WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — A poll published last week by German-owned Politico Magazine insists that “most Americans — including a large number of Republicans … “ agree that the former President Donald Trump’s trial on federal charges he mishandled classified documents should take place before the Republican Party primary.
And nearly half, according to the Ipsos poll of more than 1,000 “adults,” believe Trump is guilty.
Trump’s pollster, John McLaughlin, says not so fast.
The veteran numbers man and CEO and partner of McLaughlin & Associates, asserts the Ipsos/Politico poll doesn’t jibe with voter sentiment in myriad national and statewide polls. That’s because, according to McLaughlin, the polling numbers are skewed — resulting in a narrative that somehow a divided America is uniting around Trump’s guilt.
“The recent Ipsos poll commissioned by Politico is directly contradicted in both sample and results by DJTFP24 [Donald Trump for President ’24] internal polling as well as numerous other public polls, leading to skewed outcomes that generate faulty reporting,” McLaughlin wrote in a memo to Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller.
Unlike standard polls of registered or likely voters, the poll for German-owned Politico surveys 1,005 adults. As McLaughlin told The Iowa Star on Friday on NewsTalk 1040-WHO in Des Moines, the Ipsos poll sample is heavily weighted to Democrats, who hate Trump with the intensity of a dozen white-hot suns. In Ipsos’ poll sample, 37 percent of respondents identified as Republican versus 44 percent Democrat. That’s a different look than the 2020 presidential election exit polls, which showed party affiliation at 36 percent Republican and 37 percent Democrat.
“There’s a 6- or-7-point bias against Trump in the poll,” McLaughlin said. “And the point of it was to say the trial of Trump should be moved ahead, but he’s guilty.”
The Ipsos poll, according to the July 6 piece in Politico Magazine, was conducted June 27-28, roughly three weeks after Trump’s federal indictment and almost three months after the highly partisan Manhattan District Attorney criminally charged the former president with multiple felony counts related to hush money paid in an alleged long-ago affair Trump had with a porn star. Respondents, 18 and older, were interviewed online. The poll has a “credibility interval” of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points for all respondents, according to the publication.
Nearly half of those surveyed — 49 percent — believe Trump is guilty of crimes alleged in the federal records handling case, according to the poll. That apparently includes 25 percent of Republicans who responded. And 48 percent of respondents — including 24 percent of Republicans — believe Trump is guilty in the Manhattan DA’s pending prosecution, the magazine reports.
“Nearly two-thirds of respondents (62 percent) said that the trial in the pending federal prosecution should take place before the presidential election next November — a figure that includes nearly half of Republican respondents (46 percent). A lower number, but a still-solid majority, said that the trial should take place before the Republican primaries begin early next year (57 percent of all respondents, including 42 percent of Republican respondents),” the publication reported.
But just a quarter of respondents said they understand “very well” what the federal sensitive documents case is all about. Only 21 percent said they understand the Manhattan case, which includes complicated charges on falsifying records.
“The questionnaire puts the verdict among largely uninformed adults before the process questions in a decidedly Democratic sample,” the McLaughlin memo states. “The questionnaire finds President Trump guilty and then wants to rush the trials, which Politico is overeager to write up.”
Such strong sentiments of Trump’s guilt and the interest in a rapidly-moving trial would seem to contradict a raft of polls showing Trump dominating the field of Republican presidential candidates and leading President Joe Biden in a head-to-head match-up.
In the latest RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump leads his closest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, by 32 percentage points. In the McLaughlin and Associates poll, taken after the Biden administration-led federal indictment against Trump, the former president led Biden 49 percent to 44 percent. The Trump campaign poll was not an outlier.
RealClearPolitics’ polling average shows Trump narrowly leading Biden (44.1 percent to 43.5 percent). Trump outpaced the Democrat 44 percent to 40 percent in the most recent Economist/YouGov poll, and he was up by 2 points (45 percent to 43 percent) in the Messenger/Harris poll. Biden was up by as much as 4 percentage points in the mid-June NBC News poll.
But McLaughlin said Trump leading the Democrat’s anointed didn’t happen in 2016 and 2020, suggesting trouble ahead for Biden’s re-election quest.
The McLaughlin & Associates poll on June 20 found, among Republican primary voters, 79 percent agreed that Biden and the radical left have weaponized the justice system to prosecute their political enemies and to interfere in the 2024 election through the indictments of Trump. Only 15 percent disagreed. Again, it’s Trump’s polling firm, but other polls show deep concerns from conservatives about what they see as the political weaponization of the executive branch.
“Joe Biden wants to make Donald Trump the Nelson Mandela of America,” McLaughlin said. “They want to put him in jail, which is incredible. I’ve told the president the only crime he’s committing is he’s ahead of Joe Biden in the polls.”
Politico Magazine reporter Ankush Khardori, who wrote the Ipsos poll piece, did not return The Star News Network’s request for comment. Representatives from Paris-based Ipsos could not be reached for comment.
Other polls have raised concerns about narrative shaping in the early presidential primary season.
As The Star News Network has extensively reported, Republican pollster Public Opinion Strategies (POS) rolled out a bunch of battleground state polls this year insisting DeSantis fares better than Trump in head-to-head match-ups with Biden. But those polls have consistently underrepresented traditional Trump voters in the quest to spin DeSantis as more electable than the Republican Party presidential nomination frontrunner.
Ultimately, POS refused to release topline and demographic information to The Star News Network. The firm also wouldn’t talk about the people paying for the poll. As reported last week, Public Opinion Strategies announced Thursday — as DeSantis jumped into the race — that POS partners Gene Ulm and Robert Blizzard will be working for the DeSantis presidential campaign.
“We are excited to announce that POS Partners Gene Ulm and Robert Blizzard (@robertblizzard) will be supporting and working for Ron DeSantis for President, providing strategic advice and counsel to the campaign,” the firm tweeted.
A new POS poll commissioned by a pro-DeSantis PAC again finds the Florida governor leading Biden, but Trump trails by 4 points, this time in Nevada. Again, the representative sample leans to groups of people who don’t like Trump, marked by more college grads, fewer conservatives, and fewer working-class voters.
🇺🇲 2024 GE: NEVADA (with leaners)
(R) DeSantis: 46% (+2)
(D) Biden: 44%
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(D) Biden: 47% (+4)
(R) Trump: 43%⦿ Commissioned by Pro-Desantis PAC
⦿ @POStrategies (B+) | RVs | 07/05-06https://t.co/2LBK3SnKer pic.twitter.com/ADoen1YDGl— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) July 7, 2023
“‘POS’ is an appropriate name for this polling company. They intentionally undersample conservatives and working class voters in order to make Nevada look more palatable for Ron DeSanctimonious, but all other polling shows President Trump leading by a big margin,” Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior adviser, said in a statement to The Star News Network.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
