Free Republic

No one wants Kamala Harris to run for president, or to take over for Joe Biden, recent focus groups in Arizona and California have confirmed. Who could possibly listen to that wretched laugh or listen to her incomprehensible word salads for four years. This confirms something that the Democrats have been struggling with for months now. Harris is even less popular than Joe Biden. This is why she can’t ride in to their rescue in the 2024 election. FOX News reports: Focus group of voters offer ‘brutal’ take of VP Harris: Not ‘someone I want running my country’ Multiple voter...

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is not committing to supporting former President Trump if he runs for reelection in 2024. “I’m not saying I’m there for him yet,” Ingraham told Northern Virginia Magazine, when asked if she’ll support Trump in the next presidential election, should he run. “But I think whether he runs or not — I mean, his policies worked. Trump’s blueprint for policy — a forward-looking, optimistic set of pro-America policies — that blueprint, without a doubt, is winning.”

“What were some of the biggest things that happened in 2021?” That was the opening question to two very different focus groups of voters convened by Times Opinion this week. The wide-open question was intended to see what was top of mind for the two separate groups — nine Democrats and eight Republicans from across the country — who weren’t told the discussions would focus on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the state of democracy in America. Unprompted, the Democrats started off with these answers: “The Capitol in January.” “Definitely.” “Absolutely.” And the Republicans started off with...

Do American Indians who join the Air Force have unique challenges?According to the military, yes.The same goes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning recruits.Therefore, last month, the United States Air Force put together two focus groups to address barriers impeding airmen and Space Force Guardians.An April 26th announcement breathed official life into each:Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning Initiative Team, otherwise known as LITIndigenous Nations Equality Team, or INETFrom the Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs:The establishment of these two teams builds on the successes of the Department of the Air Force’s other teams and allows the Department...

VIDEOIt's like a pollster protection racket for Frank Luntz. Pay him for his dubious focus group services or he will actively try to derail you. In 2015 Donald Trump refused to pay Luntz and threw him out of his office. Shortly afterwards, as he can see here by his own admission, Luntz actively tried to derail the Trump train by appealing to the Republican establishment leadership to "do something" to stop Trump.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz said Donald Trump is back in the game after a strong performance at Sunday night's debate. "I may have made a mistake in writing off Trump," Luntz tweeted after the second presidential debate. "After talking with voters tonight, he's back in this race." Sunday's debate came at the tail end of the most tumultuous weekend of the Republican presidential nominee's campaign so far. Trump landed in hot water on Friday when a leaked recording showed him boasting about trying to sleep with a married woman and remarking that he could "grab" women "by the p---y" because...

Nicolle Wallace nailed it: “voters are so smart! And whenever we scratch our heads here in New York City or anywhere along the Acela corridor, you really just have to get out for a day or an hour and talk to people. They see everything.” Wallace was reacting to clips from a focus group of working-class Pennsylvania voters aired on today’s Morning Joe. Trump boosters and critics alike offered fresh, authentic, insightful takes on the candidate. As something of a political junkie, I found myself feeling envious of the clear and uncluttered way they cut to the heart of things....

Is it the MSM's role to protect Hillary Clinton's image by preventing the public from seeing what members of her own party think of her? Today's Morning Joe played a clip from a Dem focus group in New Hampshire in which there was near unanamity that Hillary's personality could be a serious turn-off to voters, particularly male ones. Joe Scarborough then said: "we actually cut a good bit in there, out, that was even more negative of Hillary because we thought it was actually too negative and didn't like some of the connotations there." View the video here.

I'm shocked that he's shocked, and I do not mean that as a joke. He is a professional. He is a focus-grouper and high consultant. I imagine he reads a lot of polls too, and probably runs some. And yet he didn't know the anger brewing at the Establishment.I am truly shocked. No matter how low my estimations of our political class, they keep failing to meet my expectations. I complained on Friday that the vaunted consultant class does not know the most elemental things about the "constituency" they're paid to advise clients about. I put "constituency" in quotes because...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — “Nothing disqualifies Trump.” That was the takeaway of Frank Luntz, the public opinion guru, after leading a focus group Monday night of supporters of Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) For two and a half hours, Luntz quizzed a group of current and past ardent Trump fans about their views on the businessman. He discussed the candidate’s past liberal stances and played past video of Trump saying provocative things about women. Yet when the focus group was over, not a single person who was planning to vote for him said they had changed their mind. At one point,...

This is fodder for WSJ columnist James Taranto's "everything is seemingly spinning out of control" file. Howard Dean has declared that we'll have to be "more humble" about Donald Trump's prospects and that he will "have to stop making fun" of him for now. What's got Dean doing a 180 on Trump? Not just the latest polls, which include one showing Trump trouncing Jeb and Rubio in their home state of Florida. Above all, it was the experience of viewing, on today's Morning Joe, a stunning focus group of New Hampshire Republicans who were uniformly and enthusiastically pro-Trump, saying things...

Frank Luntz may smugly believe that Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin and other right wing talk radio hosts are "responsible for the stark polarization within the nation's political discourse" and therefore "problematic" for the Republican Party. I submit the problem is that Luntz, and a misguided over-reliance on focus groups, has neutered and thus destroyed any semblance of courage in the GOP's message. Luntz is conflating, as many wonks and number crunchers do, cause and effect with regard to the bigger realities and polarization. The country is polarized because, well, we are polarized. Rush and "the great one" didn't make it...

About five years ago, pollsters identified a crucial bloc of swing voters they called the “Walmart Moms.” These are women with children at home 18 or younger, and they shop at a Walmart at least once a month. They are also women who know what it is like to stretch a budget and juggle the demands of a family. For them, stress is a normal state these days. Walmart Moms don’t spend a lot of time thinking about politics, but when they do, it is on a very pragmatic level: Which candidate or party is going to make life better...

Health Insurance: Driven by focus groups, the administration and Congress rail against insurance companies to get ObamaCare passed. So why have they been protecting the insurance companies from real competition?In a recent stop in North Carolina, President Obama told the crowd that our existing health care system "works well for the insurance industry, but it doesn't always work well for you." This shift from discussing what's in his plan to fighting the insurance bogeyman is no accident. In June, Joel Benenson, the president's chief pollster, told the Economic Club of Canada, where health care is a public scandal, that the...

Did anyone just see that tool Frank Luntz on Fox with Shepard Smith? He said his focus group hates Congress and the job they are doing...but...they blame the Republicans in Congress??? WHAT?!?! The Democrats have a clear majority!! How can his focus group blame the GOP for the job Congress is doing?!?! This is INSANITY! His focus group can't be undecided if they are that ANTI GOP. Just another example of Fox going in the gutter.

I'm rather skeptical as to whether or not the composition of focus groups is truly reflective of the electorate, or of "undecided" voters. CNN and Fox News both had such groups featured tonight. How are these groups put together? Do the participants get paid? I would imagine that they do. Is that truly reflective of the electorate? I know that the little focus group meters they have seemed off. When McCain was sticking it to Obama, it seemed like the GOP line never really went up that high. Like, for example, when the debate turned to spending and McCain called...

RICHMOND, Va.—There's no shortage of polls underscoring America's sour mood these days. Surveys generally show that 7 in 10 Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction and that most Americans believe their leaders in Washington are doing a poor job. U.S. News led the way in explaining this trend with a recent special report on why Americans think Washington is broken and what can be done about it. If anything, the warning signs are getting gloomier. A new focus group of Republican voters from the Richmond area, conducted last Thursday evening, was a case in point. All...