The results of the 2019 Turning Point Action Amfest straw poll are in and it's a doozy! Listen in as we discuss the results, the media narrative, and the overall experience at the largest pro-American student event in the country.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:11.000Hour two is underway, and it is the hour that everybody's been waiting for.
00:01:16.000The results of our 2025 Turning Point Action Amfest straw poll.
00:01:22.000So this is something we do at every Amfest, and we've got a major publication that's going to go live with it in just a second as well.
00:01:30.000And here to unpack what we found from this straw poll is the one and only Rich Barris, big data poll, who conducted it on our behalf.
00:02:21.000So congratulations on that because we're talking about a massive attendance, folks.
00:02:26.000And secondly, you know, the biggest thing that'll stand out is, you know, the media narrative and the infighting that they projected was going on over there.
00:02:36.000And we'll see this with the results of the straw poll.
00:03:02.000And you, so some top-level marks that you were just telling me about is, so this was the youngest straw poll result based on just who took the poll, right?
00:03:12.000It was, it skewed the youngest of any that we've ever had because, you know, even we struggle sometimes, Rich, with getting the students to take the darn straw poll.
00:03:20.000This time, we got lots, lots, just the average age of who took the poll was younger.
00:03:25.000So it's actually going to give us a more interesting insight in some ways about where younger Americans, younger conservative voters, younger base voters, where their heads are at right now.
00:03:36.000And it was also the most responses that we've ever gotten at a straw poll.
00:03:41.000And what's remarkable about that, Rich, is that, you know, we intentionally delayed this until we sent it out overnight after day three and into day four.
00:03:52.000We wanted people to have this full experience before we asked them these questions.
00:03:56.000So the response rate on a relatively short turn was pretty remarkable.
00:04:00.000Just explain that from a pollster's perspective, Rich.
00:04:04.000Well, straw polls can be a bit of a upholster's nightmare, right?
00:04:08.000Because as the pollster, you're like, I want to start early.
00:04:11.000But you also want people to have the experience before they answer some of these questions.
00:04:17.000And honestly, it'll become very evident when we show people some of the questions, right?
00:04:21.000Why we want people to hear things first, which can be challenging because for people who are taking it and the pollster, because you are now limiting yourself on the reaction time.
00:04:53.000You know, I mean, as a pollster, I was over the moon.
00:04:56.000When I, you know, one minute, you're logging in, you're seeing the responses come in.
00:04:59.000The next minute, you see an explosion.
00:05:02.000So I think, too, it also tells you that the respondents, Andrew, also were kind of hanging back and saying, let me, you know, let me open it up.
00:05:27.000So, you know, I'm toying with everybody wants to know the who do we want as our 2028 GOP nominee.
00:05:36.000I don't think anybody's, you know, I'm toying with delaying it, but I think we just have to, you know, I think we just have to do the reveal here, Rich.
00:05:44.000What is not surprising is who won, but what is surprising is by what margin.
00:07:08.000There has never been such widespread agreement over, because what are they really telling you when they're picking who they want for the future nominee, right?
00:08:44.000So I don't know if there was anybody worth mentioning in the write-in section, Rich, but that is the field that people most predict for 2028.
00:08:54.000There is something worth mentioning, all right?
00:08:58.000And that is there is there are more than a few responses for Donald J. Trump for a third term, right?
00:09:07.000But again, I mean, you're going to get that some, and that just shows you how much the president is loved, right, by the base.
00:09:13.000But there's outside of that, you know, there's a representation of libertarian wing.
00:09:18.000You get a few for Thomas Massey and stuff like that.
00:09:21.000But it's not, you know, you can see the percentage guys collectively what that comes to.
00:09:36.000In the history of a turning point straw poll that you've conducted, have we ever seen a question like this get, you know, have a front runner with this much margin of victory?
00:11:50.000Yeah, it'll be ready by the time I get to it.
00:11:53.000We were, we actually were shopping what questions to put into the straw poll.
00:11:57.000We just did it the night, I think Saturday night.
00:11:59.000We were talking about what to put into it.
00:12:01.000And obviously, we had the stuff, we've had debates over the past year about America's relationship with Israel, how it relates to stuff in the Middle East.
00:12:13.000It was a recurring theme in our member exclusives interviews.
00:12:16.000So we just said, throw in to the attendees, what best describes what your view of Israel is?
00:12:21.000Do you view them as our number one ally, as just one ally of many, or do you think they're not an American ally, which some prominent figures have said.
00:12:31.000And do we have that result ready to throw up?
00:12:42.000And 13% said not an ally, which I think you mentioned it is the youngest group we've had at Amfest.
