Victor Davis Hanson: Pollsters Have No Reputation After This Decade-Long Hatred Of Donald Trump

RealClear Politics / The Daily Signal ^ | 9 May, 2025 | Victor Davis Hanson

[MtnClimber]

THE DAILY SIGNAL: Mainstream media would have you believe that Trump’s first 100 days were a failure—despite securing the border and strong economic gains. Victor Davis Hanson breaks down the polling regarding Donald Trump’s early 2025 presidency on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” and asks the question: Were pollsters reflecting public opinion, or manipulating it?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: This is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. We've touched on polls before but I don't think I've seen anything quite as egregious in pollsters' bias as recently when they apparently or supposedly or purportedly surveyed the first hundred days of Donald Trump and the public reaction.

Almost immediately headlines blared, worst first hundred days in history. Trump drops from 52 to 41, 42. Everybody was confounded because the economic news was pretty good.

Job growth was just spectacular, over 170,000 jobs. Inflation was down. Energy prices were down.

Corporate profits were up. There was a movement on the trade question. There was no bad news except the controversy and chaos of a counter-revolution.

So what were the pollsters trying to tell us or were they trying to manipulate? And I think it's the latter. Larry Kudlow, for example, the former Fox business, I think he still is at Fox, he pointed out that when he examined the New York Times and the Washington Post polls, they were deliberately not counting people who surveyed that they were Trump voters in 2024.

That was half the country. They were only polling about a third. Think of that, a third of the people that said they voted for Trump, they polled.

Not half. So of course their results were going to be disputed or suspect. But here's another thing.

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TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: polls

[MtnClimber]

Most polls are just propaganda.

[MtnClimber]

VDH ping

[hal ogen]

They DO have a reputation. It is that of having no integrity and being bald-faced liars. It has been established as a career path for sociopaths.

[circlecity]

All media polls are push polls.

[ripnbang]

All polls are propaganda. Even ones we like.

[Political Junkie Too]

Too bad that Hanson left off AtlasIntel from the list of good polls, but I suppose that they are international and wouldn't focus on something local like President Trump’s first 100 days.

-PJ

[AnAmericanMother]

“Don’t tell my mother I’m a pollster. She thinks I play the piano in a house of ill repute.”

[Kartographer]

So, polls are mostly the work of lying liars for the benefit and use of other liars to coverup the lies of the liars running election? Well, who would have thought it???

[USS Alaska]

That was half the country. They were only polling about a third.

In real numbers, that translates to 17 points that if added to the 43% that the lefty pollsters say Trump has means his real number is 60% favorable.

The msm and lefty pollsters would cut off both hands above their wrists before they ever published that Trump has a 60% approval from the entire country.

It must make eating their dinners extremely difficult knowing the true results of their polls...loads of Pepto.

[KC_Conspirator]

Same polls that predicted that we would be talking about Kamalas first 100 days.

[libertylover]

Yep, Tagline is still accurate.

[Revel]

I was always amused how many people here treated the polls as if they were actually real.

[cgbg]

The infamous Iowa poll.

Never forget.

Never forgive.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4275312/posts

My post is #23 and I was off by two points.

—

Then see post #101:

“Crazy leftist women are going to get her close and the ballot machine is going to put her over the top.”

Doragsda

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My response is Post 105.
—
See post 108:

“Obama won it in 2012, and women are batshit crazy this year over abortion.

Montag813

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For more history see my post 140.

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Then see doomer post 141:

“Does not matter one bit if Democrats are dumping ballots to steal it and no one is paying attention. All these poll watchers and lawyers camped out in swing states better be watching red states.”

Tornado Alley
—
See post 146:

“The electorate has changed significantly since last census taken. People relocating. Many voters aged out. The older folks were 10 years younger voting group in 2016. Bernie bros?”

Tornado Alley
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Post 151:

“Harris may not win the state, but if she’s over performing and Trump is losing ground, that’s not good for the other states. He needs to win Iowa by double digits.”

Tornado Alley
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Btw—on post 173 you will see that President Trump himself nailed it.

He won the state by 13 points.

[Billthedrill]

VDH has picked up what we've been laying down here at FR for years. If you see it and you haven't paid for it, whoever has is using it to influence you.

David Ploof, one of the directors of the Harris campaign, just recently came out and said, well, we had all these inside polls we never disclosed.

Well, of course not, since campaigns are making tactical decisions on their basis. There is a cardinal rule among professional campaign staffs: never talk about the internal polls and never believe the public ones. You cannot forget that and people who are more passionate than objective about the campaign do it all the time.

Some campaigns are so confident in their methodology that they turn off actual polling altogether in the final days of the campaign when the funding is running short, depending on data analytics instead. Hillary Clinton's campaign did that in '16 with results disastrous for their candidate. Polls are expensive and they and the analysis take time, which factors run very short as voting day approaches.

That is not to say public polls are useless. It's never a bad thing to recognize what somebody in power wants you to think.