The Daily Signal - 'Most Terrifying Poll Result I've Ever Seen': Scott Rasmussen on Elite 1%

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

When veteran pollster Scott Rasmussen surveyed a group of Americans he calls the elite 1% earlier this year, he discovered a startling number who say it's OK to win an election by cheating.  The elite 1%—individuals who make over $150,000 a year, live in densely populated areas, and have postgraduate degrees—are overwhelmingly liberal. They give President Joe Biden an 82% approval rating, compared to his 40% average from the rest of Americans. Rasmussen asked these liberal voters: "Suppose that your favorite candidate loses a close election. However, people on the campaign know that they can win by cheating without being caught. Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?" Among all Americans, just 7% said they would want their candidate to win by cheating. But that number rose to 35% among the elite 1% and skyrocketed to 69% among those who are part of the politically obsessed 1%, meaning they talk about politics every day. "I've been polling for a very long time and the last finding is the most terrifying poll result I've ever seen," Rasmussen told The Daily Signal. Rasmussen spoke to "The Daily Signal Podcast" about his findings and his upcoming plans for a weekly TV show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We go out and we make a strong effort to ask questions in the language of everyday Americans. We respect voters. We think they are intelligent. We have great hopes for the common sense wisdom of the American people. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, March 21st. I'm your host, Rob Bluie, and that was the voice of pollster Scott Rasmussen, the president of RMG Research. On today's show, we talk about how Rasmussen's firm is using a different approach called counter-polling to better understand how everyday American. Americans view the world and policy issues here in America. We also talk about his groundbreaking research on the elite 1%, a group of Americans who control many of our country's leading institutions, but whose views are significantly out of step with the rest of the population.

Finally, our listeners get a sneak preview of the Scott Rasmussen Show, which debuts next month on Merritt Street Media. Stay tuned for our interview right after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia Allen, are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, Problematic

Women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues that are particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. Scott Rasmussen is the founder of RMG Research and editor at large of Ballotpedia. He's also a bestselling author and he joins us in studio today. Scott, welcome. Rob, always good to see you. Well, thank you for being here. Your firm, RMG Research is a public opinion firm and it takes a different approach to polling and public opinion

trying to understand where voters stand on key issues. You've coined this term counter-polling. Tell us what that means. Well, counter-polling is designed literally to counter misleading information that comes out from a lot of establishment polls. Our belief is that most public opinion polling that comes out of this city here in Washington, most of it is presented and analyzed in the language of a Georgetown cocktail party.

They use words that nobody else in America uses. They use terms that some people don't know what it means. But the problem is they'll put out a poll. Voters answer the question because they were asked, but they don't really know what the term means. And then they come back and analyze it as if everybody did. That's really not helpful. So we go out and we make a strong effort to ask questions in the language of everyday Americans. We recognize, we respect voters.

We think they are intelligent. We have great hopes for the common sense wisdom of the American people. But we also know they have a lot better things to do with their lives and talk politics every day. So we don't assume they know what the latest details are and what's happening on the hill. It reminds me of after the 2016 presidential election, so many media organizations and even politicians had this reckoning that they were out of touch with the everyday American. So we appreciate you trying to keep the pulse of how they do feel and what they're thinking about. And a lot of times, first of all, we go and ask them, do you know what these words mean?

And then we ask them to describe it. So we start by trying to understand. And the other thing that we do is we don't want to get into the innards of what do you think about this policy detail versus that policy detail. We want to know their attitudes. You know, we want to know because that's, that is something that is constant. You know, we've been polling on immigration. I've been polling on immigration for decades. And you know what's never changed?

about 80% of Americans say legal immigration is good for America, and about 80% say illegal immigration is bad for America. That's constant. Yeah, an important point. We'll come back to immigration in a moment. So you are in the field quite a bit. What are typically some of the issues that you're asking voters about? Are there constance? Does it change on a week-to-week basis?

