Speaker 1: This is a numbers Game with Ryan Gardusky. Welcome back.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you all being here again this week. I
Speaker 1: know that everyone's busy with work and family and school
Speaker 1: and laundry and all the rest of it, and I
Speaker 1: know that you have very limited time sometimes, so listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast means quite a lot to me. I've
Speaker 1: realized being built that the amount of hours needed to
Speaker 1: have a clean house, decent body, and good at your
Speaker 1: job is like four hundred hours a week. It is
Speaker 1: not fair whatsoever. So I know that I know that
Speaker 1: many of you have not had the opportunity to like
Speaker 1: and subscribe to this podcast and give me a five
Speaker 1: star rating. But there's always time this week, and I
Speaker 1: hope you can find the time. You will all be
Speaker 1: my best friends. That's what I would say growing up.
Speaker 1: All the time people are like, oh you my best friend,
Speaker 1: Get me a soda, but please give me like and subscribe,
Speaker 1: like and subscribe, give me a five star review. It
Speaker 1: would mean a lot. Okay, I always start this podcast
Speaker 1: off with a cultural reference, and I'm going to use
Speaker 1: the movie Arthur, which is my favorite comedy of all time.
Speaker 1: Dudley More looks at a prostitute. He just picked up
Speaker 1: off the street and he says, well, Princess Gloria, tonight
Speaker 1: is New Year's Eve, third time this week. It's not
Speaker 1: the most famous line in the movie, but it invokes
Speaker 1: a general amount of happiness, and he has in this moment.
Speaker 1: He's drunk. He's what the things are great, very little
Speaker 1: things in life. Get me that excited, get me just
Speaker 1: that happy on a normal basis, and for me, because
Speaker 1: I am incredibly nerdy. That is, polls like really good polls,
Speaker 1: polls that are interesting, polls that that you know, tell
Speaker 1: a good story with the national environment, I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity this week. I was reached out to by a
Speaker 1: polster to ask questions for a national polling survey. Now,
Speaker 1: this is like something that costs a lot of money
Speaker 1: to do. When they were offering to do it, to
Speaker 1: be on the podcast and talk about it to my audience.
Speaker 1: So this is something very exclusive. There's something very special.
Speaker 1: The polster is Signal, which is Active Vote, which kind
Speaker 1: of ranks all the polsters that come out during an
Speaker 1: even year. They ranked Signal is number twenty seven at
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty six. That's very good, that's a
Speaker 1: very high number. They are a very well accredited Republican firm,
Speaker 1: probably one of the top three if you separate all
Speaker 1: the Polsters, probably one of the top three or four
Speaker 1: Republican pulling firms in the business. Did a good track record,
Speaker 1: So I solidly believe in them, and I'm excited to
Speaker 1: sit there and talk to them. Our guest is Brent Buchanan,
Speaker 1: founder of Signal Polls, and I want to talk to
Speaker 1: the audience first about what questions I chose to ask
Speaker 1: and why I chose to ask them. So first and foremost,
Speaker 1: the first question I asked was America brings in about
Speaker 1: one million legal immigrants per year. Is that number too high,
Speaker 1: too low? Or about right? Then I asked how many
Speaker 1: legal immigrants should America bring in per year, with the
Speaker 1: options being zero, one hundred thousand, two hundred and fifty thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred thousand, one million, five million, or unlimited. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's why I asked that question. A lot of Polsters
Speaker 1: talk about immigration in esoteric you know, I like, as
Speaker 1: if they don't give the information before, and they talk
Speaker 1: about the idea without giving the information give people the
Speaker 1: hard numbers. It's like when they say do you support amnesty?
Speaker 1: They all speak English and go to church and pay
Speaker 1: their taxes and have never committed a fel any. Well,
Speaker 1: then like, yeah, a majority always say yes. But that's
Speaker 1: not how how the actual process works. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about the actual thing, the actual hard numbers. So
Speaker 1: that's why I did. There's only one polster recently in
Speaker 1: the last few years to ask a question like that.
Speaker 1: Believe it was Cato of All Places, which is a
Speaker 1: libertarian thing tank which dreams of the day that America
Speaker 1: will have no borders and we look like Angola or
Speaker 1: Honduras or something. They're the ones who asked the question,
Speaker 1: and they found in twenty twenty one that nine percent
Speaker 1: of Americans wanted no immigration at all. They wanted a
Speaker 1: complete and utter freeze, forty four panted a ninety percent
Speaker 1: reduction or greater, and sixty one percent a fifty percent
Speaker 1: reduction or greater. So we'll talk to signal and we'll
Speaker 1: see what it looks like now with Donald Trump in
Speaker 1: charge and the border's much more secure. The second question
Speaker 1: I asked was about the future of artificial intelligence. This
Speaker 1: is a question that is really important to our nation
Speaker 1: because we're going to be the United States is supposed
Speaker 1: to be on the forefront about artificial intelligence, and there's
Speaker 1: almost no polsters asking about how Americans feel like it's
Speaker 1: not ass and I think that I think that your
Speaker 1: opinion of it based either on your how you think
Speaker 1: you'll thrive in the environment or what you think the
Speaker 1: future looks like, Like does it look like Rosie the
Speaker 1: robot from the Jetson's doing chores? I mean, who wouldn't
Speaker 1: want that? I would? Are we going to get the terminator?
Speaker 1: And is everyone you know going to be in really
Speaker 1: rough shape on judgment day? I don't know. AI makes
Speaker 1: me nervous, but I don't know how the rest of
Speaker 1: the country feels. And I would love to know if
Speaker 1: that I'm it's just me being crazy, or how everyone
Speaker 1: else's opinion is on it. I need a pulse check.
Speaker 1: The last question was also about tech, and somebody was
Speaker 1: about AI and tech and there's our big tech in
Speaker 1: social media. The question was is social media social media
Speaker 1: has almost no regulations on it people. I want everyone
Speaker 1: to realize that there's almost no regulations on social media.
