Speaker 1: Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and
Speaker 1: social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Speaker 1: Tim O'Bryant. Today's crash Course. Polling versus the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election. Polling, the very inexact science that is the
Speaker 1: lifeblood of political analysis and guesswork is very much with us,
Speaker 1: built upon a series of queries that asks respondents essentially,
Speaker 1: what do you think about X? Polling aims to make
Speaker 1: the intangible concrete. It is the stuff from which predictions
Speaker 1: are made, the data that fuels a political marketplace, aiming
Speaker 1: to artfully respond to voters preferences and priorities. But polling,
Speaker 1: via its siblings, focus groups and messaging, also aspires to
Speaker 1: shape voters preferences two in the best interpretation, understand and
Speaker 1: serve them with greater clarity in the worst interpretation. Messaging
Speaker 1: makes voters more malleable, more easily swayed. The modern polling
Speaker 1: era may have begun in the late nineteen fifties when
Speaker 1: Joe Kennedy retained the services of a polster named Lou
Speaker 1: Harris to help him market his son John. Just like
Speaker 1: another consumer product, today, polls beget messaging, which begets spin
Speaker 1: which sometimes begets disinformation and other dark arts. It's tough
Speaker 1: out there, and the twenty twenty four presidential race will
Speaker 1: be a cage match. Joining me today is Frank Once.
Speaker 1: Frank is a political and communication strategist and polster who
Speaker 1: has spent much of his career working for Republicans. He
Speaker 1: also has been a polster for some of the biggest
Speaker 1: media companies in the country and specializes in leveraging the
Speaker 1: emotional content of language to win campaigns. Welcome to Crash Course, Frank.
Speaker 2: Thank you, and can I just start by saying I've
Speaker 2: listened to your introduction, yes, and there are forwards that
Speaker 2: I want to address right off the bat, disruption, prediction, disinformation,
Speaker 2: and leverage the issue disruption is absolutely accurate from you,
Speaker 2: even in the fact that I've just disrupted your conversation
Speaker 2: right now. But the goal of the work that I
Speaker 2: do is not disruption. It's actually understanding. It's comprehension. My
Speaker 2: job is to understand the people that I'm researching, to
Speaker 2: understand what they really want from what they're telling me.
Speaker 2: It's the exact opposite of disruption. If I do my
Speaker 2: job well, it's not disruption. There are no surprises there's
Speaker 2: predictability and stability. Second prediction, I should not be doing
Speaker 2: it and polsters should not be doing it. Yes, that's
Speaker 2: what we're called upon to do. That's actually the least
Speaker 2: important aspect of what a polster should do, and frankly,
Speaker 2: the less predictions they do, the better off the profession
Speaker 2: would be. Third information, which I am absolutely resolute in
Speaker 2: the accuracy of what I tell you. In the accuracy
Speaker 2: of what I put out doesn't mean I've got one
Speaker 2: hundred percent record of success, but we have to be
Speaker 2: the opponents, the most hostile people to any kind of
Speaker 2: misinformation or disinformation. And finally, it's the idea of leverage.
Speaker 2: To me, leverage is about knowledge, and I want to
Speaker 2: know more than anyone in that room. I want to
Speaker 2: understand not how people think, but what they believe and
Speaker 2: why they communicate what they say. I don't look at
Speaker 2: it as leverage. I look at it as wisdom to
Speaker 2: hopefully reduce the conflicts and the surprises, and to help
Speaker 2: either candidates or governments or businesses or anyone be able
Speaker 2: to fully understand so they can keep their promises, they
Speaker 2: can do the jobs that they were set out to do.
Speaker 2: And most importantly, they will reinstill a level of trust
Speaker 2: and confidence that what they say and what they mean
Speaker 2: is what they actually do.
Speaker 1: Well, Frank, I love that you put your linguist Scalpel
Speaker 1: the use on the introduction. It's a great way actually
Speaker 1: to start the show. Disruption is more about the ethos
Speaker 1: of the show that we sort of look at disruptive
Speaker 1: events to glean an understanding of them. So it was
Speaker 1: less about polsters being disruptive agents. But certainly the other
Speaker 1: three words that you've focused on, leverage, disinformation, and prediction.
Speaker 1: I think those are good themes for us to weave
Speaker 1: in and out of our conversation today because it is
Speaker 1: the essence I think of where campaigns are won and
Speaker 1: lost and where polling is right now in terms of
Speaker 1: navigating around those rocks. And you've set this up wonderfully.
Speaker 1: You've been around. You worked for Pap Buchanan, you worked
Speaker 1: for Nude Gingrich, you worked for Rudy Giuliani, more recently,
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy. You worked for the Bushes. You've represented a
Speaker 1: lot of people and.
Speaker 2: Never worked for the pulp On. Never work for the
Speaker 2: Bushes ever, And this is an example.
Speaker 1: Can you work for the Bush, White House in terms
Speaker 1: of health and craft their method. Well, then let's get
Speaker 1: to that later. Well let's handle that chronologically. I could
Speaker 1: readdress this.
Speaker 2: Though I don't want you to cut this out of
Speaker 2: the show. Okay, this is a perfect example of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Somebody notice that, because misinformation would be I intended to
Speaker 1: say you worked for the Bushes to fake out my
Speaker 1: audience and have them believe bad things about you, knowing
Speaker 1: that you didn't work for the Bushes. I honestly thought
Speaker 1: you did, and I thought you advised them on climate
Speaker 1: change initiatives.
Speaker 2: But that's why this is so important. Don't cut this
Speaker 2: from the show, please, because somebody wrote that more than
Speaker 2: twenty years ago to hurt my reputation, to say that
Speaker 2: this was done in a negative way. And that's exactly
Speaker 2: the problem.
Speaker 1: Back the matter. You actually never did work for the Bushes,
Speaker 1: for either one of them.
Speaker 2: No, they have no idea who I am.
Speaker 1: They never retain to work on anything.
Speaker 2: No, and that's why no.
Speaker 1: One in their White House retained you. No one acting
Speaker 1: as their representatives retain you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, there are people that I know, but I never
Speaker 2: worked for George W. Book direct, directly or.
Speaker 1: In so that's what I was wondering, and that's right, qut.
Speaker 2: And this is really important for the listeners to hear this.
Speaker 2: Don't believe the crap that you read on the web.
Speaker 2: Don't believe social media. I know by the names that
Speaker 2: you used. You said Papu Canon and not Ross Paro.
Speaker 2: And the fact is I was much more engaged in
Speaker 2: the Ross Paro campaign. But I know the article. I
Speaker 2: know where this comes from. So I know the list
Speaker 2: of people that you give. I've worked for so many.
