The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - Mark Mitchell ｜ 04-30-25

00:00:00.000 Welcome back to the Stone Zone. We're joined now by Mark Mitchell. He is the head pollster for Rasmussen Reports, and I would say a leader in the information war.

00:00:10.600 He is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and former nuclear submarine officer turned financier and technological leader, but he founded himself as a real outsider in an industry desperate to reassert their integrity, and that is, of course, political polling.

00:00:30.000 Rasmussen Reports has made a name for itself, not just for predicting with extraordinary accuracy election outcomes, but also questioning other pollsters in their methodology and timing, and questioning Americans about things that the establishment doesn't want questions asked about.

00:00:49.160 Mark Mitchell, thanks for joining us today in the Stone Zone.

00:00:53.240 It's great to be here, Roger. Let me tell you how happy I am about this.

00:00:56.720 It's a list of people who are like, oh, you're going to love Roger. You should talk to him.

00:01:00.100 John Fawcett, Brandon Hauser, I was talking about today.

00:01:03.700 Rich Barris, they all give shout-outs, and I'm really happy to be here.

00:01:07.060 Well, I am myself, of course, a consumer of survey research going back in a 50-year career in American politics.

00:01:14.840 Mark, I remember the days when all of the polls were taken at the doorstep.

00:01:21.220 That's how far back I'd go in the days of Gallup and Harris.

00:01:24.780 And I talk often about how easily it is to rig a poll.

00:01:32.160 In my view, there are two kinds of polls.

00:01:35.240 One kind is in which the person who commissions the poll and a competent pollster are trying to get an accurate measure of public opinion within the time frame that the poll is taking,

00:01:48.760 memorizing and realizing that any poll is a snapshot of a moment in time.

00:01:54.300 In fact, technically, because public opinion, particularly in this day of mass media, public opinion changes very quickly.

00:02:03.640 Any poll, generally speaking, is only good for that episecond in which it is taken.

00:02:09.860 Now, public opinion doesn't shift that dramatically that quickly, but it does shift.

00:02:15.320 Then there's the other kind of poll.

00:02:17.660 That's the kind of poll that is designed to get a desired result, either for fundraising or public relations reasons.

00:02:26.800 There's a big difference.

00:02:28.280 And polls can be rigged by the wording of the questions, the order of the questions, the accuracy of the sample.

00:02:34.960 There are many, many ways to rig a poll to get a desired result.

00:02:39.960 That's not what you do at Rasmussen.

00:02:43.120 No, it's not.

00:02:43.980 So the first question I have to ask you is, first of all, tell us about your predictions based on your own polling in the last presidential election.

00:02:55.260 Well, we're always trying to be accurate, and sometimes it's harder than others.

00:02:59.080 There are very particular reasons why it was harder than normal back in 2020.

00:03:03.300 We don't have to get into that.

00:03:04.980 But this time out, I was polling Joe Biden versus Donald Trump all the way back into 2021.

00:03:09.820 And every single poll, we had Donald Trump winning by massive amounts.

00:03:14.720 And, of course, it tightened up a little bit.

00:03:16.300 But we were pretty much the only people saying that.

00:03:19.460 I literally had never one poll showing Joe Biden up in the last year of our polling.

00:03:25.280 And then, I mean, what was crazy is that we were putting out so much, and we saw the race narrow after Kamala Harris became the candidate.

00:03:34.040 But for me, it always – it tightened up at Trump plus two and just stayed there.

00:03:39.140 And all of my polling showed that he was going to do good in the swing states, winning almost all of them every single time.

00:03:44.920 And public opinion does change a lot, rapidly, many times.

00:03:48.940 Just look at Pierre Polyev.

00:03:50.180 But what it doesn't change about is Trump, because once you've decided to support Trump, you're pretty much there.

00:03:56.120 Like, you've pretty much gone through the process, in my opinion.