Well, there's always some constants. We're always asking about the president's job approval, and at least once a month we're asking about the economy and a few other topics. Sometimes it's political, sometimes it's more attitudinal. A lot of times we go through a sequence of, well, gee, Easter's coming up. Let's take a look at some faith-based divisions in the, you know, in the electorate. So there are constants, but for the most part, we're looking at whatever is going on today. We do at least two polls a week. In theory, one of them is always about current events. What's happening right now, does anybody know the government might shut down. Does anybody care? We then go on to the, you know, the second poll might be a deeper

dive into an education issue or something else. But the bottom line is when something comes up in the news, we want to make sure we have some data on it so that we can respond right away with some messaging guidance for our members. One of the polls that you did recently that made a lot of headlines was on what you call the elite 1%. Can you give us some top lines on what you learn from that? Sure. The elite 1%, and I won't go through the long story of how we found them, but... But please explain who the elite 1% are, at least to begin. The elite 1% are people who make at least $150,000 a year. They live in a densely populated urban area, more than 10,000 people per square mile.

And they have a postgraduate degree. That last one is very important. We hear a lot about the diploma divide, that people with a college degree are more democratic and people. actually, it's the post-grads who are different. The gap between post-graduates and people with a bachelor's degree is often bigger than the gap between people with the bachelor's and no degree. So that's the elite 1%. They represent 1% of the population. They are extraordinarily influential.

They also, heavy concentration of them went to one of 12 elite schools, many of whom have been in the news lately of the schools. And the reason I bring that up is about half the policy positions in government, half the corporate board positions in America are held by people who went to one of these dozen schools. So their views really play a large role in the country. And it all feeds into this elite 1%. Let me ask you some specific policy-related questions. But just to better understand this group, you said that they are highly influential. Yes.

What do you mean by that? Well, first of all, they. They tend, they know their congressman. They tend to think that if they have an important issue, I can get in and see them and talk about it. Only 15% of Americans have ever met their congressman even once. You know, so they have a direct policy impact. Okay. They are in power centers, you know, somebody who is in Manhattan or Washington, D.C.

is in a different circle of public influence than somebody who lives in McKinney, Texas. So in other words, they're the ones that are shaping the nation. narrative that we are then consuming on a day-to-day basis. If you're thinking of who's shaping the mainstream media narrative, it's this group. Okay. So let's get into some of the findings. The biggest headline for me was what this group thinks about the issue of cheating in elections. Can you want to pack that one for it?

Sure. We asked voters, 1,000 voters first. Suppose there was an election and it was closed, but your candidate lost. and if their campaign team knew they could win by cheating and not get caught, would you want them to do so? Now, among voters, only 7% say they'd rather cheat than win. I wish it was one or two, but 7%'s not bad. Among the elite 1%, 35% would rather cheat than win. And then among a group that we call a politically obsessed elite.

And these are people who are not only in the elite 1%, but they talk politics every day. 69% of them would rather cheat to win the election. It's because they don't have much respect for the opinions of voters. I would imagine this group, based on some of the stories I saw, also puts a significant amount of value in government action. What are their views on government versus the general population? Well, let's start with a very simple one. Most Americans think we don't have enough individual freedom. Among the elite 1%, about half, say, you know, we've got two.

much freedom. And among that politically obsessed group, about seven out of ten say there's too much individual freedom in America. That's just mind-boggling to me. But part of the reason is because they trust the government. You know, in America, it's been 50 years since most voters trusted the government to do the right thing most of the time. I mean, it's been since 1972. But among the elite 1%, 70% trust the government. Why? Well, partly it's because is what we mentioned earlier. They can get in touch. They can reach out to their congressman or to an agency person. They are the government to a large degree. And it's not a conspiracy. You know, a lot of people I talk about deep state conspiracies. Truly, it's a sense of

a fraternity. We all know each other and we really don't understand the rest of the country. Yeah. Yeah. Government knows best. And the administrative state and others who are in a position of power are there to help make the decision so we don't have to. I would say that, you know, this is not a polling interpretation, but when I look at all the data, there's a sense that, you know, most of us believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people, kind of that formulation. And I think they would say, you know, it's of and by the elites is what's best for the people. I mean, I think that's what, you know, they really believe that if they could just make the

decisions and get us out of the way, be a lot better off. You know, Alexander Hamilton thought similar things a long time ago. I mean, there have been people who have had these attitudes. Woodrow Wilson really wrote about the desire for something close to what we have now. So these aren't, this isn't something new. Some people have always believed that they are destined to rule over others. And America was founded to reject that idea. Yes. Yes. Well, I think that the Elite 1% Project is a perfect example of the type of work that your firm does that we're not seeing from some of the establishment firms. As somebody who's been in the polling business for a long time, I think going back to the

1980s, what is it that keeps you going? And what are some of the trends that you find particularly exciting in the field that you work in? What keeps me going is I remain convinced that most of the polling data is misleading. Most of the data that guides the public narrative is misleading. And as someone who believes deeply in our nation's founding values, I want to lift up the voice of the people so loudly that it can't be ignored in this city. That's the objective. We want to transform the debate.