Speaker 1: Let's slow for one second. There's no ill intent on
Speaker 1: my part in warming up your client list. It's not
Speaker 1: to cherry pick any of them. It was more just
Speaker 1: to convey to the audience that you have a long
Speaker 1: track record doing this and you've represented notable people. And
Speaker 1: if I've messed any of that up, I'm happy to
Speaker 1: clarify it. But it wasn't meant to misrepresent your bona
Speaker 1: fides or your CV.
Speaker 2: But when it was put out initially, there was no
Speaker 2: acknowledgment that I worked with a Biden Weight House directly
Speaker 2: on COVID language. There is no discussion that I work
Speaker 2: with the Clinton White House on global trade, specifically NAFTA.
Speaker 2: There's no comment about sitting down with so many leaders
Speaker 2: from across the globe, because I know where this comes from.
Speaker 2: And I love the fact that this begins with this
Speaker 2: conversation me too, because it tells the listener be careful
Speaker 2: of what you read, be careful of what you see,
Speaker 2: because it may not be accurate at all.
Speaker 1: So is it inaccurate to describe you as a Republican pulster?
Speaker 1: Do you feel you're a bipartisan pulster?
Speaker 2: They've stopped calling me a Republican?
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, But what do you consider yourself?
Speaker 2: I consider myself a nonpartisan by partisan means you work
Speaker 2: for both sides, not partisan means you don't take sides.
Speaker 2: I have relationships with the Republicans absolutely, and I was
Speaker 2: a partisan polster ten years ago, twenty years ago, but
Speaker 2: beginning with the Donald Trump election in twenty sixteen, I've
Speaker 2: actually publicly eschewed partisanship and even the word itself. You
Speaker 2: can say I'm a language guy. Even the word partisan itself,
Speaker 2: it's not accurate for what I do because in the end,
Speaker 2: it's not my job to represent Republicans or make them
Speaker 2: look good. It's not my job to speak ill of Democrats.
Speaker 2: It's my job to be honest and accurate to every
Speaker 2: question you ask me.
Speaker 1: So, in the interest of accuracy and the chronology, I
Speaker 1: think we should have a new timestamp BT and AT,
Speaker 1: you know, before Trump and after Trump. So the Frank
Speaker 1: Lunce of the BT era was a partisan polster who
Speaker 1: worked largely, perhaps almost exclusively, for Republicans. The Frank Lunce
Speaker 1: of the AT period is spreading his net more broadly
Speaker 1: and working for people he believes in. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: That is accurate, and it's not just domestically. We're doing
Speaker 2: this interview with me in London, which shows you how
Speaker 2: great technology is that you and I can communicate five
Speaker 2: thousand miles apart from each other in real time. And
Speaker 2: my perspective is much more global. Having traveled to I
Speaker 2: will hit my fiftieth country this year. It does give
Speaker 2: me a different perspective, not just as a pholster or
Speaker 2: as a communicator, but as a human being. Now that
Speaker 2: I've visited every continent except for Antarctica, it teaches me
Speaker 2: that there is a different way of speaking, that there's
Speaker 2: a different way of life, and that the priorities are
Speaker 2: the things I take for granted as an American are
Speaker 2: simply not the same as those from an Asian country
Speaker 2: or an African country, for example, and that it makes
Speaker 2: me not only more tolerant of other cultures and other societies,
Speaker 2: but it makes me more curious to understand, to learn
Speaker 2: about what they have to offer to a humankind on
Speaker 2: a global scale.
Speaker 1: Since we've invoked Trump already, I was going to get
Speaker 1: to that a little later, but I think it could
Speaker 1: also still be a useful departure point right now. Well,
Speaker 1: what was the intervention in your worldview and in your
Speaker 1: life as a pulser in a human being when Donald
Speaker 1: Trump entered your mindscape? As I understand it, it actually
Speaker 1: took a physical toll on you. You had a stroke
Speaker 1: a few years ago. I've seen in some public statements
Speaker 1: you attributed that in part to the stress philosophically and
Speaker 1: emotionally and physically you experienced when Donald Trump ascended into
Speaker 1: the White House.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair. I think that's accurate. But go
Speaker 2: back even further. I'm the person who interviewed Donald Trump
Speaker 2: in Des Moines, Iowa, in twenty fifteen when Donald Trump
Speaker 2: was condemning John McCain, and I intervened to say, wait
Speaker 2: a minute, John McCain's a war hero, and Donald Trump
Speaker 2: famously said, talking over me, he's not a war hero.
Speaker 2: He was captured. I like the ones who weren't captured.
Speaker 2: That was my interview. You hear me, but you don't
Speaker 2: see me on camera. And from that moment on, I
Speaker 2: had a problem with him.
Speaker 1: He rather than what what was the specific problem you
Speaker 1: had with him?
Speaker 2: I didn't think he told the truth. To mean nothing matters. No,
Speaker 2: you're gonna use that word. I know.
Speaker 1: I'm asking is did you consider him a liar?
Speaker 2: I considered that he didn't tell the truth.
Speaker 1: What's the difference?
Speaker 2: A huge difference.
Speaker 1: Explain that one.
Speaker 2: If I call someone a liar, I'm immediately asking you
Speaker 2: to judge me by that accusation. If I'm saying he
Speaker 2: doesn't tell the truth, you're simply analyzing the statements and
Speaker 2: the delivery of the person that we're focused on. I
Speaker 2: don't want to be accusing someone of lying, because I
Speaker 2: know that that causes people not to listen, causes them
Speaker 2: to shut up. But if I say is he telling
Speaker 2: the truth? If I turn it as a question, it
Speaker 2: is much more likely that I will contemplate what I've said.
Speaker 2: You are more likely to take what I say and
Speaker 2: accept it because I'm not being accused a to him.
Speaker 1: But I was just talking about your own decision. You
Speaker 1: said you were turned off because you believed he wasn't
Speaker 1: telling the truth. You were making your own subjective value
Speaker 1: judgment about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm just not willing to use your language to
Speaker 2: describe it now.
Speaker 1: I was just series about how you parts the difference
Speaker 1: between the two in terms of your own view of him.
Speaker 1: But we can probably get stuck on that one forever now.
Speaker 2: Actually, but here's the thing, Okay, I listen to every
Speaker 2: word when a politician is speaking, when a business person
Speaker 2: is speaking, when a cultural icon is speaking, I pay
Speaker 2: attention to what they say. It's in listening to how
Speaker 2: people formulate their statements and the words that they use.
Speaker 2: And I used to just let it go when it
Speaker 2: was about me. I would never correct someone. And now
Speaker 2: I realize that on a podcast like this that it
Speaker 2: is essential that the listeners hear the words that I
Speaker 2: wish to speak, absolutely, because that is clarifying either my
Speaker 2: story or my beliefs, or my principles, my.
Speaker 1: Priorities, your place in the world did go.
