My latest in PJ Media:
By now, anyone who doesn’t know that polls are tools for manipulating public opinion, not for discovering what public opinion is, simply hasn’t been paying attention. And when poll results are published under the headline “The Big Lie: Over half of Republicans believe Donald Trump is the actual President of the United States,” it’s clear that we’re not dealing with honest brokers. With the recent news out of Arizona, Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, it’s clear that to believe that the 2020 presidential election was hardly the freest and fairest in American history is far from falling for a Big Lie. And that’s just the beginning of this poll’s dishonesty.
A research firm called Ipsos conducted the poll on behalf of Thomson Reuters. Ipsos bills itself as “the world’s third largest Insights and Analytics company,” and claims to “provide true understanding and powerful insights into the actions, opinions and motivations of citizens, consumers, patients, customers or employees.” However, Ipsos was accused of “systematic” and “massive” liberal bias in its polling during the 2016 presidential campaign, and there is no indication that it has mended its ways since then. On the basis of its “Big Lie” poll, instead of ridding itself of its biases, it is doubling down on them.
In a survey filled with awkwardly worded questions clearly designed to produce the outcome Ipsos and Reuters desired, we learn that only eight percent of Democrats and twenty-seven percent of Republicans believe that “foreign terrorism (committed by non-Americans on American soil)” poses “the biggest threat to the safety of average Americans.” Meanwhile, 49% of Democrats and 34% of Republicans believe that the biggest threat to safety comes from “politically or religiously-motivated domestic terrorism (committed by Americans on American soil).” 43% of Democrats and 38% Republicans were most concerned about “random acts of violence (committed by Americans on American soil).”
Superficially, this looks as if Americans are hardly concerned about jihad terrorism (“foreign terrorism”) at all, and extremely worried about “white supremacist” terrorism (“committed by Americans on American soil”) and people who open fire in schools and shopping malls (“random acts of violence”). So what we need, you see, is restrictions on dissent from the Left’s agenda (to take care of the “white supremacists,” who are now anyone to the right of Leon Trotsky), and the loss of our Second Amendment rights to end those random shootings. And lo and behold, the Democrat Party is here to help.
But wait a minute. Could sloppier and less informative categories have possibly been formulated? The foreign/domestic distinction, so beloved of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, is actually of little value. A few weeks ago, an Islamic State (ISIS) jihadi was coming up for a bond hearing in Michigan and complicated his own case by threatening to murder his own attorney once he was released. Ibraheem Musaibli was born in Michigan, and was arrested while waging jihad in Syria. If he succeeds in bumping off his own lawyer, would that be “foreign terrorism,” or “politically or religiously-motivated domestic terrorism”? At least we can be fairly sure it wouldn’t be a “random act of violence,” since he would know his target. But what if Musaibli was freed and decided to heed the Islamic State’s call for attacks on random civilians in America? Which one of the three categories would that fall into?
There is more. Read the rest here.
mortimer says
Ipsos is ‘adjusting’ the results by selectively polling people that give the answers they want … so many men, women, so many members of different parties, no opinion.
I worked for bosses in market research who themselves simply created the surveys for the client if enough people could not be found in the limited time.
Often survey takers will introduce their own answers into questionnaire if the person leaves or hangs up.
mortimer says
Questionnaires are sometimes so BADLY worded … presumably by slavish lackeys who write down every mumble and meander of vice-presidents dictating on the fly … that no one can figure out what it means.
gravenimage says
Often this is deliberate, Mortimer–intended to elicit a specific result.
mortimer says
Yes, GI, I’ve lived it. The oligarchs get the result they pay for and thereby justify their dictatorship. The US is now a dictatorship run by presidential decrees. This is soft fascism … but it is hardening daily.
The present situation is GOVERNMENT BY THE OLIGARCHS and FOR THE OLIGARCHS. The American people are the ENEMY of the OLIGARCHS who must be molded, brainwashed and then CRUSHED and REPLACEMENT.
“Le grand REMPLACEMENT” is here.
mortimer says
correction: CRUSHED and REPLACED.
gravenimage says
Very scary stuff.
Kesselman says
This poll business can more or less be categorized into the same frame as in use in authoritarian countries. If you have an illegitimate government with the media and other influential agencies covering up you are really in deep sheets.
OLD GUY says
The scary couple, when they show up we are in trouble. Three more years of these two may destroy American freedom. Biden is a small problem, these two morons are the real problem.
Ben Kennedy says
It is difficult to believe these polls reflect the communist Democrats’ concern for what the American People think, but the results they manufacture are more likely to be used as an “Alibi” for what these political terrorists in our government are about to do. As it was said at the birth of our Nation, we hang together, or separately. The divide and conquer technique seems to be working on many of the younger generations which would seem to guarantee the American people hanging separately, based on Race, Religion, Creed, and Color. What have these communist democrats done to our Constitution?
Keys says
That photo would be a great mugshot for a “Wanted Poster” !
Rob Porter says
Beautiful sarcasm and mockery from Robert. Just a few minutes ago I watched first-rate liar, Anderson Cooper, discussing the danger posed by the “big lie” from Trump.
Andrew Blackadder says
Personally have never met anybody who has been polled, however applying for a job many years this wee soy boy asked me, with a straight face, “So what is the smallest thing you have ever stolen from your previous employer ?”… I just laughed in his face, and hes lucky that I needed the job more than my desire to punch his fucking face in…