We want to help people see most Americans still embrace those founding ideals. Most Americans still embrace, broadly speaking, Judeo-Christian values. So we want to celebrate that and then have that informed policy. So that's the driving force. It just offends me to no end to see this misleading impression of the American people. And by the way, as a people, we are far more united than we are politically. You know, in our day-to-day lives, there's an awful lot of unity and common ground. Now, as for the polling industry, when I first did some polling in London, I don't know how many years ago, 35 years ago,

I was asked whether phone polling was acceptable or if you still had to do in-person interviews. You know, now, it's kind of shocking. We've gone through a lot since then, and in those days, the biggest technological hurdle where people were starting to screen calls because they had answering machines. You know, we hadn't gotten to the point where people didn't pick up the phones at all. But the other factor is in the 80s, there was hardly any public polling. And it wasn't until the early 90s that when I began to put out a lot of polling, I was the first person to put polling data directly on the Internet.

And that was really the first time it became. available to most people. And one of the fun things from back in that long ago era is I was mocked by some who said, nobody will be interested in polling data. They want to have it interpreted for them by network anchors. Different world. Yeah. You know, but truly, we could put out a poll then, and there weren't any other polls out for another couple of weeks. And so the fixation on fighting polls and battling polls didn't exist until really probably the end of the George W. Bush's presidency began to really take off. Yeah.

Interesting. Well, on that point for our daily signal listeners, how can they be a discerning audience who is looking skeptically maybe at some of the information that they are consuming from these establishment polling firms, but also critical thinkers when it comes to making sure that they understand what questions are being asked in polls and how to better interpret the data themselves? You know, most people, when they think of polls, they're talking about who's going to win the election. And for that, truly go to the polling averages.

But do so with a little bit of humility. If the polls, if the average says one candidate's ahead by 1%, that's too close to call. Polls with a built-in margin of error aren't designed to call a one-point race. So that's the first thing. When you're talking about only election polls. One of my favorite examples of this years ago, I pulled Burgess Owens race when he run, and he was trailing the whole way. My last poll for the local paper had him winning by a point,

and Burgess was kind enough to win by a point to help my poll look good. Now, I'd love to tell you that's because my polling was perfect. But the truth is, that poll had a three and a half point margin of error. There was no way, that was not the right tool to use to figure out who's going to win the next day. Again, so follow the averages and with a little bit of humility. When you get to other questions on issues, look at the question and see, do your friends and neighbors, would they understand this? You know, last fall when I was starting to poke around in some different issues, I found polls asking about intersectionality. Now, only 10% of Americans can define what intersectionality means.

So what's the point? If you ask about DEI or some of these other terms, people don't. But also, you know, there was a poll about should the U.S. send troops into Mexico to fight the drug cartels? Of course, nobody wants to support that because we don't want to send our troops to Gaza or to Ukraine. I mean, that's – but when you ask the question about what about sending troops to help secure the U.S. border, you get 69 percent. support. So again, it's really thinking through the context of the question, looking at what it means. And that doesn't mean you reject a poll that you don't like the answer to. But it does mean you really just need to take a look. And as always, I think go to RMG research counterpolling and see a

different angle on it. And on that note, on April 7th, I'm going to begin hosting a weekly TV show. So that'll be another source that you can go to. Let's come back to that in just a moment. But I want to stick on immigration for a moment. You have indicated that there's a certain support for some policies when it comes to that issue. We've also seen the issue of immigration take top tier now, in some cases in many polls over the issue of economy and inflation. What does that say about the state of the race as it pertains to president or down-ballot races for Senate-in-house? Does it favor one party over the other when Senate candidates over the other? Absolutely favors Republican candidates in the current environment.