Speaker 2: That's perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is an ideal outcome. I hope that listeners
Speaker 1: come up close to you and your place in the
Speaker 1: world and how you see it, and I appreciate you
Speaker 1: course correcting as we move along. So we've arrived at
Speaker 1: this Trump moment. But this is such a rich subject
Speaker 1: and let's not tie it all to Trump just yet.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the pre Trump era
Speaker 1: in your life. I think you sort of enter polling
Speaker 1: as a main part of your life around the early nineties,
Speaker 1: more or less. And how was the world that you
Speaker 1: entered then polling and messaging and then actualizing those things
Speaker 1: and campaigns and strategy positions. How was that world different
Speaker 1: than the one we're in right now.
Speaker 2: Frank, Oh, that's good. That's a tough question to answer
Speaker 2: because there's so many facets of it. And even in
Speaker 2: my own life. I learned how to do survey research
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty when I was eighteen years old, and
Speaker 2: I was supposed from nineteen eighty till about nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: And it was a breakfast that I have a new
Speaker 2: Kingridge in April of ninety four, where he said to me,
Speaker 2: gave me two pieces of advice. Pollsters are a dime
Speaker 2: a dozen You can find a dozen of them in
Speaker 2: the Republican Party. No big deal, nothing special. I want
Speaker 2: you to be a wordsmith. I want you to use
Speaker 2: polling to study how to communicate difficult principles and how
Speaker 2: to explain the conservative philosophy in a way that we
Speaker 2: win not for the next election, but for the next generation.
Speaker 2: And I followed that. That was when I started focusing
Speaker 2: on language. The other advice he gave me was learn
Speaker 2: Spanish because it's going to become the most important subgroup
Speaker 2: and no Republican polster really understands it. That one I
Speaker 2: didn't do because guy, Frankly, I'm an idiot when it
Speaker 2: comes to language. And my first big client in life
Speaker 2: were people running for office in Puerto Rico, the governor,
Speaker 2: the Resident Commissioner. Yet I couldn't speak the language. And
Speaker 2: from that point on, I'm always trying to figure out
Speaker 2: how to say it, how to communicate it, how to
Speaker 2: show it, how to present it. Everything from my PowerPoint
Speaker 2: slides to the videos that I create to the interviews
Speaker 2: like this one. It's always trying to clarify and simplify
Speaker 2: the language.
Speaker 1: But come back to me different idea of what was
Speaker 1: different than compared to now, what's the great change you've
Speaker 1: witnessed over say, the last thirty years, give or take
Speaker 1: a few.
Speaker 2: The greatest change in polling is that people want to
Speaker 2: know why not what so nobody is asking is the
Speaker 2: direction of a country positive or negative? They want to
Speaker 2: know why positive and why negative. They want to understand
Speaker 2: the reaction that certain politicians have on the electorate, not
Speaker 2: who they trust necessarily, but why they have trust or distrust.
Speaker 2: What is the root cause of some of the challenges
Speaker 2: we face. So just asking people what's the most important
Speaker 2: issue in America today is irrelevant in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: What is relevant is the root cause of that concern?
Speaker 2: Is it economic anxiety? Is it loss of faith and
Speaker 2: trust in the system? Do we now believe that democracy
Speaker 2: or capitalism don't work. It's trying to understand the second degree,
Speaker 2: the third degree of any issue, because in the end,
Speaker 2: if we don't understand the root cause, we don't understand
Speaker 2: how to fix it.
Speaker 1: You have always been attuned, though, to the idea of emotion,
Speaker 1: the emotional quotient that underlies people's preferences and choices. I
Speaker 1: think you've spoken very specifically and articulately about that over
Speaker 1: the years. I have a feeling you're going to say
Speaker 1: that that's also been pulled off of some weird spot
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and it doesn't really reflect who you are.
Speaker 1: But I bring it up not to zikatcha, but just
Speaker 1: as an attempt to get at your statement of purpose
Speaker 1: in terms of what you see the essence of I
Speaker 1: think this is a an accurate quote. Eighty percent of
Speaker 1: our life is emotion and only twenty percent is intellect.
Speaker 1: I am much more interested in how you feel than
Speaker 1: how you think, or another one along the same lines.
Speaker 1: It's all emotion, but there's nothing wrong with emotion. When
Speaker 1: we are in love, we are not rational. We are emotional.
Speaker 1: My job is to look for the words that trigger
Speaker 1: the emotion. We know that words and emotion together are
Speaker 1: the most powerful force known to mankind. So explain to me.
Speaker 1: Do you also think that that was a relatively novel
Speaker 1: insight within the polling community, This idea of move it
Speaker 1: beyond simply issue based polling and get at this emotional
Speaker 1: motivator for voters.
Speaker 2: Other people have done that long before me. What I
Speaker 2: learned and where I'm different is to find the language
Speaker 2: that best articulates or best connects to emotion, passion intensity.
Speaker 2: I know right now, for example, that there is probably
Speaker 2: thirty percent of Americans, thirty percent that don't believe in
Speaker 2: our electoral system, and I'm trying to figure out how
Speaker 2: to speak to them because I believe that the right person,
Speaker 2: the accurate person, won in twenty twenty. For example, I
Speaker 2: believe that what happened on January sixth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: was a tragedy an embarrassment. I can't believe that some
Speaker 2: people try to downplay the events of that day. I
Speaker 2: need to understand what is triggering this level of anger
Speaker 2: and more importantly, distrust. I can work with anger. I
Speaker 2: can work with disappointment. I can work with fear. I
Speaker 2: can work with anxiety, and when I say I can
Speaker 2: work with it, I can understand it and craft a
Speaker 2: language to address it. But I cannot do anything about mistrust.
Speaker 2: I cannot do anything if the public believes that those
Speaker 2: who are telling the truth are lying and the liars
Speaker 2: are actually truth tellers. And that's the situation that we're
Speaker 2: in right now. And the reason why I was so
Speaker 2: eager to do this podcast is that that, to me,
Speaker 2: is the single greatest disruption in American society. Today. It's
Speaker 2: not economic, it's not financial, it's not even political. It's
Speaker 2: the fact that there's so little in our lives that
Speaker 2: we now trust, and that we believe that the institutions
Speaker 2: and the people who run them that matter most are untruthful.
Speaker 2: And if that's the case, our democracy is in jeopardy,
Speaker 2: our economic freedom is in jeopardy. And I can't fix
Speaker 2: it because I don't know how to instill trust when
Speaker 2: it is lost.
Speaker 1: Do you know this is actually a phenomenon that was
Speaker 1: gaining traction before Trump even landed in the White House,
Speaker 1: a fraying of trust in US institutions. I think it
Speaker 1: accelerated around the financial crisis. Certainly a lot of the
Speaker 1: analysis of people's faith and institutions and the idea of
Speaker 1: public authority had taken noticeable downturns in the mid two
Speaker 1: thousands and surveys compared to prior to that era. I
Speaker 1: would suggest or think that it had to do with
Speaker 1: how devastating the financial crisis was for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: And then I think it's accelerated since then. But one
Speaker 1: of the interesting constants that's gone along with that during
Speaker 1: that period and it remains so today, is that people
Speaker 1: still trust their own personal network, they trust their family,
Speaker 1: they trust their friends, they trust people they have direct
Speaker 1: contact with. And that's a hard thing to leverage in
Speaker 1: terms of rebuilding trust for people. Is it has to
Speaker 1: happen at this very granular local level. When we run
Speaker 1: campaigns that are national league, when we run companies that
Speaker 1: have national footprints. I think some of the solution involves
Speaker 1: a lot of very granular direct contact among people, and
Speaker 1: I think that that's going to be an ongoing challenge
Speaker 1: for the political process. And this is also to me
Speaker 1: why it's so interesting to do an episode of polling,
Speaker 1: because I think the accuracy of polls and their ability
Speaker 1: to actually drive into people's needs in a broad based
Speaker 1: way and marry that understanding to personal interaction and then
Speaker 1: to policy in order to get better civic result is
Speaker 1: the challenge in front of us all right now.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons why I do focus groups,
Speaker 2: and I stopped doing it for about a year after
Speaker 2: January sixth because people were so rude and so vicious
Speaker 2: and so mean to each other.
Speaker 1: And occurring within the focus groups.
Speaker 2: You mean, within the focus groups. I'm about to publish
Speaker 2: some of the worst ones. There were seven sessions that
Speaker 2: I did that were so awful.
Speaker 1: In that this is post January sixth, this is.
Speaker 2: Right around there, this is post election twenty twenty. That
Speaker 2: the group's never made air that from the beginning to
Speaker 2: the end, people yelled at each other, they didn't listen,
Speaker 2: they didn't want to listen. They were accusatory and just mean.
Speaker 2: And the various networks that I I did it for
Speaker 2: said to me, we can't put this on the air.
Speaker 2: This is a I don't want to use the language.
Speaker 2: But rams would hit and no, and it was embarrassing
Speaker 2: to me, and I finally decided that now was the
Speaker 2: time to put it out. So if you're a listener
Speaker 2: to this program, just know if you type in my
Speaker 2: name and Straight Arrow News, you'll be able to see
Speaker 2: snippets of these sessions. I just warn you, it's going
Speaker 2: to break your heart and it's going to scare the
Speaker 2: hell out of you. Because this is the country that
Speaker 2: we have become.
Speaker 1: Why was it important to you to publicize those focus
Speaker 1: groups gone wrong?
Speaker 2: Because my health is not that great, which I've acknowledged,
Speaker 2: and because I'm trying to put out as much information
Speaker 2: and facts as I can to show people that we
Speaker 2: are dangerously close to coming apart, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to play the role of divider. I want to play
Speaker 2: the role of truth teller so that we can consider
Speaker 2: a different approach to how we talk to each other,
Speaker 2: how we treat each other, and most importantly for the
Speaker 2: next generation, our commitment to civics and decency, so that
Speaker 2: this doesn't get any worse in an election cycle that
Speaker 2: I'm afraid is going to be the worst of modern times.
Speaker 1: Frank, we're going to take a break on that note,
Speaker 1: and we will come right back after we hear from
Speaker 1: one of our sponsors. We're back with Frank Luntz, a
Speaker 1: prominent polster and political strategist and always full of insights.
Speaker 1: Frank has been simultaneously educating me, correcting the record, and
Speaker 1: having a great conversation with me in the previous session.
Speaker 1: So we'll continue on that path. You know, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk again about this epiphany you had. You know,
Speaker 1: I topped off the show talking about Joe Kennedy had
Speaker 1: this insight in which he famously said he wanted to
Speaker 1: sell his son John like a box of soap flakes,
Speaker 1: laundry detergent, and the rap on John Kennedy at the
Speaker 1: time was he hadn't paid his dues in the Senate,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a lot of experience, but the family's
Speaker 1: marketing prowess and money allowed for the celebrification, if that's
Speaker 1: the word, a celebrification of the presidency, and that that
Speaker 1: really launched us into an era when you could go
Speaker 1: above the party apparatus, go beyond the resume, and bring
Speaker 1: a candidate directly in front of voters if he or
Speaker 1: she was packaged the right way. We saw that obviously
Speaker 1: with Ronald Reagan, a formidably telligenic candidate, and then in
Speaker 1: the Trump era with social media, Trump went around all
Speaker 1: the gatekeepers. He was able to go to his supporters
Speaker 1: directly through social media, and he is the personification of
Speaker 1: a certain form of celebrity the United States. I think
Speaker 1: his celebrity was built on sand. He was the entrepreneurial
Speaker 1: guru from the masses, while in the real world he
Speaker 1: was a serial bankruptcy artist. Nonetheless, I think there is
Speaker 1: a strand you could tie from John CA Kennedy to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in terms of the political process, and polling
Speaker 1: is so tied up in that right. Polling is an
Speaker 1: element of how you package the candidate. Maybe the core element.
Speaker 1: Have you had thoughts about any of that. I know
Speaker 1: you've said in various places you've tried to reckon with
Speaker 1: the life you led as upholster prior to Trump. We
Speaker 1: talked about that earlier and the life you're trying to lead. Now,
Speaker 1: tell me what you think of that long list of
Speaker 1: particular as I just put on your doorstep.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting list, and I would have stopped at
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton, Who's the one who taught me that there's
Speaker 2: a difference in how people hear you depending on words
Speaker 2: you use. It was Bill Clinton who first came up
Speaker 2: with the idea that we're going to have revenue enhancements.
Speaker 2: That's what we call them. Any normal human being would
Speaker 2: have called them tax increases, but that kills the popularity,
Speaker 2: so they're now revenue enhancements. I know. In nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 2: new gingridg focused on the Crime Bill to essentially ridiculed
Speaker 2: Democrats for supporting midnight basketball, dance, lessons for convicts, all
Speaker 2: sorts of programs that the public would hate. And then
Speaker 2: I saw how it was used George W. Bush versus
Speaker 2: Al Gore in two thousand. We've had a steady progression
Speaker 2: of candidates on both sides of the aisle that have
Speaker 2: used polling arguably to know what matters to the public,
Speaker 2: but in some ways to know how to manipulate that public.
Speaker 2: And that's one of the reasons why I got further
Speaker 2: and further and further away from politics, from elections, because
Speaker 2: I didn't want to be part of that.
Speaker 1: Because you felt that the polling process was corrupting both
Speaker 1: policymaking and the packaging of candidates.