00:03:59.300 After everything they've thrown at him, the amount of psychological operations you have to overcome to be a Trump supporter, you know, he's earned very sticky results.

00:04:07.300 And that's what I saw, and what I also saw was every other pollster except for a couple of other independent ones shilling so hard for Kamala Harris, six, seven, eight, even nine points to the left of me.

00:04:19.680 And they came back.

00:04:20.760 I think I shamed them back into hurting at the end to be a little bit less inaccurate.

00:04:25.780 But they were doing everything in their power, in my opinion, to try and get Kamala – there were Harris plus six polls, and she lost the national popular vote.

00:04:34.180 And not one single mainstream media or academic research institution, not one of them, put out a map that showed that Kamala Harris was going to lose, an electoral map, and we did.

00:04:46.500 We had Trump winning five out of the six swing states.

00:04:48.840 The sixth one was a toss-up.

00:04:51.480 And everybody called us a right-leading pollster, but no, in our swing states, we were actually a little bit too left, believe it or not, almost the full point.

00:04:59.980 So there it is.

00:05:00.840 There are no right-wing pollsters.

00:05:02.380 There are accurate ones and left-wing establishment shills.

00:05:05.940 Yeah, I think that is true.

00:05:07.320 I found a tremendous tendency, particularly right after they dumped Biden and they anointed Kamala Harris.

00:05:15.380 By the way, these were the people who kept whining about our lack of respect for democracy, but they nominated a candidate for president that not a single Democrat, primary, or caucus voter voted for.

00:05:26.700 Just a little reminder I had to throw in there.

00:05:29.720 But in almost every case, I saw this great tendency to oversample Democrats as if they were trying to create this psychological claim that she was surging, she was coming on strong, she was beating Trump.

00:05:44.920 Virtually every poll, when I got into the cross-tabs, I found them oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans.

00:05:52.680 So, and when you add that to the millions of dollars pouring in through Act Blue, virtually all of it laundered money, they were trying to create this idea that there was some kind of surge for her.

00:06:06.920 Well, we both know she couldn't even fill a rally hall, she couldn't fill a stadium, whereas Donald Trump was the only presidential candidate I've ever worked for, and that's, I've been through 13 presidential campaigns, the only presidential candidate I ever saw where he didn't have to go out and work to raise a crowd.

00:06:26.380 All he had to do was announce that he was coming, and you would be guaranteed a full house, in fact, an overflow crowd.

00:06:33.020 Yet, they even tried to claim that he was having trouble filling his rally halls, which, of course, was never, ever the case.

00:06:40.840 Let's talk for a minute about what's going on right now, because you see polling outlets like ABC and Fox News claiming that Trump's polling is tanking and giving him the worst possible 100-day approval rating.

00:06:56.620 What's going on here?

00:06:57.920 Well, it's another psychological operation, just like back in September.

00:07:01.940 They have arrayed everything in their power to take out the anti-establishment candidate.

00:07:07.140 It's really interesting.

00:07:08.040 If you look at the history of Google searches for Trump approval, Bush approval, Biden approval, Obama approval, Trump approval just has, like, twice as much search volume as everybody else, and that's because they're pushing narratives and headlines, trying to convince everybody that America hates this guy.

00:07:22.620 But, you know, he had his first presidency and then added votes, and then I think won a second time, and then added votes.

00:07:29.460 And he keeps adding votes, and he keeps adding support, and all they're left with, they don't have political power now.

00:07:34.540 So they're trying this disgusting, mean girls tactic of, again, trying to convince everybody that Trump's not cool. 0.99

00:07:41.900 Now, I'll tell you, his approval is not great, but that's, I think, more of a reflection of the fact that we're on the cusp of a civil war and nothing to do with – like, we're just not in a country that's going to give Trump an 80 percent approval rating like they did George W. Bush.

00:07:54.400 It's not going to happen, but he's doing pretty well.

00:07:57.260 I had him at 48 percent today, totally underwater two points, totally different than the negative 13, negative 14 points.

