The NYTimes poll: Flawed and biased.

March 4, 2024

Hi, all. As always, my advice remains, “Ignore the polls.” Polls don’t vote. People do. And when they do, Joe Biden performs well—and Trump underperforms. Real people. Real votes. Real results. Democrats win. Consistently.

Over the weekend, the NYTimes published results of polling that sent some readers into a tailspin. Throughout the weekend, I received a steady stream of stories about the NYTimes poll, rebuttals, and commentary. Those emails were accompanied by triple exclamation points, sad emojis, and entreaties to “Please address.”

I would prefer not to write about a poll that is simultaneously flawed and biased, but it has rattled enough readers that it seems irresponsible to ignore it. If you feel comfortable “ignoring the polls,” good for you! Skip this article and read on!

The right reaction to the poll is to say, “It’s just a poll, it changes, nothing, it is an outlier, and (on average), the poll confirms that Biden and Trump are seemingly locked in a completive race, which will be won by the party that motivates the biggest turnout.”

Three writers have taken that approach and provide substantial comfort and perspective.

• Dan Pfeiffer wrote a column recommended by many readers with a “Suck it up, it’s just a poll, this will be a close race” vibe. See Messagebox, Some Quick Thoughts on that Bad NYT Poll - by Dan Pfeiffer on Substack.

• The always positive and helpful Simon Rosenberg placed the poll in the context of other polling and recent actual results. He also describes questionable aspects of the poll. See Hopium Chronicles, Notes On The NYT Poll, Why I Am Optimistic –on Substack.

• Readers of this newsletter will appreciate Jay Kuo’s approach in his Substack newsletter, Status Kuo, Status Report: About That Poll… - by Jay Kuo (substack.com). Kuo’s newsletter is both analytical and calming. Kuo takes a slightly deeper dive than Pfeiffer and Rosenberg while keeping his tone calm and positive. I highly recommend Kuo’s article.

Pfeiffer, Rosenberg, and Kuo leave us with the right takeaway: Don’t waste time worrying about one poll eight months before election day. Individual polls are snapshots, and no single poll is predictive of the outcome.

For most of you, that should be the end of it. Move on to the next article.

But some of you sent emails about the predictable follow-on commentary on social media, Fox News, and well-meaning progressive writers who effectively say, “This is bad. Really bad.” Chief among the doomsayers is Nate Cohn, who has taken to defending the poll by re-posting caustic comments that call people who question the poll “cross-tab truthers.” Although the reference is a bit opaque, the gist of the insult compares people who do not believe the NYTimes polling to “9-11 truthers” who believe the attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job.”

So, for those feeling assaulted, insulted, and aggrieved by the NYTimes’s persistent anti-Biden bias, I aggregate below a few of the criticisms of the poll with a gloss of my own, i.e., that the NYTimes has effectively abdicated the moral responsibility of the free press in reporting on an imminent threat to democracy.

Before I proceed, a caveat: I am not a pollster, statistician, or social scientist. I am repeating criticisms posted by others. But as you will see, those criticisms of the Times’s poll have the virtue of reflecting reality and emphasizing actual results.

So, here are some of the criticisms of the poll.

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The sample of voters surveyed was unrepresentative and manipulated to favor Republicans.

The sample over-represented rural voters by nearly double their actual share of the 2020 vote. (In 2020, 19% of the vote was rural; the Times sample had 36% rural voters).

The Times “readjusted” the sample from 29% Democratic and 28% Republican to become 32% Republican and 29% Democratic. Per Simon Rosenberg, “that’s a shift of 4 percentage points, something that would take an even race and make it +4 Republican, as this poll finds.”

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The “cross-tabs” on sub-groups in the sample show results that should cause the NYTimes to disregard its own poll.

Among the many findings of the poll that are simply not credible are the following:

• The poll shows Trump with a 1-point advantage with women, even though Biden won women by 11% points in 2020—which was before the Dobbs decision. So, dear NYTimes what explains a 12%-point increase in Trump's support among women after the Dobbs decision? There is no credible explanation.

