Polling As A PsyOp

Vaccines and masks are clear targets... political candidates are as well.

I’ve suspected for a while that political polls could be tools used by nefarious actors within the U.S. Government to sway public opinion rather than measure it.

You could imagine a few easy ways to do this:

1. You could, as a government or proxy for one, pressure polling companies to shift polls in certain directions, just as the U.S. Government did with social media companies during the pandemic.

2. You could have assets within the company who could alter polling rolls or adjustments made to produce the final numbers.

3. You could covertly create fake individuals who find their way onto polling rolls. When dialed, these are handled by assets who answer polls to sway the final result.

Any of these are easy for the U.S. Government to do and the second two aren’t all that hard for a foreign government to do here or abroad.

Why a government would do this should be obvious: polling is not just a measurement of public perception, it has a huge capacity to sway public perception. This capability has been termed the “bandwagon effect” in social psychology. While it is hard to measure given the effect has a long time horizon, it makes sense given that humans are largely conformist.

Beyond increasing support for a given topic, polls can also be used to demonize a small minority and make them seem incorrigible, or also to normalize a less popular idea by inflating its support. Many people aren’t likely to buy into something with 3-4% support, but if it hits 10%, 15%, 20% etc. more people become increasingly open to it. We see this kind of flow all the time with political candidates who steadily increase and then reach a tipping point where they then get massive waves of support.

All that said: polls are an obvious tool if an entity like the U.S. government was trying to control and sway public opinion. And as anyone who follows any news knows, the U.S. government is absolutely trying to control public opinion. You don’t just wake up one day and try to launch a “Disinformation Governance Board.” Instead, you do that work behind the scenes for years, and even when you get caught trying to make it public, you still do that work behind the scenes under a different banner.

Do you need convincing? Three polls recently came out which should put to bed any question on the topic.

Mask Me Harder Daddy, One More Time

Newsweek just published a poll result from Rasmussen which states that:

“Amid rising COVID-19 cases, a new poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows 76 percent of Democrats support a mask mandate, an increase from a 2022 poll.

According to the new poll, taken between September 6-7 and 10 that surveyed 1,091 American adults conducted over the phone and online, 76 percent of Democrats support a mask mandate, compared to 33 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of the unaffiliated.

This was published 3 days ago: September 26th, 2023! As anyone walking around on the street can attest, there is simply no way this is the case that nearly half of Americans would support a mask mandate. Even in leftist shitholes cities you’ll see less than 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 wearing a mask.

But leave the left aside for a minute as we do know that they love ritualistic self-flagellation and forcing it upon others. I’d love to find out where the 33% of Republicans are that they found to support a mask mandate! Indeed, I’d love anyone to find me one single Republican, nationwide, who would support such a thing.

This Vaccine Will Work This Time, Right?

Another poll came out that looks to bolster the latest pharma money grab vaccination campaign. Published by KFF it states that “Nearly half of adults say that they will “definitely” or “probably” get the newly recommended COVID-19 vaccine.”

This one may be slightly more believable. But considering the uptake from the latest “booster” was only 17%, it is very unlikely that you’d see close to 50% uptake on this thing. Some of this could be due to known biases in polling: people will say they will do things that they won’t end up doing and people are more likely to say yes to things that are perceived or portrayed as virtuous.

Still, I’d like to believe this poll is more propaganda than a ringing indictment of our national intelligence. Then again, perhaps most people aren’t aware that the latest “booster” was only tested on 10 mice, that people up-to-date on Covid shots are more likely to get Covid, and that almost no other country is trying to do this again.

Surging Orange Man, Failing Senile Man

Moving into the realm of political polling, a recent ABC News poll is quite likely a psy op. It suggests that Trump would be up 10 points, 52% to 42% on Joe Biden in the 2024 election.

This is anomalous to all other current polls by a wide margin:

Included in this is the claim that Trump is ahead 53-38% with 18- to 35-year-olds, which does not pass the sniff test at all. Consider that 18-29 year-olds voted 59% for Biden in 2020 vs. 35% for Trump. Is it really possible that we’ve seen a net 40 point shift amongst the same age bracket? Almost certainly not.

The mask and vaccine cases can be considered obvious attempts to coerce behavior and views in the name of population control, sorry “public health.” here though, we need to do a bit more triangulating. There are two viable options:

1. This poll is being used to help ensure Trump does get the nomination as Democrats believe he is the easiest target to defeat.

2. This poll is being used to make Biden look weak, and pave the way for a late entrant into the Democratic field (many hypothesize the treasonous Governor of California, Gavin Newsom).

It doesn’t have to be either-or, and could easily be both of these and a bit of other interests as well.

But this is all quite eminently possible, especially if you look at the polling methodology. ABC says that this poll “The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.”

So you have a group of eight people in a small office in Carmel New York running the poll, and Abt Associates in Rockville Maryland collecting the data. It would be absurdly easy for the CIA, FBI, or other Federal Agencies to infiltrate or have influence over Abt Associates.

Indeed, Abt’s first capability listed under “What We Do” on their website is the Orwellian “Communications & Behavior Change:”

Source: here

A quick tour through their website, and it’s clear that this company is almost fully funded by government agencies.

A Conclusion

One thing I struggled with when writing this is that polling traditionally is a great way to get an understanding of the bubble that we all live in. Each of us have an incredibly biased group of friends, neighbors, and family that are not representative of the country as a whole. Given that, we should trust polling over personal experience.

But sadly, this factor is also what makes them great targets for swaying the public, since they cannot easily be refuted!

That said, these three polls seem to cross the line into the realm of naked propaganda, and we have to call that out when we see it. It’s a safe bet that other polls are more subtle forms of propaganda and that some, I assume, are still honest attempts at measuring true public opinion.

We truly do live in a post-truth world where information is the main weapon in our new forms of warfare. This article that I wrote almost two years ago is a good follow-up as it looks at how we got here, our branching perceptions of reality, and what it means moving forward: