The Midterm Elections with Robert Cahaly

of pollsters are showing their bias. Right, they inject their own bias into the outcomes and what they think the electorate is going to look like. That pollster, he's the founder of the Trafalgar Group. His name is Robert Colly. You've seen him on Fox News quite a bit. But he has a history of getting things right. I mean, you look at over the last six years, their average

error rate is two point four percent. Even in the election, they made a huge name for themselves because you know, he stood by his polling results which showed a clear three D plus Trump victory. You know, he was an outlier. Basically consensus was saying Hillary Clinton would win, and Robert didn't back down. He didn't act down. He stood by his results. You've got the real clear politics. Tom Bevan has said that the Trafalgar Group are widely recognized as

one of America's most consistently accurate and trusted. The Weekly Standards said a single firm had the most accurate polls in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, in Georgia. Talking about the Trafalgar Group, So they've gotten a lot, right, I think, largely because they don't inject bias into the polls, and they do things like likely voters, particularly at a time right now when we're head of the election, and

that's really important. So we are going to talk to Robert about this election cycle, what it all means, talk about that hidden Trump vote in two thousand sixteen, two thousand twenty. Are we gonna see a little bit of that again? Is there a hidden Republican vote? So we're going to talk to Robert about all of this, a guy who is a history of getting things right, what he thinks about today's political landscape, where things are going, and what voters care about. So stay tuned for Robert

Cally Trafalgar Group. That's next. We've got Robert ka Haley from the Trafalgar Group. You know, Robert, I'm really looking forward to this conversation because you're one of the few posters people still trust in this day and age. Well, you know, we got into poeing because not because this was anybody's big ambition. This isn't what I took in school. Uh. You know, I was a political of doing campaigns, and we were I was a general consultant. We were running

kind of legislative congressional level races around the country. And what we found is the poem was just terrible. And everybody kind of knew it was terrible, but you know it was like nobody had anything better. And I've studied a little bit um kind of watching. Uh, some you know, kind of digging into the pool. Weren't asking, you know, volunteer into see if I can go to the call center and see what it looks like down there and stuff like that and just get a sense for how

they were doing it. And so I found some what I found figured to be serious falls and UH decided, hey, we should we should try this, uh, and we should try to do it with at a different angle. Uh. And now there was some bomps along the way we that. There's obviously there's some questions when the new technology of the automated polls came out, Uh, there was some questions about where you can you can't do that same as automated calls, and we had a little buff of the

road figuring all that out. But in the end, what we determined was there's some basic mistakes that the police is making first and foremost, I mean, and this is this is the key thing. If you ever want to know how reliable pol is, look how many questions I asked. We do not live in a day and age where average people have time to answer long poles. So what happens is poles disproportionately represent the opinion of those who have the time, and those people tend to care about

politics a little bit too much. They tend to be higher educated, and they tend to be very firm uh in the in their corner. They're either firmly liberal or firmly conservative. And the worst is the people who are just bored and need someone to talk to. And you'd be surprised how people and our society fit that. So

we just think they miss average people. And that's the first thing I mean candidates all the time tell me, oh, well you know this, this this is the pulse when I gave me and I'll look at it thirty or five questions, It's worthless. The manything, there's so much bias that exists in today's world. And when we see it in the media, I mean we see it when we turn on the TV. We see it constantly. The bias that exists and our society. Is there bias in pulling

and if so, how does that bias present itself? Well, first of all, the self selection that that many questions it gives you creates a level of bias. I looked at one the other day. It doesn't matter what state um, but the college graduates, post college and I mean post college and post degree. That so like everything from a from a master's, a doctorate, in a college graduate. They

represented fifty percent of the people in the pole. There's not a state in America that that looks like a general election turnout nowhere, it looks like the kind of people who were participate. And in that case of forty two questions pol And. So what it does is it creates a bias to begin with a people who are more involved in politics and right now, people who have a greater epicacy tend to lean left. So that's the

first not intentional by us. And then of course, I mean you have to look at it every company, no matter what you do. I don't care if you make tomatoes, I don't care. You know, grotovators, I don't kindn't care. If if you build cars, you are built. You are based on what the people who are paying you want. You're you know you your answer to them. So the question is do the media outlets seek polls that are perfect? Are seek polls that fit the agenda of their news department?

And do the universities want poles that are accurate our polls that seek to reflect the position of their university. I mean, in the end, what we found is a lot of the polls and and this is this is true for the ones put out by the partisan groups that that are out there. You know they paid for by the Republican Party, Democrat Party, paid for candidate, paid for by a pack. But in the end you have to answer this question, what was this pollar designed for?

Is it to reflect the electorate or is it designed to affect the electorate? And I will tell you effect is much more than reflect right now, and that's one of the problems. And so what they're doing is they're flooding these these averages and giving people a thought since where races are because there's four or five junk poles in there that have an agenda and then only two or three that are honest, and of course it leans towards the agenda of the junk polls well, and to

that in that vein, I see. You know, if you go to the real clear politics, particularly if you're just saying at the congressional ballot, you have Republicans up five right now, but you're also doing likely voters. A lot of people are doing registered voters. Why do you do likely voters? And why do other people do registered voters? Well, first of all, because they're most these guys are really

bad at predicting news gonna vote. That's one of the things we learned and the Trump campaign last time UH is they were whole groups they weren't pulling, so likely voters tends to give UH an advantage to the Democrats. It just does. I don't know why they switched to it, other it seems very obvious to me because when you're calling registered voters or you mean registered voters gives an

advantage to Democrats? Absolutely? Yeah, okay, I think you actidently said likely voters, but you mean registered voters gives the advantage to Democrats. Yeah, no worries, stories, just wanted to make sure. But when you're calling registed voters, you're calling everyone from Johnny and Susie who have voted in every single election every two years to build the bomb. Who hasn't voted in ten years but still registered? How is that more accurate poll? How do you at least not

filter out people who haven't voted at all? Now, I'm a big fan of identifying low propensitive voters that I think will participate in particular election. But we but just imagine, we had one of the biggest turnouts in America in no one will debate back. Do you think somebody who did not get off their couch and vote in should be getting pulled about two? It's insane. It does not. It is a fundamental problem, and we're never gonna do that.

Talk a little bit about you know, the hidden Trump support that existed in and well, it manifested itself two different ways in we called you they were the kind of hidden the shy Trump voter. And these were people who were definitely voting for trauma um but because of you know, Hilly calling him the basket of the plorables, and and just kind of the stigma that was out there, they were hesitant to say so on the phone. They just were. And the thing is, we all know, I mean,

just forget what I tell you. We all know this is real. Every single person who's listening to this knows somebody who was for Trump who didn't want all their friends and family to know it and didn't talk about it, didn't have a sign in, they y ared, but could not wait to vote for it. We all know people like that. So why would why would you think that everyone is just this forthcoming is forthcoming in a pole?

Of course they weren't. So what they were doing is that they weren't saying who there for were or they were staying in deciety and they when we weren't, or they were staying there for Hillary. So what we did is we we used a little vehicle. Uh. And I would love to take credit for this, but it is not my idea. There's it was a great guy. He was one of Lee Atwater's Contemporaries in South Carolina, where

I grew up and did politics. His name was um Rod Sheeley, and Roy Chiley told me, he said, you need to give people a polite way to tell you something that they think is impolite. And he said you need to ask him, well, how do you think? What do you think most of your neighbors think? And so we came back through and I said, let's just use this little sleeves to the neighbor question. So he said,

all right, well, okay, you're for Hillary. What do you think who do you think most of your neighbors for? And they would say Trump. And what that is is it's it's a projection vehicle and lets people tell you what they wanted to tell you about you, thinking that's their opinion. So we started looking at the difference and in and in states we would measure that how what the margin was between those who said Trump and those who said Hillary and then those who neighbor question was

was different. And the common thing was Hillary uh never went with up. Hilly support never went up, It always went down, and Trump support always went up. And so in every single state it was like, all right, hey, this state's an eight. You know the states the three and we can figure out pretty quickly consistently what what the margin was between the people who said Trumph on question one, I mean Hillary on question question one and

and said Trump on question two. So we were able to get to a better estivation of where the hidden Trump vote was in these states and better identify them and then ask them some other specific questions. There are a lot of things that we don't explain, uh to help us get there because they're they're very proprietary ways we question people. There's ways you can do all kinds of stuff in pulling that you can get you a more honest answer. I mean, if you want to be

one of our callers, you don't. It's not just like being a regular caller who do the polling calls. You have to sign a document. You will never suppose the way we teach you to ask questions. Take a quick commercial break back with Robert Colly of the Trafalgar Group. That's next. Is there a hidden Geope vote right now?

Because I think because the left has gone so insane on certain issues, I would imagine there are a lot of independence or maybe even some soft Dems who may be inclined to vote a different way given today's environment. Is there is there a hidden Geope vote? Perhaps? Yeah, that's often tell you was totally different. It wasn't just they were hidden. They didn't want to participate. The pole with a whole new ballgame in you had conservatives Trump

supporters who literally just didn't want to take polls. What we found is to get we would have to try five times. It's hard to get Republicans as Democrats. So if you're doing a poll and you need he get you know, thirty eight percent Republican for that state and you need to get you know, forty Democrat for that state, we would have to work way harder. We'd have to call five times the number of people, reach out to five times a number of people to get that percent Republican.

Then who would to get to the Democrats because they were hesitant answer. Now here's the other problem. The ones that were not hesitant ansch on the Republican side where they never Trump Republicans who couldn't wait to tell you they hated it. So if the poem company wasn't really trying to get this right, they would end up artificially boosting the size of never trump Republicans since they were more likely to participate in polls, if you didn't filter

that out and put that as a percentage. Wait, that's saying ay, all right, hey, among the Republicans we get there is you know, eleven percent that are never Trumpers. Well, if you didn't make sure that was the case, you'd end up, you know, having of your Republicans have be never Trumpers or more and the pole would be off. And that's why you saw some of the nonsense you saw in these states. I mean, you know, Wisconsin the

great a great example. We had the best pole in Wisconsin in America, and Washington, I think it was Washington Post ABC had it off by like twelve And we had the best one in Florida, and the best one in North Carolina, and the best one in Duxas and the best one I know why Yeah, And there was and there were a few states that you know, we were a couple of points off, and that sometimes like a couple of points of difference between winning and losing, and we can all just we could spend the rest

of our lives discussing how that couple of points got done, whether it was right, but it doesn't matter, it's the past. But the fact is, these these things, these things matter. And that's why the polling was so off compared to what happened. They said this was gonna be a Joe Biden blower. It was by no means that Joe Biden blowout a few votes in a few different states. And it's different game. So what does that mean for the mid terms. The mid terms are very much just like

what Virginia was. So so if Virginia was, hey, we have this oude of your election, there are lots of Republicans and Democrats in Virginia who vote every two years for federal elections, but don't vote in oude your elections. So it was a battle between the two parties see which one could build up closer to their turnout. So it's going to grab those people who don't usually vote, who did vote in twenty and trying to get as many of them to vote as possible. It's the same

thing here. It's it is a it is a motivation game, and so that's and so that's what's really key. So that's why I really don't understand these people who are polling beyond registered voters who hadn't gotten off their sixteen I don't know if those didn't those elections didn't wake up, I don't know what will um. But so that's so you have to you have to pull anticipating your turnout is gonna be somewhere between, and a lot of that

is just where you think that's gonna be. Are uh a young family, you know, people with school age children. Are they going to turn out in the rate they did in ten or are they going to turn out like they did in Virginia because of all the school stuff? Are they motivated on that? Will they come in a higher margin? What what proportion of the thing You're just

gonna turn out? And a usual midterm election, the seniors would represent a much bigger point, much bigger part than they do in a in a presidential election, So a lot of that The difference is first of how you model your turnout, because again how your collection and stuff is based on the models for your turnout and the way you collect the information. So yeah, it's gonna it's it's gonna affect it a lot. And everybody's you know, having different scenarios. I mean, I guess take of me

an attach form being Republicans. So frankly, most of our scenarios are are the better snare for the Democrats and the Republicans, just so we can avoid that accusation. From what you've seen so far in the pooling you've done for this cycle, what does the political landscape look like right now? People are frustrated in general. Um, they they don't really look at a party to solve their problems. And this is what I was trying to say a

long time ago when all these generic ballots came out. Now, like, oh, Republicans are sixty years Listen these people Republicans. When when you see that generic ballot jumping around, what that is is like it's like a guy who's been in a casino all night bet and black and he says, well, all I'm doing is losing. I'm gonna bet read for a while. That ain't the car I usually bet, but I'm gonna because I'm we'll see if I get something different.

And that's what this is is I don't like what I got and we'll see if I get something different. So if the Republicans do pick up a bunch of seach, don't get in your heads that all these people suddenly became Republicans, and they're gonna be walking around, you know, wearing red T shirts for the next ten years. No, they've given you a chance to earn their votes. Well you're gonna do with it. The American public is shopping and they don't know when they don't want a party

at all, but they've got to find one. And so what I see as voters that are hesitantly moving towards the Republicans with because they think they might be better than what they've got. And there has become a separation that be it that it's started, it are official or not, between Joe Biden and the Democrats. What the Democrats are doing is they're letting Joe Biden take all the negative and letting me get blamed on him and trying to separate themselves from him. But in the end, I think

this election is a reference among Joe Biden. I mean, this is the Joe Biden work or not? Is the sum administration making the difference that you wanted or is it going the opposite way? I mean, what's Saul said and done? I think what you'll see And I said this the other iron handy, I said, I think running as a Democrat with Joe Biden as president is like having a household of termites. Everything looks fine on the outside,

nobody's talking about it, nobody has any clue. But before it's over, it's going to be the only thing that matters. How much did the FBI raid on Maral logo. How much has that impacted things or or has it? Well remember that part about how it's switch party can get closer to the turnout. That's that helped the Republicans get closer. There was a level. I mean there was and I

saw this in early the Republicans. We're so angry at all the nonsense in the summer of and all the masks mandate and all I just all the COVID nonsense, all the statue being torn down, all the approaches. They were just so angry, and it was like the only way to scratch that itch was to vote. The only way to get some release from that pressure was to vote. And I'm seeing them feel that way again, and I'm

seeing the Democrats certainly motivated, but not like that. And then there are people in the middle that are just I just almost like in Trump selection where I said that people a lot of people voted for Trump. They didn't like Trump, that's necessarily. They just saw Trump as a big old monkey wrench that they could throw in the middle of a machine that was hurting them. They said, how to hate this system? How do I break it? Oh, that guy looks like a monkey rinch will break it.

Let me throw it. That's what they wanted. And people just think this thing is dysfunctional. I mean, what we get what people are telling us is the government cares about all kinds of stuff I don't, and that would include, you know, constant pressure on Green New Deal stuff which pronounced people use, its establishing all of you know, the white supremacists as a priority for the military, and all the other things they see as nonsense and the things that do matter to people. Am I safe in my home?

