Beware biased GOP polls flooding the zone, with corporate media's help

In this case, Trump's own pollster put out "private" polls that contradict his own "public" polls!

It’s that time in the election season when we see GOP pollsters flooding the zone with biased polls meant to have corporate media throw them into the averages and cause anxiety for Democrats—attempting to depress the vote. And now we’re even seeing the Trump campaign releasing some of its own internal polls—except they bizarrely contradict their own pollster’s public polls.

First, for background, you may recall six months ago I noted that Donald Trump’s top pollster was also partnered in polling for the Wall Street Journal, and how none of the corporate media pointed it out as they reported on the Wall Street Journal’s polling on the presidential race. That piece is right here.

Wall Street Journal poll has Biden trailing. No one reports Trump's top pollster conducts it.

The gist of the piece from back in April is that it’s not unusual to have a noted Republican pollster who’s worked on previous presidential campaigns, along with a noted Democratic pollster, Michael Bocian, who’s worked on previous Democratic campaigns, conducting polls for the Wall Street Journal, or any news organization, together. But it is quite out of the ordinary to have a pollster who is currently working for one of the presidential candidates also in the role of co-executor of the WSJ’s polling. From the post in April:

The co-executor of the Wall Street Journal Poll has been simultaneously working as a top strategist and pollster at a Trump super PAC, MAGA, Inc., and was reported in the same week to now be headed to the Trump campaign itself as a senior adviser. Tony Fabrizio, in fact, has a long history with Trump, having served as his top pollster and strategist in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

Having a top Trump strategist who is currently getting paid to raise money for and help elect Trump conduct the WSJ poll would seem to run counter to the WSJ’s attempt—and that of the other news organizations reporting on the poll—to implicitly portray the poll as independent and unbiased.

The WSJ would counter that the WSJ Poll is conducted by Fabrizio, whose firm is Fabrizio, Lee and Associates, along with Democratic pollster Michael Bocian, founder of the Democratic polling firm GBAO, who is the other co-executor of the WSJ poll.

But Bocian, who worked on the campaigns of Senators Raphael Warnock and John Fetterman in 2022 as well as campaigns of other Democrats, isn’t currently working on the Biden campaign or for a Biden super PAC, certainly not according to his firm’s list of clients.

None of the media pointed this out when reporting on the WSJ’s polls at the time, as I noted:

While a small handful of sites (not the New York Times or CNN) note the WSJ poll was conducted by “Republican” pollster Fabrizio and “Democratic” pollster Bocian, none identify Fabrizio as a top adviser of MAGA Inc., now headed to the Trump campaign itself, an operative who is a hardcore, vocal Trump supporter who literally said this week in a statement about his joining the Trump campaign: “I’m honored that the president and his team have asked me to continue in the fight to Make America Great Again.”

Flash forward to October: The Trump campaign, with Fabrizio heading up their internal polling, released some of its internal polling to the media this week. It’s not something campaigns generally do, but if you have a narcissistic candidate who thrives on claiming he’s winning and you have polls that appear to show that, you’re likely to follow his orders and make them public.

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Maybe to make him happy, you even polish the polls a bit to make him seem like he’s winning too—in close polls, a little weighting here or there goes a long way—since he’ll probably go crazy on you if you show him bad polls. I don’t know—that’s just speculation on my part.

But based on what we’ve seen regarding Trump and the loyal servants who work for him, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Whatever the reasons, however, we do have evidence that Trump’s internal polls are biased toward him.

It’s all right up on The New York Times web site, where the polls Fabrizio conducted for the campaign are much more favorable for Trump than the polls of the same states in the same time period that Fabrizo conducted for the Wall Street Journal.

The New York Times offers polling averages, but they break them down into “all pollsters” and “select pollsters.” The “select” polls are basically the ones they trust, while the others are the ones they don’t, or, as the Times puts it, “Polls from 'select pollsters,' which meet certain criteria for reliability, count for more, and are shown with a diamond.” (Why they include polls they don’t trust is certainly something to ask.)

So, listed in “all pollsters” are polls from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/McLaughlin & Associates, which is the GOP polling team working directly for Trump’s campaign on his internal polls.

But listed in “select pollsters” are polls from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/GBAO. GBAO is the firm of Democratic pollster Michael Bocian, co-executor with Fabrizio of the Wall Street Journal poll. As you can see, the polls are, overall, less favorable toward Trump.

Harris obviously has a small lead in three of the states that Trump is leading in according to his internal polls, while tied with him in two others that his internal polls have him leading in. The two sets of polls are also a bit out of whack, as Trump is doing a lot better in Nevada in the WSJ poll (something those analysts who know Nevada say is really off) than he is doing according to his own pollsters.

The bottom line, however, is that there’s bias. Fabrizio, in releasing his own polls, is either inadvertently calling into question the polls he conducts for the Wall Street Journal with Democratic pollster Bocian or revealing his polls are biased toward Trump, which seems more plausible since only Republican pollsters are working on the internal polls. Yes, internal polls can be biased too. We all remember when Mitt Romney thought he was going to win in 2012 because his internal polling told him so.

And the New York Times is putting Trump’s biased internals in the averages—albeit, without including them as “select”—which is the entire purpose of the campaign releasing them.

Trump and the GOP have used this strategy in every election cycle. Republican-leaning pollsters flood the zone toward the end, knowing that the polling averages will include them. They believe that creating the appearance of winning will help them—and of course, Trump just must always believe he’s winning to assuage his ego—as we saw in 2020 and 2022. Then Trump lost and there was no red wave, respectively.

Just a reminder as we are weeks away from the election that you cannot let polls give you anxiety and that some are designed to do that. Look at real numbers—like the surging registrations of young people, Black people and others, the encouraging signs in early voting, the massive amount of money in small-dollar donations the Harris campaign has raised, and the ground game of the campaigns—and stay focused on getting out the vote.