Let’s All Be Cool About the Biased Polls, Like Good Little Fonzies

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

Let me tell you something you already know.  

The MSM/Democrats are trying to BS you at the 100-day mark of President Trump’s second term. They are desperate to show that the new Trump administration is sinking fast in the polls, and that the American people are waking up to his (supposed) authoritarianism and overreach.

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Here is how they are doing it.  

Every day, for my day job, I go to MSM websites that focus on Congress – The Hill, Roll Call, and Politico.  Almost every day, a new article is written at one of these websites about a new poll that has come out, which shows President Trump’s approval scores in the toilet.  

Similar articles also appear on Twitter, Facebook, and at the local news websites.

You may notice something about those articles and their polls.  The polls are inevitably from ABC News, or NBC News, or CBS News, or CNN, or NPR, or the NYTs, or even FOX. What all these sources have in common is that these polling organizations largely did not get the 2024 election correct. Many underestimated the Trump vote, sometimes substantially, and many produced Harris leads that, in the words of her political advisor, “showed us with leads we never saw" in Harris internal polls.  

And campaign polling is always far superior to public polls, because if they get it wrong, their candidate suffers.

These websites almost never have a news article detailing the new polls from the polling firms that got the 2024 presidential election mostly right, such as Atlas, Rasmussen, Quantus, RMG, etc.

Some people on the right are getting very angry about this.  Others are getting distraught or dispirited.  Some are demanding that the MSM curb their bias. 

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But the MSM are Democrats, and they won’t change their spots. They have a vested interest in doing what they are doing. They want to undermine the Trump administration and cause Republicans to lose hope and cave in substantial ways to the Democrats. The MSM has been doing this same thing for decades, against many previous Republican politicians, including against President George W. Bush and Speaker Newt Gingrich.


RELATED: CBS News Poll: Americans Approve of Trump's Immigration Policies, Mixed on Economic Issues

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These are the six factors I think about when I see a new MSM-biased article. I think everyone should focus on these six things, instead of the actual article.

First, we should focus on a polling average, and never on an individual poll. An average better allows you to control for individual bias in any one poll. And the problem with just focusing on a “good” poll, like say, Rasmussen, is that good polls don’t always stay good, and you never know when it will cease to be predictive until it happens. In the 1996 and 2000 elections, the Zogby poll was excellent; starting in 2004, it wasn’t. That year, the original Rasmussen poll usurped Zogby’s status. Later, Rasmussen also lost its predictive value, and its founder, Scott Rasmussen, eventually sold the firm (he is now with RMG). Now, the new Rasmussen and the old Rasmussen are both good again.

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Besides, both Atlas and Rasmussen were good polls in 2024. But now, both are showing different results. So, which poll should we use?

Second, the Real Clear Politics average is the polling average that should be used. Of the three most notable polling averages during the 2024 elections, the RCP average from the day before the election was the closest to the result. It underestimated the Trump vote by only 2 percent. Nate Silver’s average and the 538 average (which is now defunct) were both off considerably more.   

Third, it is important to recognize that the RCP average – while the best available – still underestimates Trump support. As I mentioned above, the result was off by 2 percent. Further, polling in the average before the final few weeks was even worse, as many of the polls I listed above as being biased were producing numbers that even the Harris campaign didn’t believe. These polling organizations will inevitably be doing this again, leading up to the 2026 elections. So, the best polling will occur during the final weeks of those elections.

Fourth, considering what I have said about campaign polling, if we have access to campaign polling, we should use it to check the RCP average. And sure enough, we do have an internal campaign poll. In battleground House districts, the NRCC has Trump's approval rating down 46 percent to 53 percent. Meanwhile, the RCP average has Trump down 45.1 percent to 52.5 percent. While the polls are of different universes, this is still very close.  

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Fifth, we should expect some slippage in Trump approval numbers right now, but not a full collapse. As I mentioned before, Donald Trump has been extremely active in his first 100 days. He has been working to end world crises in the Middle East and Russia-Ukraine, he has imposed tariffs, he has set up DOGE, he has eliminated USAID, he has cracked down on the border and deported thousands of illegals, and he has threatened colleges for instituting DEI and not cracking down on violent antisemites. MAGA types, of course, love that.  But other, less committed Republicans, and independents who voted for him, tend to get nervous about such bold and dramatic actions. I have had several people in my personal life express this exact concern to me. Thus, we can expect that some of these people who produced Trump’s 50 percent victory to now disapprove of his administration, as a result.  

Once again, this is very similar to what happened during the Gingrich Revolution, in 1995-1996, when the GOP was very active in government reform. And the end results of the supposed anti-Gingrich backlash in 1996 were far less than CW has advertised.   

Sixth, and finally, we should remember that the Republicans swept the 2024 elections. Donald Trump is the president, the U.S. Senate swung GOP by a large margin, and the U.S. House (despite some skullduggery with endless ballot counting) stayed Republican. The Democrats, who for four years instituted a real fascist/authoritarian regime that sought to control speech, conducted lawfare against a GOP presidential candidate, tried to defund cops, opened the floodgates at the border for illegal aliens, and allowed crazed lefties to terrorize Americans in colleges and elsewhere, were convincingly kicked to the curb. 2024 was a complete and utter victory for the GOP.  

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Considering all this, does it really matter if one biased poll shows Donald Trump’s approval numbers falling, while he is trying to implement his agenda? Especially when we don’t know if this will even lead to real negative election results in 2026?  

No, it doesn’t.  

Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.  

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