Are my children safe from fitting all? Um? Are people coming across our our border and making our communities less safe? Is the economy given me the opportunity to make a good living? Yeah? And somehow the government doesn't seem to be doing anything about that. In fact, seems to be working to the opposite effect. And it's it's like, why is the government working against me? I mean, I feel that way. You know, I think a lot of the people listening to this podcast feel that way. You know,

I know a lot of people on the left. They're they're saying that the overturning of reverse Wade, that that is going to motivate you know, Democrats, particularly Democratic woman. Uh what are you saying in that? You know, how much of a motivating factor do you think that's going

to be for the left? Well, first thing, I'll tell you, I think the luckiest thing that ever happened to the conservative movement was that Leak Because this decision came out now as a decision, but almost like when you know, a government floats an idea to see what the reaction is and so then when happens, it doesn't seem so shocking. The shock value of versus Wade being overturned was cut in half by that Leak decision, and that was helpful

for the conservative movement, uh in general. Now, once the decision came out, it upset them, but it wasn't It wasn't as bad as it could have been. It what it wasn't overwhelming. What I see moving people was what happened in the days that followed, and that is some of these states moving quickly to make further restrictions on abortions and and and just kind of jump on this opportunity because maybe they hadn't done anything on abortion before

that would now be legal. What we have found in our national surveys is that when you look at first trying you know abortion being legal. So p we have where do you draw the line? And what we find is an abortion for rape, incess, in life the mother, for trimester before a heartbeat. You have fifty percent of the population who says that's it, that's all you should have. You start getting into second trimester, third trimester partial birth,

it keeps going down. Third trimester partial birth is only eleven percent of the population that's against. And so when the conservative movement right now is on heartbeat and not before, I mean not after rape, incess life the mother, then they have a winning majority. But when states start talking

about no restrictions, just life of the mother. None of these bills have passed yet, mind you, But when they talk about having special sessions and doing things like that, that's the stuff that is freaking in a lot of these people out And one of the lessons you would think that the right has learned from the left is when you get something you know, don't go for it all immediately. If you really want to restrict abortion, don't push it so hard that you lose a bunch of

elections and then actually lose the ability to restrict abortion. Um. But I see them making the some of the concerns making the same mistake pushing this right now. And you can see the narratives of the insane stories about you know, people are gonna have me arrested for miscarriages and all this nonsense, and all this could be avoided if people would just say, well, we've got a great bill, you know, in are in any particular state. I know, for example,

Georgia the heartbeat bill howl even passed. A lot of states have a heartbeat bill, and uh, you know, and you gotta work in the yard in every single state that has one. But um, moving further on it. And and of course the characterization by the other side that you are I mean, for example, the Kansas referendum, it was not about stritching abortion. It was about taking the power to make abortion law away from the Kansas Supreme Court and handing it to the Kansas legislature. That's all

it was. But the other side came in. The thing was that was the most convoluted word referendum you've ever seen. Uh. And then the other side came in and said, this is a vote to an abortion and people on election. They believe that, and that's why I got shot down it. They thought it was literally voting and making all abortions illegal. So the other side is going to grandstand that they are going to um do all of these things. So now it's not the time to fight those battles. Now's

the time to win your elections. And if you really want to and abortion it's a business. You get a heart of bill. Every abortion clinic in your state's going out of business because they just not have enough customers. And it's so much better when they go into business then when they're perceived to be shut down. Quick commercial break, Stay tuned. What are the top issues that you're saying

right now? Right? I know you've kind of hit on some of it, but if you know, if you're just kind of looking at sort of like the top five and what you're saying, you know, what are they? Well, certainly inflation, Uh, the sense that the government is a little bit out of control. Um. It was funny because I was I was watching the UH Sunday Meet the

Press numbers and they threw up on the screen. Now the average people more worried about the state of the democracy, and and they were painting it like these are all January six people. And I'm like, I know enough about Poe And if that question reads like it looks like it reads after the FBI rate to former president, they're a Republicans saying they word about democracy too, and you just ignored that that a piece of that poll. People

are concerned about this big government's out of control. They're absolutely concerned. So there are people on the Republican side. I mean, here's the thing. If you say that talking about the election being stolen and questioning where the election was honest is a threat to democracy, then can you not also concede that if those people who say the election might have been stolen it were right, a stolen

election is also a threat to democracy. I think you can so take us through for those who are sort of, you know, unfamiliar with how polling works, just kind of take us through a real quick like thirty foot this is how it's done. You don't have to you know, and I know that you guys have your proprietary stuff, so you know, you don't have to get into anything like that. But just but just like the bear, the bear basics, you know, for people to kind of understand

how it all that's right now. Um, Well, with poles, you have to polls about what it's supposed to be. Is it get a snapshot of where the electorate is the day the days you're checking. Um, everybody uses different methods to collect that data. I believe that you need to use multiple methods because I think people live differently.