00:08:04.320 But what's crazy is you can look at RealClearPolitics and see they essentially planned this as a media hit.

00:08:10.040 That ABC headline, Trump's the worst 100-day polling in 80 years.

00:08:13.480 I bet they wrote that a month ago, and it's like everybody was rushing to get their homework in to dump all their scummy polls into the weekend news cycle.

00:08:20.960 It's like CNN, CBS, ABC, Washington Post, Reuters, Ipsos, and even Fox News gave Trump the worst polling that they have this cycle all over the weekend on purpose, I think, to tank his RealClearPolitics aggregate just to get those headlines.

00:08:39.080 Really desperate tactics, if you think about it, and the independent pollsters were, like, looking around and, no, like, our numbers don't look like these guys at all.

00:08:47.680 And they're so – like, the crosstabs immediately tell you they're so scummy. 0.53

00:08:52.680 If you look at the ABC one, they have Trump underwater six points on the issue of immigration.

00:08:58.780 That's like Loonyville.

00:09:00.520 In my numbers, 65 percent of America supports Trump's massive deportation programs, and he's getting rated well on all these issues, even the economy.

00:09:08.900 We had Trump at a 46 percent excellent or good on the economy, and even though that's his worst issue, that's better than any issue that Biden was ever rated by on any – like, ever, in all of our polling.

00:09:21.000 And so this whole scenario where every single pollster structurally shows that Trump does worse, it's all fake.

00:09:29.420 It's all a reaction to the anti-establishment candidate, the person who's going to try and end the gravy train, the big corporate marriage of power, capitalism and political power that's caused globalism, that's stolen the American dream, that's basically crushed people.

00:09:47.720 And it's like, no, your fake media narratives aren't going to work anymore because people remember what it was like under Joe Biden, and they want Donald Trump to fix it.

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00:10:56.780 I could not agree more.

00:10:58.380 I was looking at the crosstabs in the New York Times-Siena poll.

00:11:01.460 According to that poll, 37% of the people in the sample voted for Donald Trump.

00:11:07.000 Yeah. 0.99

00:11:08.380 Ridiculous. 0.99

00:11:08.860 Well, it's a small poll, too. 0.98

00:11:11.060 It's only like 700 people.

00:11:12.780 It's like really small.

00:11:13.900 They have a massive budget.

00:11:15.420 And not only that, their independents lean 17 points Democrat.

00:11:18.580 Like, my numbers don't look like that.

00:11:20.280 Then there's the NPR-PBS Marist poll.

00:11:24.660 Like, I would believe anything they publish.

00:11:26.600 Please give me a break.

00:11:29.140 It's pretty laughable.

00:11:30.260 One thing I am curious about is voter attitudes about continued aid to Ukraine.

00:11:40.260 Voter attitudes about the war in Ukraine, the war between Russia and Ukraine.

00:11:45.740 Based on the data that you've seen, your own data and data of others, are Americans content

00:11:52.120 to continue to shovel millions, if not billions of dollars more to Ukraine?

00:11:57.380 This is a tough one.

00:12:01.040 Because there are, listen, there are some things that the Americans immediately see through.

00:12:06.060 They overwhelmingly suspected that COVID came from Wuhan way back in 21.

00:12:10.120 And even half of them think that it was purposely released by China.

00:12:15.460 And yet, at the same time, they also are very susceptible to sort of like patriotism,

00:12:21.200 former neoconservative, pro-interventionalist media attacks.

00:12:25.920 And I think that that's something that really did happen because everybody hated Putin.

00:12:30.000 They wanted America to really, like, intervene to stop this thing.

00:12:33.820 And what's happened is, over time, those numbers have absolutely abated.

00:12:38.700 And we've been asking the question very many times, who's winning, Russia or Ukraine?

00:12:44.420 And really, what's happened is the numbers have gotten up to basically half.

00:12:49.160 I think it's a stalemate.

