“If You Can’t Dazzle Them with Brilliance, Baffle Them with Bull”
W.C. Fields
When it comes to the people and organizations that should be reliable sources of information, the American people have to work way too hard to find the truth. The recent offering from Charles Franklin and his polling team at the Marquette Law School underscores this grim reality and puts a bow on it. Their latest poll was published on October 2 under the heading “New Marquette Law School Poll National Survey finds continuing large majority who say a president must obey the Supreme Court”. It was an interesting headline choice from among so many options – a 25-page survey instrument that included questions about almost anything you can think of from recent Supreme Court cases to the murder of Charlie Kirk to the favorability of presidents dating back to Reagan. The economy, tariffs, inflation, immigration, abortion, LGBTQ, Congress, Ukraine, Russia, redistricting, news sources, and many more all found their way into this hodgepodge of political topics. Is it possible the opportunity to goose up one of the favorite talking points of the Democrats and the liberal media – that Trump is an autocrat who is threatening our “democratic norms”- had something to do with this headline choice?
The poll provides plenty of material for corrupt journalists to fuel their preferred narratives, but is meaningless as a source of information to anyone who is just seeking the truth. It is obviously intended to shape opinion rather than reflect it. The numerous problems with the poll have been pointed out in my previous Blasts but bear repeating. This poll surveyed 1,043 adults nationwide from September 15 through September 24. In a country of about 342 million people, this sample represents .0003% (3 ten-thousandths of one percent). As mind boggling as it is to think this particular sampling of people comes even close to accurately representing the diverse opinions of the American public, the sample size is not the poll’s biggest problem. Respondents were taken from the SSRS Opinion Panel which is “a nationally representative probability-based panel” comprised of US adults according to its website. Panel members are invited to join using an “address based sample” methodology; they respond to surveys about a wide range of topics mostly online; and are paid a “reward” for their participation. If this information alone hasn’t raised questions in your mind about the representative nature of this panel, consider this. In the sample of 1,043 adults surveyed, 7 respondents identified themselves as “another gender” rather than male or female. How representative of the American public at large does that strike you? Trust your judgment.
The Marquette poll is often used by media outlets all across the country as evidence for the narratives they are pushing. They are unencumbered by the guardrails credible researchers put in place to prevent their work from being mischaracterized because the Marquette Poll ignores these standards. Missing from the poll are the explicit limitations of the survey, discussion of findings, specific conclusions that can be drawn from the data, and equally, if not more importantly, what conclusions cannot be drawn. Rather, Franklin and his team cover themselves by publishing a nearly 600-page “analysis” under the heading of “cross tabs” that is nothing more than a massive data dump stratifying the raw data in every way imaginable. The readers who are ambitious enough to wade deep into the data are left to fend for themselves about what it all means, if anything.
I am convinced the media and the pollsters are bedfellows by design. With a wink and a nod, the pollsters take advantage of their undeserved reputation as credible sources, produce reams of meaningless data without appropriate qualifiers, and sit back to watch their media partners run with it.
Case in point. Craig Gilbert is the retired Washington Bureau Chief for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and a Lubar Fellow at the Marquette University Law School. It is no coincidence that the day after the Marquette Poll dropped, Gilbert referenced the poll findings in his “Special to the Journal Sentinel” titled “Trump paradox: Low ratings, big power - Net-negative approval usually a brake on audacity”. In the article he asks, “How did a politician who has almost never been objectively popular come to be the most powerful president of our time?” I laughed out loud when I read the words “objectively popular” and wondered where Gilbert got the idea anything about Trump has ever been objectively measured. The point of Gilbert’s piece seemed to be that Trump is deeply unpopular with all but his “base”, yet is exercising more power and doing more than any president in decades. He claims this is possible because of Trump’s “sheer audacity and ambition” when it comes to the use of executive power. He also makes the claim that the Supreme Court and Congress are letting Trump govern unchecked.
Gilbert cites the approval trends of a number of former presidents over time to ask the questions “Could this (Trump’s momentum) change in the months or years ahead? Is there a point at which either Trump’s overall popularity or his standing within his own party could decline enough to constrain his actions as president?” He concludes with “…given the animosity toward Trump among Democrats and his chronically low rating among independents, it would be politically disastrous for the current president if his second term hold on his own party voters ever truly weakened.” Gilbert should have given his “special” a more accurate title: “Will the voters ever turn on Trump? Fingers crossed.”
The pollsters and the media are making themselves increasingly irrelevant as we take our country back. They have squandered the trust of the American people and driven us to find alternative, credible sources of information. We must be well informed to live free. Access to the truth is critical. W.C Fields thought he was just being funny when he said. “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull” but it’s how these guys do business. It’s not funny.