I see Pauls all the time. They just do live calls and I I want to know what normal millennials and gen Z's answered the number they didn't recognize and talk to you for thirty five minutes none zero, because they don't do that. Uh we uh we make sure we we do calls home and cell phone. We we we we send texts and our text are text back and forth, not text link, so people more plantering. We send emails, We we provide them other callbacks like I can call back, I can take a poll. Lots of

different methods. So we we have a lot of methods that we can ellect all our by data. Uh. We believe in short questionnaires, uh three four or five, six seven most we want to do because we think those are the kind of polls that people take. The first question every pole gets when they call a hous is how long is this gonna take? And if your answer something other than oh, just three minutes, oh, it's just five questions hanging up normally far because they got lives,

they got stuff to do. So we believe short questionnaires, but we believe in large sample sizes. We don't want to come in your state and sample uh less than a thousand people every state poll we put out, and we're doing a lot of state polls this year. There are all a thousand people getting that marginary as low as we can get it. And so those are some of our key factors. And and we tried to do as little weighting as possible, which means we focus on

trying to hit those markers. If I need to find you know, if if I'm doing a state and that's thirty four percent African American, I need to get thirty of my samples from African Americans. It's it's very important. I think that a lot of minority groups are often misrepresented because people get a small sample of them and wait that into what's called weighting it up, which give

it a higher impact than it has. And you know you're not getting uh, you're not treating the people that you're polling that are small groups with respect when when you don't actually give them this give them the representation of the diverse opinions that would happen had you gotten the proper am out of samples. So we're big on getting our samples just right. We usually do the first couple of nights and then after what we're looking see

where our holes are. Hey, you know what are we missing? Well, you know we're missing parents with school age children who live in this part of the state. And I say, all right, what method there was was finding the best too? Well, those guys say email on this part will be responding to email best. Then let's send a ton of emails to that part of the state for that group, and let's make sure we get them all. And that's differently

what we don't have the static. We have to have x many emails in this many text Now we have to get the sample right. That's our priority. And you know we try to just be honest and transparent because unlike these media groups and unlike the universities, we you know, our business is you know, we put a lot of

stuff out there for business development. And there are a lot of industry groups, um companies, funds, you know, people that run hedge funds, high net worth individuals who literally pay us for the services of providing them honest polls that are not skewed by parties or campaigns. Well, we appreciate the work that you're doing, and everyone continue to look for the trafalgar groups work. I know you came out with the poll h the other day with IO Pennsylvania,

So everybody keep your eyes on the work that Robert's doing. Robert, thanks so much for joining The Truth with Lisa Booth. I really appreciate your time. It's great to be here. And I like truth el that's catchy. I like it. You know, it kind of rhymes, it goes well. So well, I appreciate the work you're doing, and uh, we'll we'll continue to pay attention. So thanks so much. I appreciate it. Okay, good bye. How even polls now are skewed? How even

polls now our bias? It seems that bias is steeped into you know, pretty much every aspect of her life and uh so'm sorry. So it was an interesting conversation with Robert always looked to their polls. You know, I trust the guy. I think it's a really trustworthy guy. And he's a history of getting fixed right, which is hard to do, particularly when we learned the pooling business. So appreciate you for listening to the show. One of the thank John Cassio and my producer for putting the

show together. Tune in every Monday every Thursday, but you can also listen throughout the week On The Truth with Lisa Booth