Speaker 1: Utah became like the first day to say like kids
Speaker 1: under eighteen can't access social media, can't make a social
Speaker 1: media account. But I think that's a basically that's very
Speaker 1: close to being basically it. I mean, you can't obviously
Speaker 1: sell things illegally on social media. You can't like put
Speaker 1: you know, child's pornography or something like that. That that's
Speaker 1: a national regulation. But as far as like regulating anything
Speaker 1: Section two eighty or suing them or what they own
Speaker 1: of your data or reselling your data, there's no regulations.
Speaker 1: And big tech is very very, very very few. So
Speaker 1: I asked the question of should be big tech be
Speaker 1: more regulated because in an era of Elon Musk, it
Speaker 1: used to be that Democrats are very poor regulations. You know,
Speaker 1: you have the caras Wishes of the world. The very
Speaker 1: liberals were like, yeah, let's let's uh, you know, regulate
Speaker 1: big tech. Those are the same people who are very
Speaker 1: excited about big tech, you know, when Steve Jobs was
Speaker 1: alive and now Republicans who blamed everything on the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election on zuck Bucks, they're very pro big tech.
Speaker 1: So did people change sides? It's a good analysis of
Speaker 1: how do people feel on this issue. And the last
Speaker 1: question I asked is with trade, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: use the word tariff just because it's Trump said the
Speaker 1: most beautiful word in the English language. I had to
Speaker 1: like parse through how to approach the idea of tariffs
Speaker 1: and about Trump's push for tariffs without saying the word tariff.
Speaker 1: So the question I said was, would you be willing
Speaker 1: to pay higher prices for more American jobs? Would you
Speaker 1: trade prices for jobs? I think this is very important
Speaker 1: because regardless of what happens ultimately with these tariffs, I
Speaker 1: don't think this is going to go away. During the trumdministration,
Speaker 1: Biden was very supportive tariffs. China is a very our
Speaker 1: is our geopolitical adversary, and we need to be more
Speaker 1: conscious of reindectrializing the United States. So what can people,
Speaker 1: what can politicians get, what is their ultimate how much
Speaker 1: can they can they push out on this without getting
Speaker 1: slapped backed by voters? So those are my four questions,
Speaker 1: and I am very excited to hear what the responses
Speaker 1: were and I talk to Brent Buchanan. So coming up
Speaker 1: next is my conversation with Polster Signal owner Brem Buchanan.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned. My guest this week is Brent Buchanan. He
Speaker 1: is the founder of Signal polling firm. Thank you for
Speaker 1: being here.
Speaker 2: Brent, Hey, great to be with you all.
Speaker 1: Ron Brent, When did you found Signal and why did
Speaker 1: you start in the polling industry?
Speaker 2: Well, I actually didn't start in the polling industry, oddly enough.
Speaker 2: I started just running campaigns, which is I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people's story who are in this world is
Speaker 2: they just volunteered. At some point thought this is pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Maybe I could make a living with it, and so
Speaker 2: that that's where my story started, actually started in a
Speaker 2: mayoral campaign in Montgomery, Alabama. We got absolutely trounced. They
Speaker 2: don't elect Republicans of Montgomery, and I was too naive
Speaker 2: to know that and just how we could will our
Speaker 2: way into winning the election, and we did not. And
Speaker 2: then went on to work for a Greek restaurant runner
Speaker 2: who was running for county commission against a Republican incumbent
Speaker 2: and he was a Republican too, and we beat the guy,
Speaker 2: and that was my second taste of a campaign was
Speaker 2: actually victory. And he paid me in cash and bac
Speaker 2: la bah, which was a pretty good arrangement for a
Speaker 2: single dude.
Speaker 1: But can I just tell you for one second, I
Speaker 1: worked for a guy named Stamataslacaccas who ran for the
Speaker 1: State Assembly and every third day, I think we went
Speaker 1: to a Greek pastry. I mean I was eating so
Speaker 1: much Greek food for the entire summer. I guess it
Speaker 1: was twenty fourteen and it was a million Greek pastries.
Speaker 1: So this is a this was this, I feel this.
Speaker 1: I feel this story for sure right now, one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: So that was your first race ever worked on.
Speaker 2: It was and then ended up starting a firm. We
Speaker 2: were kind of a jack of all trades. Basically, if
Speaker 2: you were willing to pay us for it and it
Speaker 2: was legal, we would do it. And realized that you
Speaker 2: can't really take that model outside of your home state.
Speaker 2: This is back in still living in Montgomery at the time,
Speaker 2: and really land it on polling after the twenty ten
Speaker 2: cycle when I saw that it was getting more expensive,
Speaker 2: it was getting harder to do. I loved the strategic
Speaker 2: aspect of what you get to do as a polster,
Speaker 2: and it was more scalable. You know, I could work
Speaker 2: on a lot more races as a polster than I
Speaker 2: could managing or running or being the consultant on a race.
Speaker 1: That is in my mind, there's so many negative connotations
Speaker 1: to polling. You're pulled it firmed it very well in
Speaker 1: the last secle on the twenty twenty four cycle. How
Speaker 1: does one manage a firm well? How do you create
Speaker 1: a formula that works, because very few do well.
Speaker 2: The first is to separate private from public polsters, because
Speaker 2: we're not the same. So when you see a Marist
Speaker 2: poll or you know somebody who's only doing polling to
Speaker 2: release it and get attention, which I mean, we put
Speaker 2: out a few poles, but you're singing barely the scratching
Speaker 2: of a surface of what we're doing. And so that's
Speaker 2: the first thing is that we are not a public
Speaker 2: pol so we actually have an economic incentive to be right.
