Do conservatives trust polling now?

Jake Hoffman is the executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (FLV) – Every time I check up on the Republican presidential primary, I see former President Donald Trump and his team quoting or tweeting polls and posting poll results from a slew of sources.

During Trump’s last campaign, polls were a hindrance and weakness, but now they appear to be one of his largest strengths. Whether it’s Quinnipiac or a variety of other University polling, it seems like every day we are told to look at the results of another poll.

Heck, I’ve even seen CNN polls quoted by surrogates of his campaign; meanwhile, a CNN reporter will still get heckled out of any conservative conference they attend to the chants of “Fake News.”

I’m not here to question the overall results of these polls. Generally, I think there is a consensus on where the race stands, with Trump far ahead.

However, I can’t help but think this is a complete 180-degree turn from 2016 when news was deemed fake and the pollsters were accused of being in the bag for Hillary Clinton.

I’m old enough to remember when every conservative influencer flaunted how wrong every poll was after Trump’s victory a short six years ago. Yet, here we are now at a time where Trump recently took to Truth Social to attack his previous press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, for allegedly misquoting the margin results of a poll.

What’s interesting about the landscape of the Republican primary is the resurgence of a tried and true political campaign technique; make it seem like you are so far ahead of the field that supporting another candidate is futile.

This continues to be done effectively across the country from local City Council races to the Presidential primary, and has been a go-to technique for decades.

In full transparency, I did the same thing while I was running for FL State House in Tampa, because it’s common practice to promote the good polls and show your community you’re capable of winning.

However, I can still say my campaign was not nearly rich enough to purchase a $5,000 “push poll” to influence early opinions.

Nearly every candidate does this, which is why it was actually extremely important and prudent that in 2016, Trump called out this mainstream media’s way of gaslighting the public into voting for a certain candidate. For a time, conservatives woke up to the idea that they were being led to support political campaigns by often corrupt and agenda-driven “polling firms.”

I use “polling firms” in quotes because you can often find a business relationship between a news outlet and its trusted “polling firm,” which only exists as a way to legitimize the story they were already going to write.

Forgetting the high level races, first-time candidates in lower-ballot races with traditionally less funding can get quickly flushed out of contention if enough media outlets are paid to promote these “push polls” that elicit a desired response from participants.

Because voters tend to be so ill-equipped in statistics and campaigns often hide that they’re paying for a result, these polls go unquestioned and a consensus is built that there is clearly only one choice in a race based on a foregone conclusion…and it works!

Donors, political organizations, and people in general always want to back the winner. Donors don’t want to bet on the wrong horse and end up getting snubbed by the eventual winner when they come calling for political favors, and nobody wants to be at the election night watch party of a candidate they know is going to lose.

Social media ridicule adds another layer of complexity to this phenomenon, because nowadays, you might have to personally defend your choices publicly to your friends, whereas previous generations quietly went into the voting booth and largely didn’t discuss politics with their peers.

Enough positive polling creates a snowball effect of support and the media has known this for quite some time. I had hoped that as Republicans, we realized this sensation when Trump broke the system, but it turns out much of our party is still subject to being led in the direction the pollsters tell us to.

As the primary continues, I imagine that polls will continue to be utilized to legitimize the claim that Trump is so far and beyond ahead that there is no reason to support anyone else, and that may be true.

Do not let yourself be lulled back into the groupthink that early polls equal eventual winner, they are still by and large, very much corrupt. The more we legitimize Trump’s positive polling, the more susceptible we are to believing statistically insignificant polls that were paid for to influence your local commissioner race too.

My purpose in writing this is to remind my peers in the Republican Party, a party that prides themselves on being, “Lion, NOT Sheep”, that they are still very much letting polls lead them right into the lion’s den.