Two days after the Aug. 23 Republican primary debate, a poll showed that support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had jumped by 7 points in the state of Iowa. The headline at Fox News screamed, “Iowa poll shows Florida gov closing the gap on Trump after first Republican debate.” Excited about his post-debate bounce, I was all set to write about it until I saw that the poll had been conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, “a polling firm working for the DeSantis’ campaign.” Naturally, the fact that it had been conducted by a DeSantis-friendly pollster diminished it’s importance in my mind and I moved on.
Politico saw the poll very differently. Citing this poll in a Saturday article about how campaigns often “leak” positive internal polling data in order to boost fund-raising, Politico concluded that the DeSantis campaign’s “leaked internal poll numbers [are] scrambling the GOP primary.”
That’s an extraordinary leap and it attaches far more significance to one poll than any single poll result, internal or otherwise, deserves, especially when you consider how little the debate changed the dynamics of the primary race or the polling averages. The media outlet turned it into a weapon with which to attack DeSantis.
Politico makes the case that while campaigns have been leaking favorable internal polling results for decades, the use of this tactic is far more pervasive today. Is it really more widespread today or is it just that Politico is looking at its use in a GOP primary?
As I recall, candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination released quite a few favorable internal polls themselves. That’s called politics.
Voter’s opinions can change dramatically during primary races. A comment made on a debate stage or during a campaign stop or an interview can instantly change a voter’s mind about a candidate. Primaries are designed for this purpose.
And it’s not as if the poll showed DeSantis soaring into new territory. Months ago, he had placed even higher in national polls.
Politico also takes a shot at entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. His campaign sent its own post-debate national survey to The Messenger that showed Ramaswamy leap-frogging DeSantis to move into second place nationally. (His numbers have since returned to his pre-debate levels.)
The article notes that RealClearPolitics excludes internal polls from its averages while FiveThirtyEight includes them.
In fact, the five most recent Iowa polls in FiveThirtyEight’s database were commissioned by Republican groups, including the super PAC backing Trump’s campaign and the pro-DeSantis nonprofit.
Politico asks whether or not internal polls should be trusted and concludes that the answer is complicated:
Public pollsters are graded on their accuracy, but campaign pollsters are hired and fired based on whether their polls correctly reflect the true state of the race on which they’re working.
But the public often doesn’t get the full picture with internal polls. The campaign or outside group that commissioned the poll is the one releasing it, and only a small amount of internal polling is ever made public. The motive isn’t usually accuracy — it’s affecting the media narrative or convincing donors to open their wallets.
At Politico, we don’t ignore internal polling — but we cover it with the full context about the sponsor’s motives and the skepticism their numbers deserve. Those are important reminders for anyone watching the 2024 Republican race right now.
I think most of us would agree that all survey results, especially internal polls, should be viewed through a lens of caution. We’ve seen pollsters get it wrong too many times – and in both directions – to put much faith into any single poll. We often see the pollsters who got it “so right” in one election flame out in the next. Think the Trafalgar Group’s Robert Cahaly.
That said, polls are not meaningless either. They provide us with a feel for the direction of a race as well as shifts in voter sentiment. They should be looked at as imperfect indicators of where a race may stand at a particular moment in time. Obviously, it’s best to look at polling averages as opposed to individual polls.
Voters should be especially wary of internal polls, for they tend to get publicized only when they favor the campaign that leaks them. But for Politico to single out the DeSantis campaign for “trying to shape the race with its own data” is a bit of a stretch.
Does anyone remember the ABC News/The Washington Post survey released days ahead of the 2020 presidential election? It showed Joe Biden ahead of former President Donald Trump by a whopping 17 points in Wisconsin among likely voters. Biden ultimately won the state by less than one point.
And that was a public poll!
DeSantis is merely doing what politicians have been doing throughout political history: trying to put the best light possible on his campaign. It’s up to us to consider the pollster and conduct our own due diligence.
Try harder Politico.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.