• The Times’s poll shows that Trump is retaining nearly everyone who voted for him in 2020, despite the fact that he has repeatedly lost 30 to 40% of the vote in Republican primaries. Exit polling of those voters shows that 43% of voters who supported Nikki Haley will vote for Biden! Again, the Times poll is simply not credible and contradicts recent actual results in multiple primaries!

• Twelve percent (12%) of the Democratic respondents in the poll support Dean Phillips—when he has routinely finished with 2% of the vote in primaries. Again, not credible.

• The poll shows Biden winning among independents (4% points) and voters who dislike both Trump and Biden (12 percentage points) and still losing to Trump? Defies belief.

• The poll shows that millennials favor Trump by a 13% higher margin than baby boomers. Has anyone at the Times met a millennial? Or a baby boomer? Again, not credible.

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The Times creates a false equivalency between Biden’s age and Trump's possible felony convictions

The Times asked voters if they believed that Biden was “just too old” to serve as president—and gave the responses to that question a separate, front-page article on Sunday. But as one commentator posted,

The latest New York Times poll asked whether Biden was "just too old" to be an effective president. It didn't ask whether Trump was "just too dangerous to democracy." It focused on Biden’s electoral weak point, not Trump’s.

Although the Times also asked respondents if “you think that Donald Trump has or has not committed any serious federal crimes,” that question does not inquire about support for or opposition to the full range of fascist threats and anti-democratic rhetoric that have become the stock-in-trade of Trump's unhinged speeches. That is the equivalent question addressing Trump's electoral weakness, not the narrow question of whether Trump committed a felony.

By choosing to ignore Trump's threat to democracy in its polling, the Times has abdicated its responsibility as a news reporting organization. The Times exercised discretion in choosing topics to include in its survey. It chose to ignore the threat to democracy posed by Trump and focus on a factor—age—that is not related to the ability to govern.

Mental competency and fitness are relevant—but the Times ignores the flashing red lights of Trump's descent into mental incompetence while obsessing on Biden’s age. For more on this topic, read on!

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The media ignores Trump's lapses over the weekend.

Trump's speeches are becoming increasingly bizarre and incoherent. Over the weekend, raucous crowds of supporters were stunned into silence when Trump asserted Putin “has so little respect for Obama that he is starting to throw around the nuclear word.” Trump repeatedly praises the January 5 insurrectionists as hostages. Trump made a crude hand gesture to simulate sex when discussing Fani Willis and Nathan Wade. Trump gets so confused as he mangles multiple words that he simply gives up and says, “aah” in a resigned tone. See a collection of the above, and more, at YouTube | Ben Meiselas on Trump speech in NC and Virginia.

 There is simply no excuse for the media’s disregard of Trump's on-screen meltdown as they drive an anti-Biden narrative based solely on age.

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Hunter Biden crushes the House Oversight Committee.

Hunter Biden finally testified before the House Oversight Committee and humiliated the hapless Republicans who questioned him. The Committee made the mistake of releasing the transcript, which confirms that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business.

I have not located a top-to-bottom review of Hunter Biden’s transcript, but the most excellent summary is available on Twitter at this post.

.Another good resource is in WaPo, Philip Bump, Hunter Biden’s point-by-point rebuttal of allegations against his father. (Accessible to all.)

If you are one of the many people who believe that Hunter Biden traded on his father’s name to obtain undeserved benefits, I urge you to read (in full) both of the above links. After I did so, my view of Hunter Biden changed significantly. He is still a disappointing figure who failed to live up to his father’s legacy, but Republicans have consistently distorted innocent actions to make them appear insidious.

There is too much ground for me to cover, but I will make two brief points: F

irst, Hunter Biden was appointed to Burisma because the president of Poland recruited him because Hunter Biden was an expert on board governance—based on service on boards of directors at a dozen charitable organizations!

Republicans have made a big deal about Hunter Biden putting his father on speakerphone at a dinner attended by a couple of Russian oligarchs. But the context makes clear the call was innocent and not connected to Hunter’s businesses:

One of the meetings Joe Biden called into was when Hunter was hosting a thank you dinner at Cafe Milano for donors to the World Food Program, which fed 70 million people per day.