Speaker 2: Some of these public pollsters, they can be wrong over
Speaker 2: and over again. They get coverage over and over again,
Speaker 2: and I don't know who really funds them. That always
Speaker 2: makes me ask that question when I see certain numbers
Speaker 2: come out. But those of us who do private polling,
Speaker 2: who were being hired by campaigns and corporations and committees
Speaker 2: and caucuses to help guide them through, what do I say,
Speaker 2: Who do I say it to? How do I say
Speaker 2: a best So that's a big differentiation between the two.
Speaker 2: The second is that one of the most important pieces
Speaker 2: of polling is the actual getting respondents from voters, and
Speaker 2: that is in our world and our competitors, most people
Speaker 2: outsource that function. So they write a script and then
Speaker 2: they send it off to a call center and a
Speaker 2: texting vendor, and then they wait for those people to
Speaker 2: do the survey collection, and then it comes back and
Speaker 2: they build their reports, give it at the clients. We
Speaker 2: decided over a decade ago that that was such an
Speaker 2: important piece of the process that we needed to control
Speaker 2: every aspect of it. So our firm is larger than
Speaker 2: I think any other Republican polling for him by headcount,
Speaker 2: because it takes a lot more effort in people to
Speaker 2: control that part of the process, and that is really
Speaker 2: the magic piece of.
Speaker 1: All what and so you okay, this the whole basis
Speaker 1: of this podcast episodes. You did a national poll. It's
Speaker 1: is it released publicly? It will be probably released publicly
Speaker 1: by the time we come to air, which will be Monday.
Speaker 1: So what are some general themes that you've seen about
Speaker 1: how people feel at President Donald Trump performance in this poll.
Speaker 2: I think the first is that there's not this massive
Speaker 2: elasticity in his image and if you were watching public polling.
Speaker 2: You would think that Donald Trump started out really good,
Speaker 2: everybody loved him, and now everybody hates him. But that's
Speaker 2: just not what our polling data shows.
Speaker 1: I got I got a call today from a friend
Speaker 1: who's was a Republican republic like that official, and he's
Speaker 1: very pusel with the tariffs, and he said to me
Speaker 1: Trump's approval is probably thirty two percent now. And I
Speaker 1: was like, now, ah, sorry, go ahead, go ahead, but
Speaker 1: you're one hundred percent right, very little elasticity. Sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've seen a slight degradation in his image from
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of weeks after his inauguration to now.
Speaker 2: But I think if he'd literally just gotten into office
Speaker 2: and sat in the oval office and done nothing, we
Speaker 2: would have seen a degradation in his image because there's
Speaker 2: there's a sugar rush. There's a high that comes off
Speaker 2: of a campaign and of the attention you get from it,
Speaker 2: and then you got to go govern. And I think
Speaker 2: considering that all that he has done and all the
Speaker 2: topics that he's broached in this time that he's been
Speaker 2: in office for less than three months at this point,
Speaker 2: that the fact that his image is still you know,
Speaker 2: hovering around forty six percent favorable, is way better than
Speaker 2: he ever was, even at the beginning of his first term.
Speaker 2: And that's that's one thing people forget about polling is
Speaker 2: is polling is not just a data point in time.
Speaker 2: A poll is a data point in time, but polling
Speaker 2: is different, and that is watching what happens over time
Speaker 2: and comparing it to things that matter. And so when
Speaker 2: you look at things in terms of his first term
Speaker 2: and his second term, he is doing significantly better now
Speaker 2: in his image than he was at this point in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: And even though the tariffs aren't popular, certainly not, but
Speaker 1: in the media standards, it has an overall I mean,
Speaker 1: people have a much more positive opinion of him than
Speaker 1: they do some like the tariffs for example, right.
Speaker 2: Completely, and a lot of people just trust him that Okay,
Speaker 2: he said he was going to do this during the campaign.
Speaker 2: I don't really understand why he's doing it, but I
Speaker 2: trust that he's got a reason for it.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay. So now I want to get to the
Speaker 1: questions that I asked, because this is what I'm so
Speaker 1: excited about because I worked on campaigns for almost twenty
Speaker 1: years and just I'm a nerd, so I get really
Speaker 1: excited by it. So I went over the top of
Speaker 1: the show the questions that I asked, but I want
Speaker 1: to go first to it and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: So the first question being the question over levels of
Speaker 1: legal immigration in the country. This is something that I
Speaker 1: don't think Bolsters ever asked enough about. Galub does once
Speaker 1: a year or twice a year, but that's about it regularly.
Speaker 1: So the first question was do you think that the
Speaker 1: levels of legal immigration are too high, too small, or
Speaker 1: just right? Thirty eight percents that they were they were
Speaker 1: fine with the current levels, thirty seven percent they wanted
Speaker 1: to reduce, eleven percent they wanted to increased. But when
Speaker 1: you ask the actual number desired, it was a very
Speaker 1: different result. So almost nine percent eight point five percent
Speaker 1: of Americans wanted zero immigration, none at all, a total freeze.
Speaker 1: Seventeen percent wanted a ninety percent reduction about one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand a year, because we've currently taken a million in total.
Speaker 1: Forty three percent of Americans wanted a fifty percent or
Speaker 1: greater reduction of legal immigration, which is if you said
Speaker 1: that on the news, you'd be called an extremist. I
Speaker 1: know I've been called an extremist, but forty three percent
Speaker 1: of the country say that, and about sixty percent of
Speaker 1: the country want somewhere between, like a fifty to ninety
Speaker 1: percent reduction, So somewhere more than forty percent of them
Speaker 1: are current numbers, but less than we currently have. I
Speaker 1: know that sounded confusing, So sixty percent they'll favor some
Speaker 1: sort of reduction of legal immigration. I just want to
Speaker 1: break it down really quickly and we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: Fifty five percent of women, sixty one percent of men,
Speaker 1: seventy one percent of Republicans, fifty seven percent of independence,
Speaker 1: forty seven percent of Democrats, sixty percent of whites, fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of blacks, fifty three percent of Hispanics, fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent of swing voters, and seventy three percent of
Speaker 1: all Trump supporters. Does that shock you.
