Political strategist: Here’s how GOP’s phony polls will help Trump with the Big Lie
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg is warning voters about a slew of phony Republican polls that he expects to “flood the zone” in the final weeks before the November election in an attempt to deceive voters into believing that the GOP is doing better than it really is, and he is determined “to call bullshit” on these intentionally slanted surveys.
“The reason it matters is a couple things,” he said. “One, is it demobilizes [voters]. When we think we’re losing, we demobilize, our voters disengage. Money dries up, right? The same is true for them, if they think they’re losing. So they want to give Donald Trump and Republican voters a belief the election is better than it really is.
“The second thing, though that’s important, is that it is vital to 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. ... 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.”
Recent national polling on the presidential election give Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, a five-point lead nationally. She also leads or is tied in nearly every swing state.
Rosenberg called out specific polling companies, which haven’t been doing any polling since a bunch of fake GOP polls in 2022, he said — Wick, Insider Advantage, Trafalgar and Patriot Polling. He expects them to concentrate on battleground states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and he predicted the polls will show Republicans winning by 2-4 points more than legitimate polls.
“We cannot be bamboozled by this,” he said.
In 2022, similar polls pushed polling average to the right — so much that Real Clear Politics, which uses polling averages, predicted the Republicans would win 54 Senate seats. The GOP won only 49. Republican voters expected a red wave that never developed, Rosenberg said.
Rosenberg expects these GOP pollsters to focus on swing states — because they’re crucial and because it’s easier to game polling in the states, where there are fewer polls.
“We have to be wise and learn from what happened last time,” Rosenberg said, “and call bullshit on what’s going on here with these fake Republican polls.”