Speaker 2: I thought it was making American politics way too negative.
Speaker 2: And the irony of that is, I'm now so pessimistic,
Speaker 2: I'm now so frightened of the future candidly, and I
Speaker 2: should have spoken up much earlier challenge this situation. That's
Speaker 2: probably my greatest regret of my career is that I
Speaker 2: saw some of these trends happening and I didn't speak up.
Speaker 1: Why Why didn't you speak up?
Speaker 2: I don't know. Because my friends were in politics, they
Speaker 2: were in business, and I don't want to make their
Speaker 2: lives any more difficult.
Speaker 1: Was it the paycheck? You were making a good living?
Speaker 1: Was that hard to walk away from.
Speaker 2: It's easy to walk away from it.
Speaker 1: Money does, so that wasn't a factor.
Speaker 2: Money is not a factor. Power is not a factor.
Speaker 2: Fame is not a factor. It's just simply easier to do.
Speaker 1: So, did you feel like you were part of a
Speaker 1: community you didn't want to leave. You mentioned that too,
Speaker 1: that your friends were in politics. I'm just interesting because
Speaker 1: at some point you did make a decision to step away,
Speaker 1: and that's an interesting process for anybody to go through.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I don't recommend it to anybody because people
Speaker 2: around you, your friends, will tell you do the right thing,
Speaker 2: and they're correct. But there is a cost to doing
Speaker 2: the right thing, to calling out people, particularly on your
Speaker 2: side of the aisle, particularly clients of yours. If you
Speaker 2: start to call out people who you are aligned with,
Speaker 2: allied with, even friends, guess what you pay a price,
Speaker 2: not financially, emotionally, personally, And at the time I didn't want.
Speaker 1: To pay that because you get exiled from the community.
Speaker 2: Because you find yourself at odds with your friends. You're
Speaker 2: the host of this show. Have you not called somebody
Speaker 2: out who you like very much on your podcast and
Speaker 2: then had to explain to them while you took them on,
Speaker 2: while you publicly criticize them. Because if you haven't, then
Speaker 2: you don't know what it's like to go through the process.
Speaker 2: And I did, and I took a whole lot of
Speaker 2: craft for it, and there were times when I regretted it,
Speaker 2: But after three years now of having done it, I'm
Speaker 2: glad I did. I just wish I'd done it sooner.
Speaker 1: What was the first glimmer you've got of that? And again,
Speaker 1: let's talk about BT Before Trump, was there a moment
Speaker 1: where you felt like your work as a pulser was
Speaker 1: going sideways, that it wasn't contributing to the world in
Speaker 1: the way that you wanted it to.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and that's the issue of climate change, the work
Speaker 2: that I did that media people still cite today still
Speaker 2: after twenty three years. I began my polling as an
Speaker 2: opponent of the climate issue. I raised questions about the science.
Speaker 2: I tried to understand. I challenged those who were so
Speaker 2: absolutely convinced that it was happening. And this is back
Speaker 2: in two thousand and two thousand and one, and to
Speaker 2: this day there are still people who pretend as though
Speaker 2: I still feel this way, as a way to attack.
Speaker 1: Me, when in fact you later testified in front of
Speaker 1: Congress that you thought you were wrong in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, your position on climate Chang was wrong, and
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't say the same things currently that you
Speaker 1: said about it then.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And that, by the way, that testimony was five
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 1: You brought up climate change at a moment when you
Speaker 1: started to feel like your work is Polster was going sideways.
Speaker 1: What about your work at that time made you uncomfortable
Speaker 1: about polling?
Speaker 2: Because I was learning that I was wrong and the
Speaker 2: work that i'd done was really, really good. And now
Speaker 2: it's the work that I've done since then. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you two great examples. The community that
Speaker 2: is concerned about climate that believes it's a crisis or
Speaker 2: climate chaos, however you want to communicate it, continues to
Speaker 2: use the word sustainability, that we need a sustainable environment.
Speaker 2: The problem with sustainability is that it's status quo. So
Speaker 2: when I started to look at the climate science and
Speaker 2: realize that I made a mistake, I wanted to come
Speaker 2: up with language that I would address the things that
Speaker 2: I had written about. And so I realized that being cleaner, safer,
Speaker 2: healthier was better than being sustainable, because sustainability is the
Speaker 2: status quote. Cleaner, safer, healthier means better. Trying to get
Speaker 2: the climate community to use better language is just about impossible.
Speaker 2: A second example is that the public absolutely cares about
Speaker 2: the next generation, cares about their children. To focus on
Speaker 2: how this climate issue is going to affect them is
Speaker 2: the most powerful way to reach the public. But the
Speaker 2: same climate activists want to talk about what it's doing
Speaker 2: to the planet. The planet is too big. Their children
Speaker 2: is just the right focal point.
Speaker 1: So there's some frank consulting work going on right there.
Speaker 1: If you want to win the climate change battle, focus
Speaker 1: on its impact on the people you love, and not
Speaker 1: a big, amorphous planet that you can't get your arms around.
Speaker 1: You can get your arms around your kid, you can't
Speaker 1: get your arms around the planet exactly. You can use
Speaker 1: that in your campaign, Frank, I'll let you so. Also,
Speaker 1: to get back to just correcting the record on this,
Speaker 1: that whole climate change work during a period when people
Speaker 1: were calling it lie warming, and you offered advice by
Speaker 1: calling it climate change instead, none of that was in
Speaker 1: the service of the Bush administration. I must have had
Speaker 1: that wrong when I brought that up earlier.
Speaker 2: It's been written about, so I'm not surprised that you
Speaker 2: said it. I never not once met George W. Bush
Speaker 2: in the White House and anythings that he did, and
Speaker 2: he actually shook his hand at a Republican events. He
Speaker 2: had no idea who I was. He never ad my stuff.
Speaker 2: I was doing this at the time for the business community.
Speaker 2: But that isn't sexy enough. That doesn't sell.
Speaker 1: And no one from the White House, no one representing
Speaker 1: the Bushes had retained your services. No, okay, No, Well,
Speaker 1: that's good for people to know that, and we should
Speaker 1: try to excize that from the public record, and we
Speaker 1: can do that now through this show forever on this
Speaker 1: issue of Trump's intervention in your worldview and how it
Speaker 1: was such an eye opener for you, and you said
Speaker 1: earlier in the top of the show that it was
Speaker 1: because he didn't tell the truth and you lost faith
Speaker 1: in him as a political actor and a person. I
Speaker 1: guess out of that. One of the curious phenomenons watching
Speaker 1: right now is that trump Ism and the uses and
Speaker 1: abuses of propaganda and social division I think pervades a
Speaker 1: lot of the Republican messaging right now. When I look
Speaker 1: at what I think are some of the foundations going
Speaker 1: into twenty twenty four of Republican messaging, I look at
Speaker 1: the backlash against immigration, I look at some of the
Speaker 1: anti woke statements, and obviously those pushes touch on real things.