Speaker 2: Not in the least. And this is why I really
Speaker 2: love that we did this as two separate questions, because
Speaker 2: I think it suses something out that we see a
Speaker 2: lot of times in polling, is it's a lot easier
Speaker 2: to get agreement on a concept, and then when you
Speaker 2: go throw numbers behind it, people's it's like you fry
Speaker 2: their brain and they don't know how to answer it
Speaker 2: per se, because if you look at these two questions,
Speaker 2: they actually somewhat conflict. Where you have thirty eight percent
Speaker 2: of PEECE people say that it is about right at
Speaker 2: a million legal immigrants a year. But then when you
Speaker 2: go look at the number of people who said a
Speaker 2: million to five million, five to ten are unlimited, it's
Speaker 2: less than thirty eight percent. So you even have a
Speaker 2: differential there of the number of people who, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: are more likely to be Democrats or or left leaning
Speaker 2: voters are saying, yes, it's the right amount, or we
Speaker 2: need more. But then when you get to the actual numbers,
Speaker 2: even though we just told them the number in the
Speaker 2: last question, like the question itself said a million legal
Speaker 2: is this just right? Too little? Too much? And then
Speaker 2: when we break out the numbers in the exact next question,
Speaker 2: you get even fewer people that tell us it's a
Speaker 2: million or more that they're good with. And I think
Speaker 2: this is one of the challenges with communication in general,
Speaker 2: and it's one of the things that Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: really good at. Is we like to talk about, especially
Speaker 2: those of us who enjoy policy. You know, what should
Speaker 2: the number be about abortion? How many weeks is that
Speaker 2: it should be legal at and voters don't think in
Speaker 2: terms of these hard construct numbers. They think in terms
Speaker 2: of principles and of concepts, and these two questions that
Speaker 2: you had us ask, I think plays that out perfectly
Speaker 2: that if we're going to win messaging battles, let's not
Speaker 2: get bogged down in numbers.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting, now there was I think the thing
Speaker 1: I found super interesting was that there was really not
Speaker 1: huge stark differences between groups aside from partisanship. So Hispanics
Speaker 1: are very close to blacks, Blacks are pretty close to whites,
Speaker 1: men were fairly close to women. There wasn't this huge
Speaker 1: surge in one area as I expected, And even among Democrats,
Speaker 1: forty seven percent of Democrats is a lot. That's not
Speaker 1: what you would assume by hearing the media narrative. And
Speaker 1: then you'd watch clips of like, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: black voters in Chicago, who were I mean ninety nine
Speaker 1: times out of one hundred a Democrat sitting there and
Speaker 1: demanding that the illegal immigration legal immigrants to be deported.
Speaker 1: You see the white people up in up in Cape Cod,
Speaker 1: you know, waving goodbye to Leegal immigrants that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: brought in. So there's just a constant conflict between what
Speaker 1: is being presented and then these numbers over here and
Speaker 1: what you kind of see from these the news clip
Speaker 1: that's you're like, there is supplicing bigger than this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And a lot of it plays into educational attainment.
Speaker 2: And this is something I talk about a lot, the
Speaker 2: diploma divide, and that is that thirty years ago, Republicans
Speaker 2: were the party of the highly educated, higher income individuals,
Speaker 2: and those folks are more likely not Democrats now, and
Speaker 2: Republicans are the party of the working class. And when
Speaker 2: you do look at this question on construct of educational attainment,
Speaker 2: you start to see a big divide almost as much
Speaker 2: as you see on the partisanship, because they're so intercorrelated now,
Speaker 2: this diploma divide and partisanship. So if you're a non
Speaker 2: college educated voter, then you are thirty over a third
Speaker 2: of those voters are saying one hundred thousand or less,
Speaker 2: which there's not a lot of other groups that we
Speaker 2: look at where you would say, have a third of
Speaker 2: the voters saying one hundred thousand or fewer to none
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand to none. And then when you look
Speaker 2: at college educated voters, that's where you start to get
Speaker 2: more that are saying that it should be somewhere between
Speaker 2: half a million to five million, But there's very few
Speaker 2: who say any number beyond that. And that's I think
Speaker 2: the story here is that you've got two Americas, and
Speaker 2: it's the tariff argument I think is too Americas. Also,
Speaker 2: if you're highly educated and highly invested in the stock market,
Speaker 2: then yeah, you're freaking out. Well, you may not be
Speaker 2: freaking out today because it's April ninth, you were freaking
Speaker 2: out yesterday in April eighth, you know, third massive four
Speaker 2: figure dropping in a day. But regular Americans aren't worried
Speaker 2: about that. But they are worried about this immigration topic
Speaker 2: because they see it as supplanting their ability to earn
Speaker 2: an income.
Speaker 1: Well, and so before we get to a tariffs, So
Speaker 1: that's one of the questions. But the thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask was, so your firm says, quote for Republican
Speaker 1: members of cong is concerned of being primary. A majority
Speaker 1: of Republican voters want to see legal immigration reduced to
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty thousand or less annually. You also
Speaker 1: wrote Trump made major inroads in November with non white
Speaker 1: men seventy three percent of non white men who voted
Speaker 1: for Trump favor immigration reduction. That is something that I
Speaker 1: did not expect that number for non white men to
Speaker 1: be that.
Speaker 2: I owe.
Speaker 1: I know Republican voters, I know them my gout, I
Speaker 1: know how to had a campaign to Republican voters. It's
Speaker 1: very It's something that I just was born, bred and
Speaker 1: you know, and lived my whole life as a Republican voter.
Speaker 1: But the non white number being non white men who
Speaker 1: voted for Trump, it feels like ideology is surpassing race, surpassing.
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe there's college attainment is having some differential
Speaker 1: but forever racial identity superseded that of partisanship, and now
Speaker 1: or political ideology. Now political ideology supersedes that of race.
