David Frum: “The Dire Meaning of Gallup’s Announcement”
“Last week, the polling firm gallup announced that it would no longer survey presidential-approval ratings. This news stirred suspicions. President Trump’s numbers are declining badly, much worse than Joe Biden’s at the equivalent point in his presidency. Gallup’s most recent presidential-approval poll, in December, had Trump at 36 percent—well below the RealClearPolitics poll average of 42 percent. Trump is known for taking punitive action. He sued The Des Moines Register and its pollster, Ann Selzer, for an ego-bruising 2024 survey that suggested he might lose Iowa to Kamala Harris.”
“Assuming the worst is often prudent, but Gallup’s own explanation—citing changes in the company’s business strategy—makes a sad commercial sense. Quality polling companies such as Gallup inhabit a world of rising costs, declining rewards, and multiplying competition. Polling worked because people once accepted a call on the phone the same way they accepted jury duty: as one of the small obligations of citizenship that helped democracy work better. Large numbers of citizens have come to perceive the institutions of democracy as unfriendly to them. The dispassionate stranger on the phone inquiring how a citizen intended to vote—and why—is one of those institutions.”
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