Fox News star Jessica Tarlov, the liberal-leaning voice on the popular Fox talker The Five saw the New York Times headline about Joe Biden being trounced by Donald Trump in the latest Times-Sienna poll and thought: that makes no sense. Digging into some specifics, Tarlov wondered is it really possible that Trump has gained with women after the Dobbs decision — despite referendums in very conservative states indicating otherwise?
The poll shows Biden tied with Trump at 46% support from women voters after winning 57% of women in the 2020 election. “That makes no sense to me,” Tarlov said.
[Notably, the Times itself ran an article only the week before, citing a different poll, with the headline: Republican Opposition to Birth Control Bill Could Alienate Voters, Poll Finds.]
Tarlov wonders aloud too whether a poll which did 3% of its interviews in Spanish can represent a Hispanic electorate that’s one-fifth Spanish-only speakers.
Jessica: The gen Z vote, the idea that Donald Trump is appealing to a generation that cares about the things that he cares about the least on the planet like reproductive choice, climate change, gun safety… pic.twitter.com/k0mRcFEIvv
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 4, 2024
Polling, of course, has been denounced as ludicrous ever since its invention and recent exercises — the never arriving “red wave,” Hillary Clinton’s near-certain 2016 victory, the GOP’s strong grip on the 2022 midterms — have all been seen as folly in retrospect.
Casting severe doubt on the prominent poll’s results, Tarlov labeled some of the data “mind-bending.” For those mired in reality, whose minds don’t bend easily, that means wrong.
The Gen Z poll data also tries and fails to bend Tarlov’s mind, as she questions the conclusion that Trump’s appeal has grown among a generation that cares about the things Trump “cares about the least” — climate change, reproductive rights, gun safety, etc.
The Northwest Progressive Institute produced an analysis of the Times-Siena poll asserting Tarlov has a reason to be skeptical. The NPI writes that in looking at the dataset, “a key fact should become immediately apparent: Republican voters were oversampled in these polls.”
With the design of polls easily manipulated to produce particular results — a fact acknowldged by all pollsters — NPI says about the Republican oversampling: “It’s irresponsible of the NYT to not state this upfront in all of its coverage. This is an important design choice that they made, and it ought to be explained.”
As Pew Research, a respected polling operation, has admitted, it’s “much harder to reach people and persuade them to consent to an interview.” Pew also says, tellingly, that pollsters are trying a “proliferation of different ways of doing polls, some of which may be less reliable than others. Experimentation is a good thing, but it makes the job of a poll consumer – you – much harder.”