Speaker 1: That's actually I feel like a good thing.
Speaker 2: Completely. And going back to the first race that I
Speaker 2: worked on for a mayoral campaign in Montgomery, Alabama, I
Speaker 2: went knockdoors in the one hundred percent black part of
Speaker 2: town thinking I could earn votes there twenty five years ago.
Speaker 2: And that was so dumb of me, because I guarantee
Speaker 2: our Republican leaning Canada got none of those votes that
Speaker 2: I went and worked so hard for. But if I
Speaker 2: did that exact same thing today, they're willing to have
Speaker 2: a conversation. And it's because Democrats have gone so far
Speaker 2: to the left on all kinds of topics, and because
Speaker 2: you've got these highly educated white voters that are now
Speaker 2: more the base of the Democratic Party than anything else.
Speaker 2: They are so liberal and progressive, and these non white voters,
Speaker 2: there are very few of them that consider themselves liberal
Speaker 2: and progressive. They're much more likely to say they're moderate
Speaker 2: to somewhat conservative. And so it's kind of like that
Speaker 2: meme that Elon Musk before he got involved in politics
Speaker 2: last year or the year before, whenever it was, where
Speaker 2: he shows himself as a stick figure in the same place,
Speaker 2: and the left keeps moving further away from him and
Speaker 2: calling him a radical and calling him a right winger.
Speaker 2: And that's really what's happening with these non white populations
Speaker 2: is they're sitting there saying, we're moderate to somewhat conservative,
Speaker 2: and you used to be moderate to somewhat conservative, but
Speaker 2: now you're insanely leftist and you left us right.
Speaker 1: And they're economically centrist. In the Republican Party has become
Speaker 1: more economically centers under Trump. The yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: can't believe LATINX didn't really work to win over hispanics.
Speaker 2: I'm shocked by that or anything else.
Speaker 1: The Okay, the second thing that I asked you guys about,
Speaker 1: which was I'm very anxious about is AI. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's aside from corporations pulling on AI. I never
Speaker 1: see a question about AI ever being asked. So your
Speaker 1: poll found that thirty three percent of respondents when I asked,
Speaker 1: when you asked, how does the future of AI make
Speaker 1: you feel? Thirty three percent said nervous, twenty six percent
Speaker 1: of curious. I guess that means like they want to
Speaker 1: see where it goes, eighteen percent said anxious, and twelve
Speaker 1: percent that excited, eleven percent were unsure. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of that's more negative connotation I expected. What are your
Speaker 1: fifty one.
Speaker 2: Percent negative emotions? I mean to the emotions were obviously negative.
Speaker 2: One is kind of up in the air. The curiosity
Speaker 2: is more a positive emotion, but I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 2: anywhere near like excited from an emotional standpoint. And so
Speaker 2: fifty one percent of voters answered nervous are anxious, which
Speaker 2: are both negative emotions and one of the most fascinating
Speaker 2: things is that is really driven by a gender gap.
Speaker 2: So women are much more likely to say nervous thirty
Speaker 2: six percent of women said nervous, only twenty nine percent
Speaker 2: of males did. And on curiosity, thirty one percent of
Speaker 2: males curious, twenty two percent of females curious. So there's
Speaker 2: a real gender gap here. And then taking that further
Speaker 2: into what we were talking about earlier on the diploma divide,
Speaker 2: there's also a really big diploma divide on this question.
Speaker 2: If you were non college educated, then you are about
Speaker 2: thirty eight percent said that they were nervous about this.
Speaker 2: And then when you go look at college educated voters,
Speaker 2: especially college educated males, thirty four percent, so they were
Speaker 2: curious about this. So I think if we were to
Speaker 2: really go Freudian on this, this has to do with
Speaker 2: like where do I fit in when AI comes in,
Speaker 2: and college educated voters feel more prepared for that than
Speaker 2: non college educated voters, which is fascinating because it's not
Speaker 2: going to replace a plumber, right, I always.
Speaker 1: Say, because it's going after white collar jobs AI primarily,
Speaker 1: and that's who would be affected. The other population I
Speaker 1: was excited about this were parents. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that is.
Speaker 2: I think part of it is that the demographics, and
Speaker 2: that's one thing when you're reading a poll, you have
Speaker 2: to ask yourself, is this cause relative or correlative? And
Speaker 2: I think that that is more posative that they parents
Speaker 2: just happen to be younger. So if you go look
Speaker 2: at young youth answering these questions, you're going to see
Speaker 2: about as high numbers as you do in the parents,
Speaker 2: because parents are younger than you know, some seventy year
Speaker 2: old answering the survey.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe because they don't want to do the
Speaker 1: homework with their kids anymore, and they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is great. But I think it also goes back
Speaker 1: to like, what's your vision of AI. Is at Rosie
Speaker 1: the robot who's going to make you dinner every night
Speaker 1: and do the dishes? Or is it the terminator? And
Speaker 1: that's really where I think that's where the mentality divide is.
Speaker 1: I hope this question is asked more because it is
Speaker 1: part of our future and we we don't, uh, we
Speaker 1: don't talk about it so enough. I think I think
Speaker 1: people are talking about, you know, Jadbanski, that specioism and
Speaker 1: we're going to be a leader in it and kind
Speaker 1: of I guess there's no way to avert it, but
Speaker 1: I don't talk about it enough as like what the
Speaker 1: ramification would be. Speaking of tech. The other question I
Speaker 1: asked was, because this is something I've also become very
Speaker 1: passionate about and last a year or so, I asked
Speaker 1: it should big tech and social media companies do they
Speaker 1: need more regulation because they have virtually none. Now people
Speaker 1: don't sit there and says there's virtually no regulations over
Speaker 1: big attach or over special social media. Sixty nine percent
Speaker 1: of women, sixty four percent of men, sixty one percent
Speaker 1: of Republicans, sixty nine percent of independence, seventy one percent
Speaker 1: of Democrats, sixty seven percent of white voters, sixty three
Speaker 1: percent of Black voters, sixty eight percent of Hispanic voters,
Speaker 1: sixty six percent of Hispanics, seventy four percent of Harris voters,
Speaker 1: sixty percent of Trump voters, and sixty seven percent of
Speaker 1: Swing voters. Said yes, it is overwhelmingly on one side.