00:12:50.580 And if the United States doing too much or not enough to help Ukraine fight the Russian invasion,

00:12:55.380 34% say too much, 39% say not enough.

00:12:59.420 And obviously, there's a party difference, but not as much as you'd think.

00:13:03.340 And ultimately, voters trust Trump more than they trusted Biden or Harris on this issue, but, you know, by a couple of points.

00:13:12.140 Ultimately, though, you know, we're just in an entirely different political context.

00:13:17.220 You might appreciate this question.

00:13:18.500 We've asked it many times.

00:13:20.200 Who is the biggest enemy that the United States currently faces?

00:13:24.580 And we put North Korea, Iran, Russia, you know, China, all the normal actors.

00:13:29.700 Then we put the Democrat Party and the Republican Party also.

00:13:34.180 And people say that the Democrat Party is America's number one biggest enemy, like 30%, followed by China, roughly 20%, followed by the Republicans in the high teens.

00:13:45.420 And if you look at Russia, it's like 12%.

00:13:48.620 North Korea and Iran are in middle single digits.

00:13:52.940 And so I think this really reflects part of the Trump movement in that Americans might have an opinion about Ukraine or Israel or whatever,

00:14:02.220 but very much in the forefront of their mind and why they're making their votes is domestic issues, is divisiveness, is affordability and a problem with their future.

00:14:13.920 I mean, we have numbers in the low 30s of people who say that they're better off than they were four years ago.

00:14:20.280 And only 22% say today's children will have it better off than their parents.

00:14:23.720 Those are existential problems for our republic.

00:14:27.940 And at the end of the day, Ukraine, I don't think, just captures the share of mind.

00:14:32.940 We have about two and a half minutes left in this segment.

00:14:37.700 A technical question.

00:14:38.720 With the advent of cell phones, with the advent of the Internet, with fewer and fewer people having hard-line phones in their home,

00:14:47.280 and fewer Americans willing to open the door to a stranger, given these times, it has to make the job of being a pollster far more difficult.

00:14:56.380 How do you go about making sure that you are getting a sample that is an accurate reflection of the electorate?

00:15:03.040 That's true, and people have tackled the problem different ways.

00:15:07.360 What most mainstream media organizations are doing is piling into these really limited panels of only 50,000, 60,000, 70,000 people,

00:15:14.240 like the Ipsos panel and the YouGov panel.

00:15:17.300 We still do robodialing landline calling for a little bit less than half of our polls because 90 million people still have them,

00:15:24.300 and we have 400,000 people that like to answer our polling.

00:15:26.740 But then we go to online panels, and those are tougher.

00:15:30.620 You pay people to take the response, and you never really know who's on the other end of it.

00:15:34.980 But it's mostly because our money comes not from a boss, not from a political party, not from dark money NGOs.

00:15:42.880 It comes from subscribers and advertisers.

00:15:45.300 So at the end of the day, I want to be accurate, or our business won't exist.

00:15:48.680 It really is a matter of will.

00:15:51.580 It really comes down to that.

00:15:53.000 And the way I can tell you is that, you know, ABC and Reuters have been inaccurate for like 12 years now polling with the Ipsos panel,

00:16:01.240 but you haven't seen them get any better.

00:16:03.020 So at a certain point, it ultimately comes down to will.

00:16:06.580 In 10 or 20 years, maybe I'll be polling AI bots, or maybe I'll be, you know, casting chicken bones and doing dark magic.

00:16:12.680 I don't know, but there will always be election prediction, and I think that we're reaching more people than almost everybody.

00:16:19.180 And we haven't even needed to go to cell phone yet, although we will at some point.

00:16:23.540 But you raise an interesting question at the end of the day with so many scammers out there.

00:16:28.020 The person who answers a cell phone poll, maybe it tells you more about that person and their mentality than it does about the actual population.

The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - May 01, 2025

Mark Mitchell ｜ 04-30-25

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