00:12:49.000And I think it does put into perspective, I think, one ally of many, it gets an outright majority.
00:12:55.000I think that would probably describe the position Charlie was in over the last couple of years, that they are a friendly country.
00:13:05.000They're a country we care about, but they're not necessarily this monomaniacal focus that we must be fixated on to the exclusion of other potential allies.
00:13:14.000And I think this also shows only 13% say not an ally, that they're basically at best a neutral or perhaps even a hostile country to us.
00:13:37.000So, so, Rich, if you go online, you would be entirely surprised by the fact that within, you know, a statistically significant sample of the youngest and the youngest sample set that we've ever had from an Amphest straw poll, that 13.3%, like you, if you went online, you would think it would be like 50-50.
00:14:50.000I do think, though, that it is a bit of a wake-up call to, you know, the older guard of the GOP who are used to, they've become, there's an expectation, you know, that Israel will get a always, you know, like a bit of a privileged or special place in the conversation.
00:15:10.000And that's not where the future really sees our, you know, when it comes to, you know, where we prioritize our public foreign policy.
00:15:20.000That's just not the future that people see, especially among younger people.
00:15:26.000So that's something they'll have to come to grip with, but it doesn't mean there's this outward hatred or anti-Semitism.
00:15:33.000It's just like, hey, look, we have been put last for a very long time.
00:15:54.000And in hour one, Rich, I said, you know, what's interesting about Amfest and Turning Point in these conferences, we're looking to define the dominant core of a winning coalition, right?
00:16:09.000And so you're going to get these really loud voices that want us to be anti-Israel.
00:16:12.000You're going to get these really loud voices that want us to, you know, essentially say that Israel is the most important topic that there is because it's a proxy war for other things, whatever.
00:16:22.000What we found here is that, you know, my takeaway from this poll, Rich, was that maybe a couple years ago, maybe five, 10 years, before October 2023, October 7th, that you maybe would have seen that chunk that said it's our top ally be a little larger.
00:16:37.000And where it looks like the consensus of the movement is really going is that, hey, Israel is an ally, but they're one of many.
00:16:46.000And so let's just put our own country first.
00:16:48.000I think that is the new consensus that is emerging on the right.
00:16:52.000And that's an important insight to glean from this.
00:18:35.000It's like, you know, it's a sore thumb right there.
00:18:38.000It is by far and away the number one topic.
00:18:42.000And to Blake's point, it kind of had me wishing we wouldn't have done that.
00:18:46.000Just so we could have seen what the other ones.
00:18:48.000But what we see behind it are voter integrity, voter ID at 9.3%, the affordability crisis, which I'm not surprised at at 8.1%, mass deportations, 5.3%, and accountability for deep state law fare at 4.2%, rounding out the top five issues.
00:20:06.000Whereas, you know, the public, that's a little bit, that would be a different result if we were polling the general public.
00:20:12.000But as far as the, you know, not adding the winning the midterms, I do hear what you guys are saying, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, I think I am glad we did it this way because it does show that despite, again, what the media narrative was or was trying to spin, at the end of the day, like the turning point family wants to win.
00:20:34.000I mean, despite everything that they tried to showcase is division, they want to win.
00:20:39.000And the reason for that is simple because they know what's unlike maybe some of the middle of the country, middle of the road, and less politically active parts of our coalition.
00:20:52.000They don't understand what's going to happen if Democrats win.
00:21:46.000It did a little, but then when I was looking at it, I thought this.
00:21:49.000The first two that really are at the top of the rank distribution are ideologies that the base feels are just not compatible with the American ideals, the American way of life.
00:22:02.000And then everything else kind of is stemmed.
00:22:05.000Yes, there are problems, there are social problems, there are economic problems.
00:22:08.000But if we could tackle this other thing first, which is that fundamentally, we've been letting in a lot of people who are not really compatible or not, you know, that, and some of those other problems are stemming from that.
00:22:23.000So, yeah, I mean, I did see where they were, where they were coming from with this.
00:22:27.000And then when after you get past rank two, into rank three through five, we start to see, you know, those other, you know, more traditional things that we would expect people to say.
00:22:36.000So, you know, given that, of course, large faith-based, you know, obviously this is a where there's a population that is extremely Christian.
00:22:50.000So they're looking at some of these ideas that over in the long term, Andrew, it's almost like some of the other things are just symptoms to a greater problem and we have to deal with the greater problem.
00:23:00.000Blake, what's your take on the top five here?
00:23:04.000Number one is just a big testament, frankly, to Charlie, who was really fixated on that topic in the last few months of his life.
00:23:44.000We're going to have this very large, often very radical Islamic component to Western societies that just did not exist before 15, 20 years ago.