Speaker 1: The one thing that was like glaringly obvious to me, though,
Speaker 1: is that sixty percent for Trump voters versus seventy four
Speaker 1: percent for Harris voters. I is that the Ela Musk
Speaker 1: effect Because Republicans were gung ho on regulating big tech,
Speaker 1: breaking up some tech companies, making Twitter a public platform
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, Like that was not that long ago.
Speaker 2: I think you've got to rewind the clock even further
Speaker 2: than that. Like, imagine if we'd asked this question about
Speaker 2: almost any emerging industry thirty years ago, and you would
Speaker 2: have seen Democrats saying, regulate the heck out of it,
Speaker 2: and Republicans saying regulation is bad. I don't care who
Speaker 2: it's on. And so the way I read this question,
Speaker 2: the results of this question when it came back is
Speaker 2: we now have a unique issue where Democrats have always
Speaker 2: been for regulation, you know, if it walks or moves regulated,
Speaker 2: and Republicans who are now former Democrats have taken some
Speaker 2: of their ideology on certain things with them when they
Speaker 2: left the Democratic Party. And I think regulation and the
Speaker 2: fact that big fill in the blank anything is negative
Speaker 2: is really a carryover from these former Democrats now Republican
Speaker 2: MAGA voters on this issue. And now big tech and
Speaker 2: really business in general finds itself on an island because
Speaker 2: Democrats still hate big everything, and Republicans, these newer Republicans
Speaker 2: have taken with them this you know, you know, if
Speaker 2: it's if it's big, it's probably bad mindset with them
Speaker 2: from the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: I hear you, but I think that you know, the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election was so blamed on Russia buying Facebook ads,
Speaker 1: and the twenty twenty election was so blamed on a
Speaker 1: Musk but not Musk, duck Bucks Zuckbucks, and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four had to do with Elon Musk. Like, that's three
Speaker 1: elections in a row where tech played some part in
Speaker 1: the narrative is why one side lost over the other.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, in your survey, college educative voters were more
Speaker 1: likely to support regulations on big tech, which they likely
Speaker 1: either have stock in or work for or could work for.
Speaker 1: Then non college educated voters who would who were more
Speaker 1: for more nurse at ai. There's a lot of inverse
Speaker 1: opinions about the two Junescy weren't going with us?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, I do. You also got to look at
Speaker 2: you know, the highest number here is female college educated voters.
Speaker 2: That's also the largest demographic that votes Democrat. So this
Speaker 2: is another causation correlation conversation where they are just much
Speaker 2: more likely to be Democrats the higher educated you are
Speaker 2: than the lower educated you are.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: But I think if we were to ask a question
Speaker 2: on the next survey and have a conversation of do
Speaker 2: you think big tech and social media is good or
Speaker 2: bad for us, that we'd probably say most people, even
Speaker 2: though they use it all the time, they may be
Speaker 2: watching us on a big tech platform right now, would
Speaker 2: also agree that they don't think it's positive for them.
Speaker 1: Oh, I know, one hundred percent, I completely agree with you.
Speaker 1: That's the people who sit there and say McDonald's terrible
Speaker 1: as they're ordering a big mac. The last question I
Speaker 1: that was able to ask was about would you support
Speaker 1: it has to do a lot with tariff, would you
Speaker 1: support increase prices for more jobs domestically? And here were
Speaker 1: the findings. This was more split than the other answers
Speaker 1: forty seven percent so that they would support higher prices
Speaker 1: for more domestic jobs, forty three percent that they were
Speaker 1: against it, And there was a huge gender gap. Fifty
Speaker 1: eight percent of men, seventy three percent of Republicans, fifty
Speaker 1: one percent of white voters, fifty percent of parents, and
Speaker 1: forty percent of spend voters were for it to only
Speaker 1: twenty sorry four higher prices for more jobs. Only twenty
Speaker 1: one percent of Kamala Harris supporters were for it. Only
Speaker 1: thirty two percent of Black voters were for it, and
Speaker 1: women were very against it. Is this has to be
Speaker 1: a partisan thing related to Trump, right, or is it
Speaker 1: an ideology thing?
Speaker 2: That was one that I asked myself that exact same
Speaker 2: question before this interview in reading the results, and I
Speaker 2: could not come up with an answer for it, because
Speaker 2: you would think that Republicans who are saying jobs and
Speaker 2: economy and inflation are their top issue, are going to
Speaker 2: not answer another question where they say I'm willing to
Speaker 2: pay inflated prices for some other benefit that I will
Speaker 2: trade off higher cost for something else. But these independents, man,
Speaker 2: they split right down the middle. Forty five percent support this,
Speaker 2: forty six percent oppose this. They just kind of prove
Speaker 2: their name right there that they're independent, because on the
Speaker 2: partisan edges, you've got a complete inversion of support and oppose,
Speaker 2: whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. And I would
Speaker 2: have thought, you know, every time we do a poll,
Speaker 2: I like to read through the script and in my mind,
Speaker 2: guess what I think the responses are going to be,
Speaker 2: and if they don't come back that way, that's the
Speaker 2: first place, I go dig into information to figure out why,
Speaker 2: and I still have not come up with an answer
Speaker 2: as to why seventy three percent of Republicans say that
Speaker 2: they're willing to pay higher prices for goods and services
Speaker 2: to bring back jobs. But when you think about it
Speaker 2: in the context of what is Donald Trump doing with
Speaker 2: tariffs and how is he messaging tariffs, that aligns so
Speaker 2: much with this this survey response where people are willing
Speaker 2: to Republicans are willing to pay higher prices if it
Speaker 2: means more American jobs, and Democrats do not want to
Speaker 2: pay higher prices if it means American jobs. I think
Speaker 2: the big takeaways Democrats hate American jobs. That's where I'm.