Hunter put his father on speakerphone in front of a couple of oligarchs, a GOP Megadonor, and a couple of rich people from New York. At a charity event where Hunter was thanking them for donations to an org which fed 70 million people per day.

There is much more. But if you are angry at Hunter Biden, I urge you to read the summaries of his testimony. While he was a drug addict who did many irresponsible things, he did not involve Joe Biden in his businesses. And it appears that the entire story of a laptop being abandoned in a random computer store in Maryland may have been fabricated by Republican operatives.

Sadly, the damage may be irreversible. At the very least, you can educate yourself about the facts so that you can rebut baseless allegations about Joe Biden’s integrity.

PowerPoint presentation confirms that No Labels plans to attack Joe Biden.

No Labels claims that it will run as a “national unity party” only if it is clear that no candidate can win the 2024 election. But a recently obtained PowerPoint obtained from a No Labels presentation confirms that the organization is planning to attack Joe Biden on positions that mimic Trump's false attacks on Biden--hardly a “national unity” platform. See CNN Politics, No Labels aims to swing at Biden even as its own plan remains unclear.

Per CNN,

No Labels officials – who have repeatedly said they don’t want to become a spoiler that would result in Donald Trump going back to the White House – have urged prospective candidates and others to prioritize accusing Biden of having politically toxic positions he does not actually hold. They are hoping to spread those accusations more widely next week, ahead of Biden’s annual State of the Union to Congress.

Please tell any friends considering voting for a No Labels candidate that the platform of the party is to amplify false claims against Joe Biden.

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Two more Trump lawsuits.

A reader noted that Trump has been sued in a new lawsuit alleging securities fraud and is about to be sued for unpaid attorney’s fees to Rudy Giuliani. As noted in the Washington Post, Trump's co-investors in Truth Social are suing to recover stock in the parent company, alleging that Trump illegally diluted their interests.

This development is significant because Trump has run his businesses in the past as a sole proprietorship. With a public company, Trump is subject to rules regarding the issuance of stock—rules that he ignored in order to [explicative deleted—rhymes with “shrew”] his business partners. Trump Media co-founders Andy Litinsky, Wes Moss sue to keep stake in company - The Washington Post. The suit might delay the public offering of stock in Truth’s Social’s parent company—an event Trump may have been counting on to provide him with liquidity to pay (or bond around) his legal judgments.

Also, Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy estate listed a claim against Trump of unpaid legal fees. That claim could be pursued by a bankruptcy trustee acting on behalf of the estate. See Rudy Giuliani targets Donald Trump for ‘unpaid legal fees’ in new bankruptcy filing | The Independent

Trump's increasingly dire financial situation may yet become a major issue in the campaign. Stay tuned!

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Concluding Thoughts.

By the time many of you read this on Monday, it is likely the Supreme Court will have issued a decision holding that Trump can remain on the ballot in Colorado despite the disqualification clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. If the Court makes such a decision, it will be disappointing, but will not change the essential task ahead of us—defeating Trump at the ballot box.

Jill and I held the final reader meeting of our trip down the Mississippi River on Sunday evening. We gathered in New Orleans with a small group of like-minded citizens in the home of a reader. Like many other meetings, we heard about the challenges of living “in a blue bubble” in a solidly red state. We discussed some strategies for effecting change against long odds, the importance of state legislative seats, strategic donations, and the importance of the youth vote.

More on these topics later, but for tonight, I urge everyone who has the advantage of living in a solidly blue state not to forget our colleagues and friends in red states. The Republicans executed a fifty-year strategy to take over national politics by focusing on state races.

We must replicate that strategy—and we have a good start. Support and participate in groups like The States Project / Giving Circles to leverage donations into meaningful state legislative races. Flipping a seat or two could break up a trifecta or a supermajority. No effort is too small; no donation is wasted. In red states, we have to begin the long journey back with small steps. We can do that!

Talk to you tomorrow!