Speaker 1: People have concerns about the border. People have real concerns
Speaker 1: about an unmanaged border. People are concerned that perhaps college
Speaker 1: curriculums are getting overtaken by people who have ideology in
Speaker 1: the front of their minds rather than learning. But as
Speaker 1: to whether or not either of these things amount to
Speaker 1: the kind of a crisis, the candidates, like RHN de Stantists,
Speaker 1: for example, pedal constantly in their messaging. I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting referendum around whether or not the GOP right
Speaker 1: now now has the right messages lined up going into
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. And I was wondering what you thought
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 2: So allow me to tell you a story about an
Speaker 2: interaction with Trump that had such an impact on me,
Speaker 2: and I've not spoken about it until now. I was
Speaker 2: fortunate enough to be invited to write on Air Force
Speaker 2: one between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Trump is doing
Speaker 2: a speech. So being sat in the very back of
Speaker 2: the plane, the plane takes off, they come and said
Speaker 2: for me. I brought to the front of the plane
Speaker 2: and there's the President sits me down. It's just myself
Speaker 2: the president, the Republican leader at the time, House Leader
Speaker 2: Kevin McCarthy, and we begin to have a conversation about
Speaker 2: language and messaging, and he says to me, what would
Speaker 2: you tell me? What have you heard out there? And
Speaker 2: I said, you're trying to get a border wall built.
Speaker 2: But their Democrats are not going to build a wall.
Speaker 2: They will build a security barrier. They will build something
Speaker 2: that makes it more difficult for people to come across illegally,
Speaker 2: but they won't build a wall. So Trump hears this
Speaker 2: and his response to me is, but Frank, I've been
Speaker 2: saying build a wall, build a wall. All my supporters
Speaker 2: know that chance, they chanted at every event I do.
Speaker 2: That's a horrible chance. Build the security barrier, build the
Speaker 2: security And I said, sir, that's not what I mean.
Speaker 2: In Washington as policy called it a security barrier, and
Speaker 2: then in your rallies, you can call it a wall.
Speaker 2: So he doesn't like that answer, so he calls Jared
Speaker 2: Kushner to come in first. Then he calls Steven Miller
Speaker 2: to come in, and then he says, hey, guys, Frank says,
Speaker 2: we got a new chance, build a security barrier. And
Speaker 2: I said, sir, that is not what I mean, and
Speaker 2: I was genuinely angry. So we get to Vegas, it's
Speaker 2: a very short flight. He does this thing. I'm invited
Speaker 2: to come back to Washington, d C. Because it's where
Speaker 2: I'm heading anyway, and once again we get into the
Speaker 2: same conversations. I'm about to acknowledge something I've never admitted
Speaker 2: before until now. I was so agitated that he was
Speaker 2: making fun of me, that he was cheapening the advice,
Speaker 2: that he was politicizing something that I thought was very
Speaker 2: important to policy, that the only way that I could
Speaker 2: respond is simply to close my eyes and fall asleep.
Speaker 2: So I must be the first person ever the Jews
Speaker 2: spoken to who fell asleep on Air Force one in
Speaker 2: front of the president. It was the way that I
Speaker 2: took myself out of the conversation. Your point is well taken.
Speaker 2: The Republican Party used to be the party of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 2: The eleventh commandment shall not criticize another Republican. Now that's
Speaker 2: the focus of most Republicans. That the focus of primaries.
Speaker 2: That's all you see in these presidents of the debates
Speaker 2: is candidates feeding up on each other instead of focusing
Speaker 2: on what's wrong with the Democrats. They're focusing on what's
Speaker 2: wrong with each other, their personal attack, their visious attacks.
Speaker 2: And I credit the origination of that to Donald Trump
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, and now it's become
Speaker 2: commonplace for the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: So that's internessine warfare that would have happened in the past.
Speaker 1: What about the message that's going outside of the party
Speaker 1: to voters. How do you see that situated strategically within
Speaker 1: the GOP right now?
Speaker 2: It's the exact opposite of where I came to politics.
Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan. His language was about its morning in America.
Speaker 2: His language was about doesn't matter who we are, but
Speaker 2: where we came from. What matters is where we're going.
Speaker 2: So his was a future focused and an uplifting message.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump is exactly the opposite. He even uses
Speaker 2: the word revenge, and it's all about the kind of
Speaker 2: politics of having a gripe. There's a word for it.
Speaker 2: I can't come up with it right now, but it's resentment.
Speaker 2: It's the politics of resents, and it's the politics of
Speaker 2: getting even, and I don't think that's healthy for a country.
Speaker 2: I think we've seen the impact of that. He's not
Speaker 2: alone I believe the Democrats do it as well, but clearly,
Speaker 2: with social media at an all time high in terms
Speaker 2: of impact, we now get our information to affirm us
Speaker 2: rather than to inform us, and that's where the politics
Speaker 2: of resentment comes in, and I think that we're now
Speaker 2: in danger of losing the ability to talk to each
Speaker 2: other as a result.
Speaker 1: The conundrum in that, too, Frank, is that the politics
Speaker 1: of resentment have proven to be an effective path to power,
Speaker 1: even if they create problematic results divisions within society, a
Speaker 1: lack of policy. As a power acquisition strategy, it's worked,
Speaker 1: and Trump demonstrated that in spades, which is why I
Speaker 1: think you have some of these Trump light candidates like
Speaker 1: Ramaswami or the Sciantists trying to walk in his shoes
Speaker 1: without his charisma.
Speaker 2: I want to take the restraint to that just before
Speaker 2: the break, yep, which is that I agree with that,
Speaker 2: and it's why over the last twelve months I've started
Speaker 2: to say to people and this came after the events
Speaker 2: of January sixth, twenty twenty one, so it's only within
Speaker 2: the last really two years that there's some things that
Speaker 2: are more important than the next election that you can
Speaker 2: absolutely win votes win seats and maybe even win an election,
Speaker 2: do the politics of resentment and woke, but you will
Speaker 2: be very sorry about the country you have because you
Speaker 2: may win that election, but you're lost in an entire generation.
Speaker 2: And I'm now telling people overtly publicly that be very
Speaker 2: careful about what you say to get elected, because it'll
Speaker 2: come back to haunt you after the election.