Speaker 1: Gonna that is that is a great way of pushing
Speaker 1: as a slogan. Uh do you think that it's also
Speaker 1: the sense of the country too, like as far as
Speaker 1: feelings towards the country go. Because I read through your
Speaker 1: other your other questions that you had that I didn't ask,
Speaker 1: and I won't go into all those, but one was
Speaker 1: interesting was on the economy, where it was either a
Speaker 1: majority or plurality of Democrats believe we were currently in
Speaker 1: a recession, which like we're not. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: sit there and say the market's down, markets up whatever,
Speaker 1: or like you know, like Trump's tariffs, but we're not
Speaker 1: in a recession. So is this just what they believe
Speaker 1: because they hope that they're hoping for it to come
Speaker 1: through to or they read a lot of narratives on
Speaker 1: on MSNBC and CNN. What do you like, do you
Speaker 1: have any thoughts on that? Well?
Speaker 2: Magically, their response was that fifty six percent said it
Speaker 2: happened within the last three months, which, hmm, I wonder
Speaker 2: what happened in the last three months. Maybe we've got
Speaker 2: a new president. Yeah, And so it is. It's a
Speaker 2: gut response and reaction to Trump. It has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with the fact that they actually believe we're in
Speaker 2: our procession. They just don't like the fact that Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's in charge.
Speaker 1: What's the one thing before we wrap up, what's the
Speaker 1: one thing about polling that Americans should know that they
Speaker 1: don't What's the one thing they could sit there and say,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I love crossed abs, but everyone says
Speaker 1: don't read them, and I'm like, I'm able to parse
Speaker 1: them a little better than the average person. I always
Speaker 1: say there was a snapshot on time, they're not, you know,
Speaker 1: the prediction of the entire future. But what's something that
Speaker 1: people could take. We are in a nation that is
Speaker 1: obsessive polling, despite we were sess at polling and then
Speaker 1: we love dismantling polling when it doesn't say what we like.
Speaker 1: What is what is people should know about the polling
Speaker 1: industry and polls in.
Speaker 2: General, Well, what's the saying lies, damn lies and statistics?
Speaker 2: And I think that's where most people end up landing
Speaker 2: on polling a poll some of them are just flat
Speaker 2: out wrong. But what I would say is, yeah, become.
Speaker 1: As said that senior citizen women were voting seventy percent
Speaker 1: for Kamala Harris White evangelical senior system women. I was like,
Speaker 1: this poll is not correct. I'm sorry, go.
Speaker 2: Ahead, Yeah, no, no, you're spot on. And so I
Speaker 2: think it's one become a better consumer of polling. So,
Speaker 2: if you're going to pay attention to poles, learn how
Speaker 2: to read them, because the top line is a very
Speaker 2: small portion of the story. The thing that I always
Speaker 2: recommend to folks is start at the bottom of the
Speaker 2: pole and work your way up. And what I mean
Speaker 2: by that is, look at the demographics if you look
Speaker 2: at the demographics and they don't pass the smell test,
Speaker 2: don't even look at the rest of the pole. And
Speaker 2: so if you start thinking about polling from the terms
Speaker 2: of is this a good poll to start with, I
Speaker 2: think you'll understand polling better. The second is pay to
Speaker 2: trends over time, not just small data points, because even
Speaker 2: the best pollsters, there's a reason that in polling you'll
Speaker 2: see a margin of air, which is whatever your number
Speaker 2: you're looking at, it can be that percent higher or lower.
Speaker 2: And that's another piece of reading polls. People say, well,
Speaker 2: the polls got it wrong. They never get it wrong
Speaker 2: if you look at it within a margin of error.
Speaker 2: So if the pole says Donald Trump's going to get
Speaker 2: forty five percent, and it's a three percent margin of air,
Speaker 2: If he gets forty eight percent, that poll was actually
Speaker 2: was statistically correct. The second is that there's always a
Speaker 2: ninety five percent confidence interval on public opinion polling, and
Speaker 2: that means that if you ran that poll one hundred times,
Speaker 2: ninety five percent of the time, you're going to get
Speaker 2: the same results within the margin of air. It also
Speaker 2: means that five percent of the time you are going
Speaker 2: to get numbers outside of the margin of air, and
Speaker 2: even the best polster cannot one hundred percent of the
Speaker 2: time replicate everything. You know, we see this sometimes in
Speaker 2: our polling where we'll collect a flawless sample look exactly
Speaker 2: like the demographics and population that we're intending to survey,
Speaker 2: and then we look at a number and we're like,
Speaker 2: that just doesn't seem right and we cannot explain it
Speaker 2: in statistically and scientifically. That is likely a five percent
Speaker 2: instance right there, right the other ninety five percent of
Speaker 2: the time it's going to be right. And so you know,
Speaker 2: don't don't look on all of polling is this horrible
Speaker 2: industry that gets stuff wrong all the time. And then
Speaker 2: the last thing I would recommend is if you get polled,
Speaker 2: take the freaking poll. Like that is how you help
Speaker 2: poll and get put it.
