Newsmax loves right-wing pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin so much — they also served as pollsters for Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign — that they have their own column at Newsmax. And they’re so biased that they offer advice to Republicans on how to message so they poll better. In their Aug. 29 column, for example, they huffed:
Shouldn’t the Republicans be challenging the Democrats on the future of America? Do we really want to allow the Joe Biden big government socialists to continue to transform America?
[…]Why did the Republicans allow President Biden a vacation from the campaign?
Why are they allowing the Democrats in Congress who voted for his failed agenda to hide those votes? September needs to be the month where Republicans aggressively challenge the Biden big government socialists on inflation and higher prices.
[…]If the Republicans want to regain majorities in Congress, it’s time to follow President Trump’s example and play offense against the Biden Democrats.
The McLaughlins’ Sept. 28 column hyped their own midterm polling that “Republicans seem to have an edge, but — the trends are mixed.” They then displayed their bias — and, thus, their lack of credibility — for all to see by openly rooting for Republicans and offering them advice on how to win:
GOP opposition leaders need to make a more effective case, that the U.S. is on the wrong track and that it’s President Joseph Robinette Biden’s fault!
Biden needs to be on the ballot — not Trump as the Democrats would like project.
Biden is the president. Biden is on the ballot, and our nation’s condition is Biden’s fault.
There’s still plenty of public sentiment that Republicans can make that case.
[…]The 2022 midterm madness is upon us.
Everyday counts.
The Biden big government socialists are fighting for their majorities. The Republicans must fight to take them away and restore America to the right direction. 41 days.
Should anyone who’s not a rabid right-winger trust anything the McLaughlins do as being credible or trustworhy after that rant? Probably not. On the other hand, the Media Research Center bought a McLaughlin to try and prove its own version of Trump’s Big Lie about election fraud.
The McLaughlins, unsurprisingly, also receive airtime on Newsmax TV and on the Newsmax website to promote the narrative that Republicans are trouncing Democrats in the runup to the midterm elections. Here’s a sampling of the promotion the McLaughlins have gotten just in the past month or so:
- GOP Must Fight to Take Away Biden’s Big Gov’t Socialism in Midterms
- McLaughlin to Newsmax: Issues, Not Biden’s Flubs, Will Decide Fall Vote
- McLaughlin to Newsmax: Major Pollsters ‘Trying to Drive Down Republican Support’
- John McLaughlin to Newsmax: Republicans Have ‘Momentum’
- Pollster McLaughlin to Newsmax: Dems’ ‘Candidate Quality’ Led to Ducked Debates
- McLaughlin to Newsmax: Polling Puts GOP Ahead in Key Races in Arizona, Georgia
- Pollster Jim McLaughlin to Newsmax: All About Inflation, Crime
OIthers have noted this sort of right-wing pol-hyping, done in an attempt to flood the zone and create the perception of a “red wave” for the midterms. Democratic adviser Simon Rosenburg has noted this flood-the-zone strategy, which obscures that there are polls that show Democratic candidates doing well, as has MSNBC host Joy Reid. Newsmax didn’t like that story, and neither did the McLaughlins. Thus, Jim McLaughlin made a Nov. 2 Newsmax TV appearance to lamely play whataboutism:
Pollster Jim McLaughlin, pushing back at a report from MSNBC host Joy Reid that Republican pollsters are inflating polls in favor of GOP candidates, said Wednesday on Newsmax that left-leaning media organizations and universities are the ones who are skewing the polls by including fewer Republicans.
“This is the typical example of the left, accusing Republicans of what the left is doing,” McLaughlin said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “You are still seeing a lot of these national polls right now done by the media and these colleges and universities where Republicans are only represented in their surveys by about a quarter of the vote.”
Earlier this week, Reid said on her program, “The ReidOut,” that polls suggesting GOP candidates are surging ahead were part of an “insidious and seemingly intentional campaign from Republican-backed polling firms to flood the zone and tip the balance of polling averages in favor of their candidates, to create a narrative that Republicans are surging and that a red wave is imminent and inevitable.”
But McLaughlin noted, for example, that an Emerson College poll scored Rep. Lee Zeldin, the GOP nominee in the New York governor’s race, down by 8 percentage points against Democrat incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.
“The problem is with the survey again,” said McLaughlin. “They oversampled Democrats at about 53% and undersampled Republicans at only about 23% or 24%.”
Not only did writer Sandy Fitzgterald not disclose the McLaughlins’ right-wing bias, she gave McLaughlin a platform to display that bias again:
McLaughlin also commented on President Joe Biden’s speech in Florida, where he referred to Republicans as extremists.
“The truth of the matter is, it’s the Democrats who are the extremists,” said McLaughlin. “They’ve spent $6 trillion we didn’t have that cause this crazy inflation. They’re not even getting hit on all these tax increases in the Inflation Reduction Act. These are the same folks that have given us open borders.”
Again: Not the guy anyone who’s not a right-wing ideologue should trust with their polling.
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