RUSH: Have you seen the polling data out of Indiana? Well, it’s crazy. It’s screwy. And I have a way to fix this, folks. I’ve been thinking about this. Here’s one story. NBC: “Donald Trump leads Cruz by 15 Points in Indiana — Donald Trump holds a 15-point lead over Ted Cruz in the potentially decisive May 3 presidential primary race in Indiana, according to results from a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll. Trump gets support from 49% of likely Republican primary voters — followed by Cruz at 34% and John Kasich at 13%.” Well, that’s not… The next poll, the next story:
“New Poll Finds Cruz with Double-Digit Lead in Indiana — Ted Cruz leads Donald Trump by double digits in a new poll of Indiana, which hosts…” This one’s in TheHill.com. NBC News, first; now TheHill.com. Both highly accredited left-wing news organizations, as highly accredited as ESPN has become. “The Texas senator leads … 45% to 29%.” Over here it’s 49% to 34%, Trump. NBC, 49-34 Trump. In this poll, it is 45-29 Cruz. This poll taken by the Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics. Yeah, you have people — the Trumpsters — on the other side of the glass are looking like, “Who? Never heard of this.”
It’s a local, highly reputed Indiana pollster, 45-29. Kasich is in at 13%; 13% are undecided. And there’s a third poll, and it’s an American Research Group, ARG, and this poll is routinely mocked and laughed at and made fun of every time they publish it. The ARG poll had Trump winning Wisconsin by eight, I think. Five or eight, ARG had, and everybody said, “This is a joke!” “Look at the sample,” they said. So we’ve got three polls here. American Research Group, this one has Trump at 41%, Cruz at 32%. So it’s a nine-point lead. So three polls here.
How do we resolve this? I have an idea, folks, to bring attention to the pseudoscience of these polls. They tell us it’s scientific, right, and you know how many people believe these. I mean, the media gobbles this stuff up. They use polls now as news. They use polls to make news. They use polls to shape public opinion. Polls used to be thought of as a reflection of public opinion. That’s not how they’re used anymore. Polls have become news stories, and they are used to shape public opinion.
So here’s my idea. Go ahead, pollsters, do what you do. But then after the results are known, any poll that was wrong outside the margin of error, will be forced to pay $50,000 per point they got wrong to the favorite charity of the candidates they missed on. So in my example here, Cruz leads Trump 45-29 in Indiana. That’s a 16-point lead, okay? What is the margin of error, five points? The margin of error is five points. So let’s say Trump wins this 40 to 30. This company would owe to Cruz’s charity five points times whatever the price per point is, 25 or $50,000.
Put some money behind this. Let’s put some risk in loss potential in this. I mean, how else are we gonna test the integrity of these things. I mean, this is all over the board here. You have three different polls in Indiana, one of them local, two of them national. Well, the firms are national. One’s local. You’ve got a huge disparity. All three of these cannot be right. So rather than go through the samples and the cross-tabs and looking at this and that, let’s just put a little money on the line here.
And for every point over the margin of error that a poll gets it wrong, they must donate — pick your number: $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 per point, outside the margin of error in their poll that they got wrong — to the candidate who they said was gonna win but lost. You think that wouldn’t shape it up pretty sure? Now, I’m choosing these numbers — $25,000, $50,000 — arbitrarily. Some of you pollsters, you’re on a shoe-string budget. You’re all big corporations to me and I’m gonna think of you like liberal Democrats do: You’ve got piles and piles of cash out there just waiting to be spent.
That’s the way they look at you.
So I think I’ll choose to look at you that way today, as, “You’re a bunch of cheapskates! You’ve got all that money hanging around. You got all that stash back there. You’re not spending it! You’re hoarding it for yourselves for when the campaign’s over with. Put some of it on the line.” And if these little polling companies can’t afford that, do something like $10,000 a point. It’s a great idea. It makes all kinds of sense. How many polls…? In the 2012 race, some of the polling was atrociously bad. Some got it right, though. But some of it was atrociously bad. My idea is just to find a financial penalty as an incentive to do better. What could go wrong?
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I was right. It was the ARG poll in Wisconsin that had Trump winning by 10, and Cruz actually won the state big. They threw the ARG poll out for all intents and purposes — the media did– in the days up to the Wisconsin primary. People looked at ARG; they started cracking jokes about ’em and so forth. So they had Trump 42%, Cruz 32%, and Kasich 23%. And ARG, they got that Wisconsin wrong. They’ve got Trump leading by nine in this poll. But then again over there you got NBC where Trump’s leading by 15, which everybody for Trump wants to believe.
Then you got the local Indiana poll which has Cruz leading by 16. Mike Downs. I’ve heard of Mike Downs. (interruption) You haven’t heard of Mike Downs? (interruption) You never heard of Mike Downs? (interruption) I’ve heard of Mike Downs because I’m a powerful, influential member of the media, and I’ve been to Indiana. I’ve been to Colts games Indiana. I’ve played golf at a number of courses, at Fort Wayne, Fuzzy Zoeller’s course.
(interruption) Where else have I been in Indiana? A couple other places. (interruption) Yeah, I did but… (interruption) But… (interruption) I’ve been there enough, though. I’ve heard about it. (interruption) You can sit there and pooh-pooh it all you want, but we’ll just we’ll just see.