Speaker 1: Participating this dad all the times, like I got a
Speaker 1: call for a poll, I hung up the phone. I
Speaker 1: go why, He's like, I was like, well, why, I
Speaker 1: have a friend who does the same thing. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? I would I would have run
Speaker 1: over someone to answer a poll, but I'm I'm built differently,
Speaker 1: And that's one hundred percent true with the numbers you
Speaker 1: know when the when the polls were coming out in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election, and there was like six
Speaker 1: public polls that had Trump at like nineteen twenty percent
Speaker 1: of the black boat. The first like three times was like, ah, whatever,
Speaker 1: this is kind of off, and then like the fourth time,
Speaker 1: I was like, maybe this is right, and then the
Speaker 1: sixth and I'm like, okay, this is probably And when
Speaker 1: there was I think it was the ABC the Its
Speaker 1: is Full, which was black only voters, and they were
Speaker 1: coming out with the same numbers, like this is actually
Speaker 1: probably real. Like at this point, it's probably real when
Speaker 1: it's happened six times across different firms and they're all
Speaker 1: coming the same thing. And there's there's institutions that are
Speaker 1: solely looking at you know, this one or that one.
Speaker 1: But anyway, where can people learn more about signal polls?
Speaker 1: They can contact you if they want to hire you,
Speaker 1: what should they reach out to?
Speaker 2: So our website is cygn dot al, so it's our
Speaker 2: company name, which is spelled differently than most people spell
Speaker 2: the word signal and then also on social at cygn al.
Speaker 1: Brent, thank you for being on this podcast. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate it's a great conversation.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 1: Run you're listening to It's a Numbers Game with Ryan Grodowsky.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Our question this week from the
Speaker 1: Ask Me Anything segment of the podcast, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: please join. Ask me anything about politics or social media,
Speaker 1: or culture or the economy. If I don't know the answer,
Speaker 1: I will look up the answer and I'll give you
Speaker 1: the best analysis possible. Email Ryan at Numbers Game podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. That's Ryan at Numbers Plural Numbers Numbers Game
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. This question actually was texting me repeatedly
Speaker 1: by my aunt Carol. So I have to answer it
Speaker 1: because I think she's going to blow a gasket if
Speaker 1: I don't. She's listening right now, so thank you, Carol,
Speaker 1: she says to me. Her question was, and she lives
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, why have property taxes increased to fund
Speaker 1: our schools while test scores have declined? That is a
Speaker 1: Since getting involved in the seventeen seventy six Project Pack
Speaker 1: and then the Foundation and dealing so much with education,
Speaker 1: it's hard to even put this into words, how frustrated
Speaker 1: people feel, especially people who have maybe more adult children
Speaker 1: or our younger adults, themselves who remember education being much
Speaker 1: better twenty years ago or fifteen years ago. And there's
Speaker 1: not a simple answer for it. There's not a simple
Speaker 1: answer why test scores have declined. Part of the reason
Speaker 1: is that the bulk of money going to schools is
Speaker 1: not going to things that make people smarter. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of money and administrators and vice principles in outside
Speaker 1: tech companies being involved in, you know, with the idea
Speaker 1: of it improving, and teachers' unions, which is the largest
Speaker 1: organization or anything to do with schools, does not advocate
Speaker 1: on part of children. They advocate on behalf of adults,
Speaker 1: people who work in the buildings, and a lot of
Speaker 1: administrators have used education as guinea pigs. And there is
Speaker 1: there's as much as people. When I started the seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six Project Pack, there was a lot of people saying,
Speaker 1: why are you politicizing education? I to quote Billy Joel,
Speaker 1: I didn't start the fire. It has been politicized for decades,
Speaker 1: going back to when George W. Bush was trying to
Speaker 1: put phonics in classrooms and liberals opposed that the pledge
Speaker 1: of allegiance to the Prayer, I mean everything. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of politics in it, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: nonsense in it, and I think that's hurt kids too.
Speaker 1: But I think that the funding, how all this new
Speaker 1: money he has gone into schools has not always been positive.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's always been not for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the kids. I think that the main drivers are
Speaker 1: lack of parental involvement, especially as people have to work
Speaker 1: more just to survive. I get that, but I think
Speaker 1: that also a big part of it is the way
Speaker 1: that struct schools are structured for their funding schools. If
Speaker 1: a school, if a school is like, okay, we're not
Speaker 1: going to past kids forward. If it's if they're failing,
Speaker 1: we're going to sit there. And but a hard stop
Speaker 1: and a school in Chicago or a school in Baltimore
Speaker 1: failed ninety nine percent of all students from one year
Speaker 1: to the next, that principle will probably be fired. That
Speaker 1: school will probably be shut down. The incentive is to
Speaker 1: look at graduation rates or college admission, which is for
Speaker 1: some places not that hard to do. Not to look
Speaker 1: at hey, can they read, can they do math? Can
Speaker 1: they do science? If we got to a place in
Speaker 1: our country where ninety percent of the country could do
Speaker 1: eighth grade, math, reading, and science. We would be in
Speaker 1: the smartest nation in the We're already one of the
Speaker 1: smart nations in the whole world, but we would be
Speaker 1: arms and leans above everybody else in a way that
Speaker 1: we're not now. So I think that that is a big,
Speaker 1: big part of it. Is the incentive is to pass
Speaker 1: kids forward even if they're failing, because they don't want
Speaker 1: to show what failing grades actually look like. That's a
Speaker 1: big part of it. And then I think the DEI structure.
Speaker 1: I think that the influence of unions and the influence
Speaker 1: of politics in the way that's been going from the left,
Speaker 1: because for the right it's always been at school choice,
Speaker 1: school choice, school choices. Maybe I'll do an episode school
Speaker 1: choice soon, and it's not been about the eighty five
Speaker 1: percent of kids who go to public school. I think
Speaker 1: that that's I think that that's really the main, main
Speaker 1: part of it. But failing kids forward is a huge,
Speaker 1: huge part of the problem, and that's dealt with a
Speaker 1: lot of the financial structure of schools. Anyway, Thank you
Speaker 1: so so much. I appreciate you listening to the episode.
Speaker 1: Education is not about money, it's about how it's applied.
Speaker 1: So that's what you should learn. That's so what we
Speaker 1: should take away from all the stats we've seen in
Speaker 1: the last few years. Anyway, please like and subscribe on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app podcast wherever you get your podcast. I
Speaker 1: will see you guys. Letter this week