Polling

How Polling Is Manipulated.

If you have enough money, you can pay for a poll to say whatever you want it to say. A key point to remember is all polls are paid by someone and that the entity that sponsors the poll has an investment in an outcome to support their view. People who have the money to pay for polling can use the results to influence what other people think. Polls are not always accurate and can be manipulated to get the desired outcome. The way questions are worded can lead people to draw the wrong conclusions. Some people have private polls that they do not share with the public, which is suspicious. The media sometimes cites misleading polls to support a certain idea or politician. During the 2022 election, some people claimed that Americans disapproved of President Biden, but the truth was that most people were upset about attacks on Democratic institutions and saw it as Republican extremism leading the country in the wrong direction.

Sometimes news reporters will tell you that a political party is doing really well in the polls, but this can be dangerous. Good news can make people feel too relaxed and not work as hard to win. For example, if you hear that a race is leaning towards a certain party, you might feel like you don't need to worry as much about it. This can be a trick to make people think that they don't need to vote. Just because a party is doing well in the polls doesn't mean it will win the election. The news media can accidentally or on purpose make people less motivated to vote by sharing good polling news. It's better to act like you're behind in the polls and work hard to win. During the 2022 midterm elections, the media predicted a big win for the Republicans based on biased polling. However, many people actually wanted Democratic challengers to win more contests, but the rich donors manipulated the polls to make people believe otherwise. The Republican party offered extremism that was not what most Americans wanted.

Polling and political violence caused controversy. If you spoke out against people who tried to overthrow the government, you risked danger from the right. Big donors used polling to make people believe that Republican lies about inflation, the economy, law, and order were more important than defending democracy and protecting citizens' rights. Despite this, Democrats did better than expected in the elections without the help of bribers. Right-wing operatives used false polling data to make extreme right-wing candidates seem more mainstream than they actually were. They tricked people into thinking that Republicans were doing better in the polls than they really were, and then used this to raise money. They skewed the polls in their favor by asking the questions in a way that would give them the answers they wanted. However, the actual election results showed that Democrats did much better than the polls predicted.

Using polls to influence the way people think about an election can be powerful. Voters might change their minds based on which candidate seems to have a better chance of winning. And media companies like to focus on poll coverage to boost their ratings and make more money from ads. But after the election, we can see that these polls are often wrong and that they were used to deceive and mislead the public. It's not just about bad polling, but a broader effort by right-wing groups to confuse and manipulate people, backed by wealthy donors. It's important to understand this strategy so we're not fooled by it. What's more important than polls is how people actually vote. By creating a false sense of support, they're trying to control people's minds and gain power over the middle class.

Big Donors and Republicans are intentionally using flawed polling to manipulate public opinion and change the narrative. Working with Trolls, many of the Trolls are Russian and Foreign Governments, and they attempt to manipulate peoples' thinking prior to conducting the poll. The goal is not to set unrealistic expectations, but to make it seem like Republicans have more support than they actually do. They do it through various methods, one of the most common methods are "Push Poles" where an opinion poll is designed to produce specific results and "push" a certain narrative by influencing the views of respondents. This tactic is used to discourage Democratic voters and create a sense of impending doom. The Republicans want to create an illusion of greater support than they actually have. It's an attempt to control people's thoughts without them realizing it, which can affect the outcome of our democracy. This behavior should be illegal, but unfortunately, it's not. It used to be considered immoral to deceive people with real consequences, but the right-wing seems to have no issue with it. Alas, the right-wing is immoral.


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