEO & President David Flaherty flatly stated that “Tom Tancredo will become Colorado's next governor,” on Friday, October 29, 2010. Tom Tancredo lost to Democrat John Hickenlooper on election day, November 2. Hickenlooper resoundingly beat Tancredo by a margin of 51% to 36%. Editorial page editor Curtis Hubbard of the Denver Post gave Magellan his "Agony of Defeat" award for the worst poll in the gubernatorial race.^[2] (In September 2011, Hubbard praised Magellan for correctly predicting the outcome of the New York Ninth Congressional District race.^[3])

New Hampshire Primary poll

In mid-November 2011, a Magellan poll conducted for the New Hampshire Journal surprisingly reported that Newt Gingrich had surged in New Hampshire, which hosts the first Presidential nominating primary. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had long led polls in New Hampshire, yet the Magellan Poll seemingly revealed he had lost a quarter of his support.

The Magellan Poll reported that Romney had 29% of the support of surveyed voters while Gingrich was in a virtual statistical tie with 27%. By contrast, a Bloomberg News poll conducted less than a week before the Magellan Poll put Romney's support in New Hampshire at 40% and Gingrich at 11%.

In a Twitter tweet, National Journal Online polling editor Steven Shepherd revealed that the Magellan Poll had made significant sampling errors, by over-sampling senior citizens. Twenty-eight percent of the respondents of The Magellan Poll in question had been voters aged 65 years or older, whereas Shepherd cited a 2008 Republican exit poll as a baseline in which that demographic group only accounted for 15% of respondents.^[4] The Magellan Poll also under-sampled voters in the 18-34 range. Additionally, the poll was conducted as a robo-call targeting landline telephones and ignored cell phones. Michael Brendan Dougherty of Business Insider characterized it as "a useless poll beyond generating over-cooked headlines."^[5]^

A story in the New York Times on December 16 reported "Signs of trouble emerged for Mr. Romney in New Hampshire on Nov. 18, the day a poll in The New Hampshire Journal showed for the first time that Mr. Romney and Mr. Gingrich were essentially tied, defying months of data that had suggested Mr. Romney’s lead in the state was unassailable. His aides, who had considered the state a political firewall, were suddenly spooked, said two people who have advised the campaign. The campaign dug into the numbers, and found what they considered flaws, but also unmistakable evidence of an ascent by Mr. Gingrich. A person who has advised Mr. Romney in the past said, "That rattled them".^[6]^

References

Jump up Martin, Laura. "Why you should ignore Carolyn Goodman's poll". The Sausage Factory. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
Jump up Hubbard, Curtis. "Podium time for the pollsters". Denver Post. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
Jump up Hubbard, Curtis. "Magellan gets its groove back". Denver Post. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
Jump up Shepherd, Steve. "@HotlineSteve". Twitter. Retrieved 20 November 2011.
Jump up Dougherty, Michael Brendan. "The Newt Gingrich Surge In New Hampshire Is Unbelievable - So Don't Believe It". Business Insider. Retrieved 20 November 2011.
Jump up In a Tactical Shift, Romney Trains Sights on Gingrich

External links

Official website

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POLLS -ter

Methodology

Performance and accuracy

2016 US presidential election

2018 US midterm elections

2020 US presidential election

2021 Georgia Senate runoff elections

2021 gubernatorial elections

2022 US midterm elections

See also

Polls suggest that the majority of Americans think climate change is real, is caused by humans and needs to be addressed. But climate change isn't a priority when Americans go to vote.

Climate Change Beliefs, Parsed on a Local Level, Paint a Valuable Portrait

Contents

Survey weighting methodology

Public polling track record

New Hampshire Primary poll

References

External links