Speaker 1: On that note, I'm going to take a break, Brank,
Speaker 1: and we'll come right back. We're back with Frank, once
Speaker 1: a prominent polster, an observer of the political scene both
Speaker 1: in the US and overseas. Frank, in the prior segment,
Speaker 1: we were talking about where the GOP is with its
Speaker 1: messaging in the wake of trump Ism. With trump Ism
Speaker 1: still very present, tell me a little bit about how
Speaker 1: you see democratic messaging right now, how the Biden White
Speaker 1: House is playing this. One of the things that's left
Speaker 1: out at me and all of this is that the
Speaker 1: Biden White House has struggled mightily to get credit for
Speaker 1: the economy, for GDP growth and job growth that's occurred
Speaker 1: since he assumed office. But when you look at the polling,
Speaker 1: that's getting very little traction. That's curious to me, and
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in any other thoughts you have about
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party's messaging right now.
Speaker 2: Well, the public blames the Biden administration for inflation. Whether
Speaker 2: or not that's legitimate, that's a question for economists. But
Speaker 2: when inflation started to pick up, his exact word in
Speaker 2: response is that inflation is transitory. Tell that to someone
Speaker 2: who lives paycheck to paycheck. Tell that to the twenty
Speaker 2: three percent of Americans that literally don't know if they're
Speaker 2: going to be able to pay their bills at the
Speaker 2: end of the week. And they felt that the administration
Speaker 2: paid no attention to it. And in fact, we went
Speaker 2: through our first Thanksgiving and our first Christmas when people
Speaker 2: couldnot afford to buy the dinners, they could not afford
Speaker 2: to travel because food prices were high, gas prices were high,
Speaker 2: insurance prices went up, housing prices, want everything, And there
Speaker 2: was no sense of understanding from the White House for
Speaker 2: months as this went forward. So that was part of it.
Speaker 2: And the other part of it is the president offered
Speaker 2: to be postpartisan. He actually ran as a and I
Speaker 2: quote a uniter, but for the first year of his
Speaker 2: administration there was nothing about unity. He rarely met with
Speaker 2: the Republican leaders of Congress. He rarely gave aged in
Speaker 2: any kind of constructive conversation at a time when we
Speaker 2: desperately needed Democrats Republicans to be in the same room
Speaker 2: at the same time hammering out their differences. Because in
Speaker 2: the end, we're a fifty to fifty country. You ask
Speaker 2: people to identify themselves as a Republican or Democrat, it's
Speaker 2: almost dead. Even so, we have to give people the voice.
Speaker 2: We have to recognize that the majority should not run
Speaker 2: rough shot over the minority in Congress or the White
Speaker 2: House versus Congress. And that did not happen. And now
Speaker 2: the reason why Biden isn't getting credits has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with his policy and everything to do with his age.
Speaker 2: And I know that listeners right now just by saying
Speaker 2: that their hands explode. But all you have to do
Speaker 2: is look at the police. Joe Biden is old, and
Speaker 2: he's asking us to vote for him, not as an
Speaker 2: eighty one year old, He's asking us to vote for
Speaker 2: him as an eighty six year old. He would be
Speaker 2: eighty six at the end of his term. So the
Speaker 2: public is looking at him and they say, thank you
Speaker 2: for the Chips Act, thank you for fixing infrastructure, thank
Speaker 2: you for making these investments, thank you for writing the ship,
Speaker 2: for adding some stability. But sir, it's time to go,
Speaker 2: and he's not listening to them, and the members of
Speaker 2: Congress are certainly not engaged. They sound so political, so partisan,
Speaker 2: so angry, that there's no sense of You mentioned early
Speaker 2: in this program, JFK I brought up Bill Clinton, Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: These are three Democratic leaders who understood that you had
Speaker 2: to focus on hope and opportunity rather than anger and despair.
Speaker 2: So I'm very critical of both political parties for missing
Speaker 2: a special moment to reignite our faith in the future
Speaker 2: and to reconnect us both to our governing institutions and
Speaker 2: the people who run them. They're both failing.
Speaker 1: So you've identified Biden's age and inflation as two of
Speaker 1: the things undercutting his ability to reposition himself. Is that
Speaker 1: something that polling and messaging can cure.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because Jeffrey Katzenberg, who I'm so eager
Speaker 2: to meet. He's a Hollywood mogul, producer, very active in
Speaker 2: entertainment and very successful, but he ought to stay out
Speaker 2: of politics because he's encouraging Joe Biden to lean into
Speaker 2: the age, to say, I've got the experience. He's telling
Speaker 2: Joe Biden to promote the fact that he's old not
Speaker 2: to use that language, and he doesn't understand that the
Speaker 2: American people do not want a president in their eighties.
Speaker 1: Democrats, I would point out that if Donald Trump gets elected,
Speaker 1: he'd be eighty one at the end of his first term,
Speaker 1: so it's interesting the second term, well, right at the
Speaker 1: end of the second term. That was just wishful thinking
Speaker 1: on my part. So the age problem doesn't accrue to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in the way that it accrues to Biden,
Speaker 1: So it's not simply a factor of chronology. Frank, I
Speaker 1: think that Biden doesn't present physically in the same way
Speaker 1: that Trump does on the campaign trail, you know, the
Speaker 1: way each of them articulates and carries themselves. I think
Speaker 1: there's a visible quotient with Biden, isn't there with Trump
Speaker 1: just yet? Though Trump's become notably more mushmouth and notably
Speaker 1: more unhinged in his tour right now, I do think
Speaker 1: it's bonkers that anyone would think that Donald Trump would
Speaker 1: be a more reliable steward of the ship of State
Speaker 1: than Joe Bidenful.
Speaker 2: Be careful your partisanship is showing.
Speaker 1: No, it's not my partisanship. It's just my rational desire
Speaker 1: to have adults in the room making decisions as opposed
Speaker 1: to little kids on pogo sticks.
Speaker 2: By the way, maybe give you the best example. Here's
Speaker 2: another example of language. Your comments, and I know how
Speaker 2: you feel, and there are tens of millions of people
Speaker 2: who agree with you and they want to get in
Speaker 2: that dig. But that's not how you succeed. The phrase
Speaker 2: you use. We need leaders who are reasonable, sensible, and responsible. Reasonable, sensible,
Speaker 2: responsible is far better than children on pogo sticks totally.
Speaker 1: But I'm not running for office, Frank, I'm just in.
Speaker 2: A jar hosting podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm hosting a podcast, and I really do want leaders
Speaker 1: who are responsible in reason, intelligent, reasonable, aren't bouncing around
Speaker 1: on pogo sticks either. I would like it all as
Speaker 1: one package. Tell me. We've had some noticeable crackups and
Speaker 1: polling in this recent say Trump cycle, right like the
Speaker 1: poles didn't indicate that Trump would beat Hillary Clinton. The
Speaker 1: twenty twenty poles suggested there might be a blue wave,
Speaker 1: it didn't occur. The twenty twenty two poles suggested to
Speaker 1: be a red wave that didn't occur. You know, we've
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the emotional side of campaigning, but
Speaker 1: on the day to drive inside on the statistical side
Speaker 1: and the analytical side of polling. Do you think this
Speaker 1: is just power for the course, Sometimes you get it
Speaker 1: wrong because there are margins of errors and people interpret
Speaker 1: the data in different ways. Or do you think something's
Speaker 1: gone off in terms of the methodology around polling.
