Polling:
All right, latest Harvard Harris poll run by our pal Mark Penn. Fair poll, 2,286 registered voters. That's a big, big crew. Favorability of Donald Trump as president. Approve 48, disapprove 46. Right or wrong track of the country. Right track 39, wrong 49, 10 point gap. Next question, do you approve of the Republican party or disapprove? Approve 51, disapprove 49. Finally, approve or disapprove of the Democratic Party, approve 42, disapprove 58, big gap. Joining us now, from Miami, Florida, is Mark Penn. He's the chairman and CEO of Stagwell, a global marketing firm. And you do oversee this poll, but this poll is different than most other polls. How come?
"I'm sorry you went in and out of there.".
This poll, your poll, Harvard Harris, is different than most of the other polling. Why?
"Well, look, you know, we interview voters, and you have to be careful. Well, there are two things. One, you have to differentiate between the polls that tend to interview all adults, because all adults tend to be more negative about everything. And so they're more negative towards all politicians than voter polls. We're a voter poll. The second thing is I made sure to readjust my sample after the election to make sure that it represents that the Republicans now are a bigger party than the Democrats. That was the result of the election. That's what Gallup found. And I think a lot of the other polls just, you know, basically had Harris winning and then stuck with their exact sample. We had it very close within two points, either way. We made sure that our samples, we believe, accurately represent the country. And it's not like Donald Trump's in the 70s or anything, but he certainly has continued to keep his constituency, maybe a little bit more. He's got some very high approval ratings on some of the policies, you know, he is pursuing and some things that people are not as happy with."
Okay. And I'm a kind of guy that puts the polls into perspective as far as data is concerned. And you're running on us, Paul. I've never had a problem with Harvard-Harris poll. I don't have a problem Gallup, all right? McLaughlin is always very accurate. And the guys in Brazil are good. Forget their names now, but they were the best on the presidential race. Do you believe that there are certain outfits that have their thumb, cliche, on the polling scale and want to deliver a bad poll number for Trump?
"Well, look, I think you've seen the entire media, you know, gang up pretty much on the president and his policies. You've seen it. Imports are only 10% of the country and a 10% tariff on 10% of the country's 1%. And oh my God, did you see dire predictions of complete economic collapse here? All right, tariffs, you know, may not be a positive move compared to tax cuts and may have some dislocations. But relatively speaking, you saw this vast exaggeration of their size and impact. And at the same time, it's the same thing I think that you see in some of these polls. They don't ask the questions that they don't want the answers to. We're very clear. People support taking those people who are here illegally and committed crimes out of the country. There's no question about that. They may not be for renaming the Gulf of Mexico into Gulf of America, but when it comes to the core immigration policies that the president is pursuing, that's supported by like 70 percent of the country, if not more."
Well, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, because you know more about this than I do, but I've been around a while. When you are being paid to deliver data, you pretty much want to please your paymaster. It's a psychological thing. And if there are ways that you can do that, and you pointed one of them out by keeping an obsolete model, that the Democratic party has a bigger presence than the Republican party, when that's not true any longer. But nobody knows whether you're keeping that or not, except you, and you want to get paid, you'll keep the obsolete model. That just makes sense, right?
"Let me say that the Harvard Harris poll is done as a... purely because I felt that newspaper polls were no longer reflecting the kind of more accurate polling that I did at the... When I worked with President Clinton. Because I mean, I went back and I saw, well, sanctuary cities. Would you think it's popular that cities don't pick up people who are designated as and have committed crimes and deport them? Well, I found out that no poll had asked that question since 1978. Right. So a lot of the polls don't carry the questions they don't want the answers to now. I'm not going to indict the whole profession. People run honest polls."
But your poll is a lot different than 80% of them. Let me ask you one more question, forward-looking. The media, as you pointed out, does have a tendency to try to panic the folks. You use the tariff example, the import example, it's very low. When the folks hear that, and then they see a down day on the stock market or a down week, they do indeed panic, and that is reflected in the polling, correct?
"Yeah, I have actually found that the voters are less sensitive to the stock market. They're mostly sensitive to the prices that they pay and to the unemployment rate. And those things very much directly affect politics. Look, why isn't Trump, you know, in the 50s or 60s, right? Because the most important issue right now is inflation, and people haven't experienced inflation coming down or prices down, even though gas and eggs are down somewhat. The president is off on a lot of other issues, particularly immigration, but also on tariffs, on a number of these others. But the voters, I think, are really looking for a demonstration that the economy is going to be strong, that his economic policies are going to work, and that their wages are going to grow faster than prices."
That's what he's trying to do, but nobody knows whether that is going to work or not. Mark Penn, thank you very much. We always enjoy talking to you, and we'll speak again soon, I hope. Thank you.
