Big Media Propping up Biden with Propagandist Polls

Ahead of a presidential election, opinion polls are a major news item. Most of these polls are not designed to reflect public opinion but instead to shape it. As most big media leans left, such shaping is always to the benefit of the Democrat party.

Polls can be fudged to produce virtually any result based on what the poll asks or who they ask the questions to. As the small population sample queried in the poll ideally approximates the full population, a representative sample is necessary for a reliable poll result. Otherwise, the axiom “garbage in, garbage out” comes into play.

In presidential polls, Rasmussen Reports surveys likely voters, rather than whoever answers the phone or is simply on the registered voter rolls, explaining their historic accuracy ahead of presidential elections. What about other pollsters?

Last week the opinion polls were trotted out, not for an election, but after President Biden’s address to Congress. CNN commissioned a poll which proclaimed, “7 in 10 who watched say Biden's speech left them feeling optimistic.” Did everyone in America watch the speech? Hardly. Instead, few watched, skewing the sample toward diehard Democrats and the media, which likely constituted most of the viewing audience.

Charlie Kirk tweeted TV ratings for past presidential addresses.

Trump 17—48,000,000

Trump 18—46,000,000

Trump 19—46,800,000

Trump 20—37,200,000

Biden 21—11,600,000

Biden’s audience was barely larger than the Oscars audience of 9.85 million viewers, which was down 58 percent from last year’s all time low. Perhaps liberals in Hollywood and cable newsrooms are not as popular as they think they are. Were the 11 million Biden speech viewers representative of America? (To be fair, the 11.6 million number for Biden's speech reflects only those who watched it live on four major broadcast networks. Nielsen estimated the total audience for Biden's speech at 26.9 million, which is still a 27% percent decline from Trump's 2020 State of the Union speech.)

Looking closer at this CNN poll, conducted by SSRS Opinion panel, the sample size was only 589 respondents, about the same size as the US Congress. Of those surveyed, 45 percent identified as Democrat compared to 23 percent as Republican, a two-fold difference.

No wonder “7 in 10” liked the speech. CNN could have saved themselves some money by surveying their own newsroom, getting a similar result, one which they desired for their reporting.

CBS also released a poll, carried out by YouGov, with a headline result, “Most viewers approve of Biden’s speech.” CBS reported 85 percent of speech watchers approved of Biden’s speech. Who were those speech watchers, aside from those in the CBS newsroom?

Their sample was even more skewed than CNN’s with 54 percent Democrats and only 18 percent Republicans, a three-fold difference. This is a prime example of garbage in, garbage out.

What would a better pollster surveying a representative sample conclude? Rasmussen Reports asked “likely U.S. voters” what they thought of Biden’s presidency this far. Only 36 percent say his first 100 days have been a success, with 44 percent calling it a failure. A minority of likely voters, 48 percent, thought Biden won the election fairly last November.

This survey did not skew the sample toward Republicans. The sample was 36 percent Republican and 38 percent Democrat, an even split, unlike the two or three to one oversampling of Democrats in the CNN and CBS polls.

Even left-wing Snopes called out the media, rating as “false” the assertion that 85 percent of Americans approved of Biden’s speech. When the gaslighting media loses Snopes, you know they have crossed the Rubicon of credibility.

Journalism is no longer about asking questions, investigating, and reporting the news as fairly as possible. It is now political advocacy and propaganda, creating the news using phony polls rather than using sound methodology to measure public opinion, then reporting it in a fair and balanced way.

Rasmussen Reports confirmed this recently by asking likely voters if they trust the political news they receive. Not surprising only 33 percent of voters trust the news whereas 53 percent of voters do not. If the media continues to align itself with one particular political party and agenda, they can expect their ratings to continue to fall just like those of the Oscar awards and professional sports.

Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer. He is on sabbatical from social media.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.