Fox News Poll – Does half of America really want President Trump removed?
Bottom Line: One of my greatest frustrations in life is mis or half information being spread readily without context. Like for example, the fact that Democrat operatives were the ones who created the fraudulent Trump-Russia collusion narrative, or that none of the alleged “crimes” President Trump was impeached for occurred. Details, right? Anyway, there’s something else that’s captured many who’re nervously tracking the impeachment trial wondering where the dust will settle. The latest Fox News poll. It’s like this, by a margin of 50% to 43% Americans want Trump removed from office by the Senate. Those on the right have a tendency to assign credibility to the poll out of an inclination to trust Fox News polling more than others. Those on the left tend to hype polls like this under the – see even Fox News polls say he should go! What isn’t discussed is the premise of the polling. That’s where I come into play.
First, Fox News like all other news organizations, isn’t actually doing the polling. They’re paying for it to be conducted. There’s a vast difference. Two third parties, one Democrat polling firm and one Republican, conducted the polling. Now let’s talk about the sampling. This is what matters most and I haven’t heard discussed once. There are three forms of samples polling firms will use. The least reliable for the purpose of gauging public sentiment of those informed and engaged politically – adult only samples. Then there’s the most predictive of informed and engaged sentiment – likely voters. And the one in-between – that's polling done of registered voters. The Fox News polling was conducted of registered voters. Already that tells you it’s only middle of the road in terms of eliciting sentiment of informed and engaged voters. Then there’s the political sampling.
The polling was conducted of 48% Democrats, 42% Republicans with independents and third-party identifiers rounding out the remaining ten percent. How does that compare with reality? In Gallup’s monthly polling of political affiliation,46% of Americans ID as Democrats compared to 45% who ID as Republicans right now. That means credible sampling would over sample Democrats by 1%. Instead, the pollsters used by Fox News over sampled Democrats by 2% and under sampled Republicans by 4% for a total misrepresentation of 6% in favor of Democrats. Not exactly the most credible sampling.So,let’s put this altogether for a moment.
We have mediocre sampling that favored Democrats by 6% over an accurate representation of the country. Using the same people polled by the pollsters,but adjusting accurately for sampling,the same poll would have reflected a 48% to 48% stalemate on the issue. See how that works. If the premise of anything is false, anything built on it will be too. Including this much discussed Fox News impeachment poll.