00:23:57.000And I think he really did a lot of work to spread that awareness among the base.
00:24:03.000Besides that, I think it's really interesting that corrupt courts, so to speak, has broke into the top five.
00:24:09.000That's expressing this realization that the biggest obstacle to a lot of President Trump's core agenda, certainly on mass deportations, or DEI, is this fact there's just judges who seem to have really taken it to heart that even if they have no legal basis, no constitutional basis for what they're doing, they can gum up the process for years on end.
00:24:33.000If you need the Supreme Court to step in for anything the president wants to do, you can really slow down the agenda in a big way.
00:24:41.000I was most surprised besides, I was really surprised that low fertility finished second from last.
00:25:10.000And then I remembered that Benny gave this blockbuster speech.
00:25:15.000And on the big screen, he threw up this graph showing a recovery in fertility rates, especially among Christians in general.
00:25:25.000And I thought, I hope that didn't impact that because it showed that there has been a lot of improvement in recent years as opposed to what was really, and I still believe is an existential threat to our culture, to our way of life, to our, you know, being able to, in perpetuity, continue the American experience.
00:25:48.000So I thought about it and I said, well, there was that.
00:25:58.000But I wonder if that didn't have something to do with it or people in general aren't thinking that we're making more progress with it.
00:26:05.000But like Blake, I think that's something that, you know, myself included, I mean, we need to keep an eye on because, you know, while there has been progress, it's not nearly enough.
00:26:15.000I want to go to another one here, Rich.
00:26:35.000And the way that you walk with the audience through, Rich, how you had people answer this question.
00:26:39.000So it was basically the same way that a pollster will ask about the approval for the president, only this time you said, look, we want to ask about the cabinet members one by one.
00:26:48.000Tell us whether you approve or disapprove.
00:26:50.000And of course, gave them the option for strongly somewhat.
00:28:31.000And I was thinking much along the lines of what you just said, but she's a part of what people see to be Trump's biggest success or part of that entire issue.
00:28:44.000And on that note, yeah, Rich, why don't we just throw it up?
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00:30:31.000Rich, your lovely wife gave you an insight on that fertility rate thing.
00:31:02.000I think affordability, I mean, also, you know, the thing that occurs to me in that particular venue with those particular people, there's so many babies and kids running around.
00:31:11.000You know, like probably those people think, you know, we're going to have a lot of babies.
00:31:18.000And we have the most responded to youngest by average age of the respondent, Straw Poll, that we are unpacking with big data poll, Rich Barris, the pollster that conducted the poll on our behalf.
00:31:32.000And this one, Rich, I think I'm just going to say it.
00:31:36.000Backstage, I had a conversation with a very important person that we're mapping out 2026 in the midterms.
00:31:42.000And I'm telling you, you know, you've got this issue of base fatigue or maybe lack of enthusiasm, whatever it is.
00:31:48.000We saw this with some of the special elections.
00:33:12.000Yeah, I would say suck it up, buttercup.
00:33:15.000I mean, if you remember when President Trump posted that he would do the moratorium, we actually polled that even nationally and it did extremely well.
00:33:23.000That was right before Tennessee, the special election in Tennessee 7.
00:33:27.000And if you remember, Emerson had a poll.
00:33:31.000And then I came on the show to tell you that once he did that, how much extremely enthusiastic and certainty to vote jumped by double digits.
00:33:41.000And I do attribute that larger margin than some people expected to have come from giving him a little bit of a shot, a wake-up call to the base, wake-up call to the voters.
00:34:49.000I kind of like the idea, but I'm also, I realize that would be pretty dramatic for a lot of people.
00:34:57.000But I think it shows the energy on this.
00:34:59.000It shows how people are enthusiastic to see a sea change on immigration, that there's really been an expansion of what people see as possible in American politics.
00:35:09.000Oh, you actually can secure your border.
00:35:12.000You actually can deport people, especially criminals, people who hate America, and so on.
00:35:42.000And again, we did poll a very similar question nationally and it got 55% support.
00:35:47.000So, you know, I think that people are at a point where they understand that this thing has been kind of like a runaway, you know, car for years.
00:35:55.000Somebody's got to pump the brake until we figure out what it is, until we get our hands on what has happened and what needs to happen going forward.
00:36:03.000Because we just, how much more of this can we take, right?
00:36:07.000Well, Rich, thank you for partnering with us and turning point action, getting this poll done, this straw poll done.
00:36:13.000And I think the results are wonderfully revealing about where, again, that core center winning coalition is ideologically where they're at on the issues, where they're at on Trump, where they're at on Vance, where they're at on the cabinet.