Polling - why the public may soon wake up to the establishment’s greatest mind trick

The only thing less popular than masks is Donald Trump – so why are pollsters telling us these two oppressive, Covid-era throwbacks are so beloved?

By Adam Edwards

WHEN was the last time you saw someone in a mask? Well, if you read the papers, you could be mistaken for thinking you can’t leave home without seeing one on every other face.

Apparently they’re so popular, “almost half” of Brits want masks to be legally mandated again, according to a December 11 YouGov poll. Even more unbelievably, a large minority allegedly support an immediate return to lockdown, too.

Of course, no sane person who lived through the lockdown years believes YouGov polling (the latest pro-lockdown polls were conveniently released the same week The Guardian started reporting on the devastating impact of lockdowns).

Needless to say, The Guardian and the rest of the mainstream media gleefully ran YouGov’s junk polling of 2,033 hermits as it were gospel.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Twenty-first century journalism doesn’t care about plausibility or logic. It doesn’t seem to matter that the claim is clearly at odds with the public’s demonstrable actions to the contrary. “YouGov says. End of story.”

The fact that you subscribe to this news channel suggests you probably know polling is used to push a political agenda and influence, rather than reflect, public opinion.

But why do so many so-called “sceptics” believe the establishment’s dodgy polls on so many other subjects?

Donald Trump’s new-found popularity is an obvious example.

Almost every journalist, commentator and keyboard warrior that saw through Neil Ferguson’s laughable modelling, Pfizer’s “safe and effective” claims and the MSM’s propaganda about Russia bombing its own gas lines, now parrots hilarious polling claiming Donald Trump is leading Joe Biden by double digits. 

Apparently the man who lost the popular vote to America’s most-hated woman, Hillary Clinton, lost both Houses of Congress in disastrous midterms and was taken to the metaphorical woodshed by a dementia-riddled child-sniffer in 2020, has suddenly found tens of millions of extra votes down the back of his chaise lounge.

Give me a break. 

Trump is less popular now than he was in 2016 – when he narrowly carried the swing states thanks, in part, to dodgy polling that made Democrat voters complacent.

He’s so unpopular, in fact, that a Trump-endorsement has proven to be something of a kiss of death for Republican candidates in recent years.

In last year’s midterms, most of Trump’s picks were slaughtered in what turned out to be a humiliating night for the Republican Party, who had been promised a “red wave” by the perpetually wrong pollsters.

In Georgia, for instance, Trump’s pick for Senate was unexpectedly rejected by voters – while the state’s anti-lockdown governor, Brian Kemp, who Trump had famously campaigned against, was comfortably re-elected on the same ballot.

Trump-endorsed Republicans suffered unexpected defeat after unexpected defeat in all the swing states, while even Republican strongholds like Alaska saw Trump’s picks rejected in favour of otherwise-unelectable Democrats.

It’s a real phenomenon. Michael Heseltine of the University of Amsterdam calculated that a Trump endorsement makes a wannabe politician more likely to be selected by the Republican Party, but subsequently knocks 1.5 per cent off their vote share in an election.

Just last month, yet another Trump-endorsed candidate lost a gubernatorial race – this time in deep-red Kentucky. The loss spurred the former governor of New Jersey and Republican primary – or leadership – contender Chris Christie to blast on Twitter/X: “The losing will only end for Republicans if we rid ourselves of Donald Trump.”

So how can a man whose endorsement seems to hobble his fellow Republicans’ chance of winning be simultaneously out-polling his all his Democratic rivals for president?

Well, clearly, the polls are fake.

There’s no way Trump is leading by double digits in swing-states like Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada, when all the polling trends since 2016 show that they are gradually turning perma-blue.

The only “swing state” that has gone the other way is Florida, where Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Governor Ron DeSantis, won re-election by 20 points (again, DeSantis was repeatedly bad-mouthed by Trump during campaigning last year).

In April, I warned in News Uncut that Trump’s various indictments were being used by Democrats to bolster his popularity among Republicans – thus ensuring an easy victory for the Democrats in next year’s presidential vote.

But the pollsters may be over playing their hand by exaggerating Trump’s popularity among Republicans and non-Republicans alike.

According to many of the polls, DeSantis, Christie and all the other challengers for the Republican presidential nomination may all be down to single-digit popularity.

Curiously, though, if we take Iowa, which will be the first state to select its pick for Republican leader on January 15, the polls have DeSantis allegedly gaining fewer votes than the number he has already been pledged by actual voters; 40,000 Iowans are said to have already filled out voter caucus cards in support of the anti-lockdown politician, which represents more voters than the 19 per cent he is alleged to be polling at in the state.

This is why I think the world could be in for a shock on January 15. Both Trump and the other highest-polling candidate, Nikki Haley, have focused their entire campaigns – and millions of dollars – on anti-DeSantis attack ads, suggesting internal Republican polling paints a very different picture to that being pushed by pollsters.

DeSantis really ought to be leading in Iowa. He's has spent several months campaigning in Iowa. He’s attended town hall meetings in all of Iowa’s 99 counties and has by far the largest number of volunteers on the ground. 

He received the public backing of Iowa’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds (another conservative and anti-restrictions Republican, who enjoyed a huge re-election when the Trump-backed candidates flopped). 

While, just as crucial as having the state’s governor campaign for him, DeSantis also has the support of Bob Vander Plaats, an evangelical leader and Iowa Republican “kingmaker”, whose endorsement Trump tried, and failed, to buy. 

If DeSantis does only end polling around 19 per cent on January 15, as claimed by the December 11 NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, he may well be toast.

However, if DeSantis wins in Iowa – or even comes close to Trump’s alleged 51 per cent first-choice polling – then the mask really will slip on the entire polling industry.

See, you’ll be hard-pressed to find any polls even vaguely positive about DeSantis, like they were, say, Trump beating Clinton, Britain voting to leave the EU, or that “skinny kid with a funny name” beating runaway favourite Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democrat primary.

Anything nearing an upset on January 15 will be a real “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment for the pollsters, exposing the entire race – and the paid-for polling industry – as the agenda-driving, mind-manipulating psyops that the lockdown-era YouGov polls made us suspect it was.