Speaker 2: I actually think the latter, And this is why I
Speaker 2: say to other pollsters in my profession, stop making projections,
Speaker 2: because every time you do, you embarrass yourself. Twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: the problem there was not people lying to the pollsters.
Speaker 2: It was that some people refused to cooperate. And I
Speaker 2: ran into this on election night. I have always trusted
Speaker 2: the exit polls because in my lifetime they were right
Speaker 2: better than ninety five percent of the time. If the
Speaker 2: exit polls showed a candidate winning, let's say you thirty
Speaker 2: three centate races, the exit polls were right thirty two
Speaker 2: out of thirty three times. Every time in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: they were wrong. And the reason why, it's not that
Speaker 2: people said they voted for the Democrat. It's that Trump
Speaker 2: voters refused to participate they thought the exit polls were
Speaker 2: part of the conspiracy, were part of the New York
Speaker 2: Times and CNN and other institutions who they did not
Speaker 2: like trying to control the election outcome. So Trump voters
Speaker 2: would push past an exit pollster and go to the
Speaker 2: parking lot and drive home. And because they have to
Speaker 2: interview every tenth person or every fifteenth person, they would
Speaker 2: then talk to the next person who came out, and
Speaker 2: it was fifty to fifty whether that was Clinton or
Speaker 2: whether that was Trump. Enough Trump people did not participate
Speaker 2: that it biased the results by about three percent. Well
Speaker 2: guess what. Three percent wasn't enough to allow the Democrats
Speaker 2: to look like they were winning control of the Senate,
Speaker 2: to make it look like the Democrats were going to
Speaker 2: have a good night. And we realized by about nine
Speaker 2: pm that evening that the exit polls were wrong. But
Speaker 2: I emphasize it, it's not because people lie, it's because
Speaker 2: they don't participate. The same thing happened in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: I remember ABC News had a survey in Wisconsin that
Speaker 2: had Trump losing by some ridiculous number, and it was
Speaker 2: an embarrassment. All the polls in certain states were off.
Speaker 2: And that's because they were trying to overcompensate for what
Speaker 2: happened in twenty sixteen. Use polling to understand why people
Speaker 2: think the way they do. Use polling almost as an
Speaker 2: X ray, to a diagnostic of what's right and what's wrong,
Speaker 2: whether in a business or politics or some sort of
Speaker 2: social issue. But stop making guesses about the future, because
Speaker 2: you're going to get it wrong.
Speaker 1: In that landscape. Do you think any of the current
Speaker 1: polling around Trump. He has double digit leads within the
Speaker 1: Republican field, and he and Biden are polling more or
Speaker 1: less even, and it had to head national matchup. Do
Speaker 1: you have any observations about the qu of that polling
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 2: I don't trust the outlying poll There's one survey that
Speaker 2: has Trump beating Bien by ten points. I don't believe it.
Speaker 2: I tend to use the real Clear Politics average of
Speaker 2: polls because that gets rid of the outliers that are
Speaker 2: too democratic and to Republican. I think for the most
Speaker 2: part that real clear average is what will happen. But
Speaker 2: I emphasize to the listener that we don't elect our
Speaker 2: president by popular vote. We elect them by electoral college,
Speaker 2: and if you win the right votes in the right
Speaker 2: states that can allow you to lose the popular vote
Speaker 2: by one, two or even three percent. Hillary Clinton got
Speaker 2: millions of votes more than Donald Trump in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: so the polling was actually rather accurate. It just didn't
Speaker 2: record it in those individual states, and the same thing
Speaker 2: could happen again in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: I always like to ask people at the end of
Speaker 1: the show what they've learned, you know, what their own
Speaker 1: educational moment was. What have you learned about polling and
Speaker 1: messaging in the Trump era that you didn't know before.
Speaker 2: I teach all across the globe, and my students teach
Speaker 2: me and explain to me the results of the polling
Speaker 2: that I do across the globe. My African students the
Speaker 2: African Leadership University taught me that we have completely neglected
Speaker 2: an entire continent, the kindest, warmest, most hopeful people on
Speaker 2: the face of the earth, and the West has ignored
Speaker 2: them or forgotten them. I've learned from my students at
Speaker 2: West Point about responsibility and service and civility and decency,
Speaker 2: and that if they can do it at the military academies,
Speaker 2: why can't the rest of America do it. I've learned
Speaker 2: from my students at Raleigh College in the UK that
Speaker 2: education can work. You don't have to do woke, you
Speaker 2: don't have to do cancel culture, That students can feel
Speaker 2: safe to articulate an opposing point of view and professors
Speaker 2: not only don't punish them, but they actually welcome it
Speaker 2: in a responsible fashion. I've learned from my students at
Speaker 2: USC that so much of what's being taught in high
Speaker 2: schools is not being remembered in college, and that if
Speaker 2: you allow students to write people off because you disagree
Speaker 2: with them, or you have something against a position they stand,
Speaker 2: then you're not hearing every point of view. My students
Speaker 2: teach me that I have to listen, I have to explore,
Speaker 2: I have to ask, and never ever ever be satisfied
Speaker 2: with the first answer you get, because there's a reason
Speaker 2: behind that and a reason behind that reason. And it's
Speaker 2: like the peeling of an onion. If you can get
Speaker 2: to the center, may be painful, it may make your cry,
Speaker 2: but if you get to the core, you can actually
Speaker 2: do good. You can actually fix a problem. If you
Speaker 2: understand why, you can learn how. And that's what it's
Speaker 2: taught me.
Speaker 1: Frank, we're out of time, I feel like we could
Speaker 1: have kept going.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: Frank Luntz is a political and communications consultant and polster.
Speaker 1: You can find him at fi LUNs dot com. Here
Speaker 1: at crash Course, we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising,
Speaker 1: and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I learned that
Speaker 1: facts matter very much to Frank Luntz, as they should.
Speaker 1: They should matter to all of us, because in an
Speaker 1: era full of disinformation, facts still matter. What did you learn?
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet at
Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim
Speaker 1: O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also
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Speaker 1: This episode was produced by the indispensable Anna Maazarakus, Moses
Speaker 1: Adam and me. Our supervising producer is Magnus Hendrickson, and
Speaker 1: we had editing help from Stage Bauman, Katie Boys, Jeff Grocott,
Speaker 1: Mike Nitze, and Christine Vanden Bilert. Blake Maples does our
Speaker 1: sound engineering and our original theme song was composed by
Speaker 1: Luis Gara. I'm Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another crash course.