You know, there's been an effort by Democrats to say, well, the Republicans wouldn't pass Biden's border bill. So now they're the ones to blame. Voters aren't buying it. On the issue of immigration, they trust Republicans more than Democrats, but there's still some hesitation. Okay. And then on the flip side, Democrats have made a lot of hay about abortion. So I would imagine that is an issue where Republicans could be on the defensive. Republicans will absolutely be on defense on the abortion issue.

The one thing you cannot do is stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away, which unfortunately many candidates try to do in 2022. But, you know, I think the important thing to recognize is voters don't like extremists. On the issue of abortion, 5% want absolutely no restrictions and 5% want, you know, no exceptions. Be with the 90% express concern. express a recognition that there are two lives involved. And conservatives in particular, and the pro-life movement in particular, needs to acknowledge that there is a woman involved, often a woman in difficult circumstances. And what they need to do is, if you're starting to talk about this issue, talk about the woman, acknowledge her difficult position, offer to help.

You know, one policy that is very well is if a man gets a woman pregnant, he should be financially responsible for the woman and the child throughout the pregnancy and for some period of time after birth. Show your support for the woman, and that's the missing element for most Republicans. Let me ask you about a third issue. It's that issue of economy and the inflation. Reading some of the legacy media headlines or listening to the White House, you would think that it were, you know, in the roaring 20s, 1920s.

The American people just don't seem to be buying it. Similar to your point about immigration, Biden has made a big case that it's the Republicans in Congress who didn't send him a bill, and it's their fault when he took all of these actions, obviously, to open the border in the first place. Do you think that the message on the economy is going to catch on and favor Biden eventually, or is it too late for that to change American people's minds? The issue is baked in because it's what people experience, not where politicians say that matters. You know, half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. You have a bunch of fixed expenses. If the price of gas goes up, you have to cut back somewhere. If the price of food goes up, you have to cut back somewhere else.

And, oh, if you're doing a little better than that and you're looking to buy your first home, well, you can't afford it in this current market. So these are real world things. What could change, I don't have any idea, I'm not an economist. But if the economy does get better in a political sense, what that will look like is the most important question we ask on the economy. How are your personal finances doing? If your personal finances are getting better, well, that's really good for the Democrats. If they're getting worse, it's really good for the Republicans.

At the moment, 21% of voters say that their personal finances are getting better. 41% say worse. Really bad for the Biden administration. But that's really early data. What matters is what will that look like in August, September, and October. Sure, when people are starting to solidify and make their decision. Okay, I want to close on the big news. You revealed it.

I'm sorry. You're fine. So April 7th, the Scott Restmussen show will premiere. Give us some details on what's gone into the planning and preparation for this. And then obviously where our listeners can tune in and watch this. Well, it's going to be part of – I'll start with the last part. It's going to be on the Merritt Street Media, which is Dr. Phil's new television network. It'll be available everywhere, and I'm sure that they'll have

something on the website to tell you about specifics in your local area. But the show came about because of the counterpolling concept, and in fact, because of my belief in some data that I have shown, showing that most Americans still believe in those founding ideals and traditional values. And so the idea is we want to lift that up. The show is going to be, to be a lot of politics in it, naturally, because as a pollster, you can't get away from that. But we're also going to touch on other things. We'll do some holiday types of stories and how people are reacting to that and some cultural twists. And some of that's fun.

You know, my favorite polling question every year is about New Year's Eve. Most people are shocked to learn that more Americans pray than drink on New Year's Eve. Now, that's because a lot of Americans pray every day. It's not because they're out there just on that one day. But it just, really, that's just a different perspective on the world. And we want to highlight that. Again, it's all part of lifting the voice of the American people up so loudly that, you know, you can't ignore it here. So in addition to tuning into your show in a few weeks, what are some of the other ways that our listeners could go about following you and the work of RMG research?

Well, the best thing to do is to go to, I was going to say Twitter. I'm still trying to get used to saying X, but whatever. Go there. and it's at Scott W. Rasmussen. Follow me there. That's where we put out our latest information. Great. Scott, thanks so much for being on the Daily Signal. We appreciate all the work that you do.

Thanks, Rob. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to the Daily Signal podcast. Please subscribe to the Daily Signal wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. And help us reach more listeners by leaving a five-star rating and review. We appreciate all of your feedback. And be sure to check out our evening show right here in this podcast. feed. We help you cut through the clutter and understand what's really important in the news.

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