Polling is propaganda: Trump's 2020 election results discredit the industry.

the most dangerous form of propaganda
is that propaganda which neither the broadcaster nor the members of the viewing public perceive to be a carefully contrived propaganda message in the last few weeks i have heard numerous news broadcasters reassure me that what happened in the year 2016 would not happen once again in the year 2020 that we were not looking at polling data that would grossly misrepresent that would utterly fail to forecast the outcomes of the election it happened in 2016 it happened again in 2020 i'll be honest with you i think every single one of those journalists was being sincere i think every single one of the pollsters political scientists professional commentators career academics i think every single one of them was being sincere i think none of them were aware of the extent to which they are participating in propaganda and sadly most of us in the audience do not stop to reflect the extent to which we're watching propaganda medical doctors quite apart from trying to convince you that a particular operation is the right operation for you or particular medication is going to solve your problem medical doctors are constantly engaged in a kind of propaganda in order to reassure themselves and reassure the public that their credentials are unquestionable there's propaganda for the social status of medical expertise as such and the education that confers that credential to a much greater extent the social status of a political scientist of an analyst of a commentator of a pollster of the polling data itself the financial value of a poll is entirely created through marketing through mass information misinformation through propaganda right how much would you pay for a poll that tells you anything whether it tells you how many people want to buy a new cell phone or tells you how many people want to vote for donald trump all right the value of the poll the value of social science research is almost entirely created through this kind of propaganda that we all bathe in through the mass media every day i heard it stated with absolutely no irony on a news broadcast within the last 48 hours uh well you know in the past there were only three or four respected companies that really did this kind of polling in the united states and today there were more than a hundred really respected firms that are engaging in this kind of polling and social science research they can't all be wrong yes they can yes all the psychiatrists can be wrong about antidepressants yes you know a whole profession a whole industry a whole department found on university campuses around the united states of america they can all be wrong about prozac and apart from your faith in the particular medical doctor the particular psychiatrist the particular medication the particular treatment right there is this deeper underlying faith that a man in a lab coat that a professor of psychiatry a professor of the arts and sciences of human consciousness that they know what they're talking about that they are to be trusted and indeed that they deserve a salary in excess of a hundred thousand dollars a year just to sit and listen to you talk about your problems talk about your nightmares talk about your childhood trump how much how much is that worth right how much is a poll worth how much is political science worth how much are the social sciences worth all right there is a type of propaganda in this sense going on all the time that most of the broadcasters are not aware they're engaged in and most people in the audience are not aware that they're engaged in 2016 should have been the death of polling as we know it i'm not naive enough to think that 2020 will finally mark that date when finally mark in the calendar when the american public lost faith in polls and when the clients and the journalists and the newspapers who paid for these polls lost faith in what is now called polling in prior videos certainly four years ago i think about two years ago also i delved into in some depth what people have been accustomed to call polling and have pointed out that it no longer is truly a poll and you could pass a law you know in the same way that you know there's a legal definition of what is and is not butter what is and is not orange juice some products the label has to say orange drink orange flavored refreshing beverage because it doesn't legally qualify its orange juice there is a question of how do you define a poll and should we restrict the notion because a very large percentage of what's now presented as polling information in newspapers and magazines if you read through the fine print and you click on the link or you look up on the internet the details of the poll you will find that the reality is they sent out an email to people who are paid or given coupons to participate in these kinds of consultations on a regular basis that in fact this does not in any way resemble what you may imagine as a stereotypical poll in the 1950s which would either involve phoning people while they're sitting at home uh eating their dinner or would involve actually confronting people face to face with a clipboard you may be thinking of the the census method you know used by the u.s census these these kinds of things believe it or not that kind of research is now considered tremendously expensive it's considered expensive to pay someone to walk door to door and deal with people face to face as opposed to sending out an email and promising people some coupons or discount or payment of this kind so they'll take a minute and sit there on the internet and click through click through some boxes all right if we can really accept that polling is dead that this whole profession that this whole academic discipline has been discredited at least to the same extent that the historical experience with prozac and antidepressants discredits mainstream psychiatry mainstream therapy so so on and so forth i think we can begin again we can begin again and ask what is it that people like me were supposed to learn when we were majors in political science in university i guarantee you if you just start making a checklist we didn't learn it it wasn't taught to us and you know what is the definition of legitimate social science research how is it that we establish a fact even if it is a fact as simple as what percentage of people in ohio what percentage people in pennsylvania what percentage of people in minnesota and so what percentage of these people are going to vote for for donald trump all right one of the most fundamental forms of progress in western society during my lifetime is the progress in labeling today you pick up a can of soup an enormous wealth information is found in that soup the ingredients yes when i was a child they didn't even list the minor ingredients by the way there were lawsuits and court challenges and wrangling and you know this democratic process to get them to list each and every ingredient so you get each and every ingredient you get the breakdown of the protein of the fat the nutritional value um you learn about other contaminants that may be present in the factory but not in the food it's an enormous amount of information on the label okay political information is a product and we haven't yet progressed to the point of having labeling that really tells you what goes in to that soup