Daily Kos is fortunate enough to be associated with the poll team from Civiqs, led by former professor and statistical researcher Drew Linzer. That gives writers on this site a fantastic resource not just for polling data, but for insight into what it takes to create polling questions that are fair—that is, questions that actually draw information from the public on their real concerns rather than feeding them lines that are certain to draw a predetermined response.
However, it doesn’t take the assistance of a data scientist or polling expert to determine that what Morning Consult did in a poll that’s making headlines on Tuesday is far from fair.
According to Morning Consult, their poll shows that fears about “immigration policy that weakens whites’ power” are a bigger concern than mass violence committed by white supremacists for more than a third of all voters, and for 60% of all Republicans. How much truth there is in this “analysis” is hard to ascertain, because the way that Morning Consult framed the poll was blatantly designed to not only generate headline-worthy results, but to reinforce conspiracy theories being promoted by Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson.
Here’re the actual polling results being promoted by Morning Consult.
But take a careful look at the genuinely small print, as in the text showing what people responding to the poll were actually asked. People were asked about their concern over “mass violence committed in the U.S. by white supremacists,” but they weren’t asked about that issue in a vacuum. Instead, they were asked to compare it to their fears over this:
Officials use of U.S. immigration policy to try to lessen the influence white Americans have on the country’s economics, politics, and culture.
Morning Consult asked people to compare their fears over something that definitely does exist, with something that definitely does not. There are exactly zero politicians and zero policies designed to promote the conspiracy theory that Morning Consult pushed at people in their poll.
You might as well ask in a poll, “Are you more concerned about being hit by a bus, or by that massive killer asteroid now screaming toward Earth at a million miles an hour which will snuff out all life forever?” There’s a good chance the asteroid will rack up a lot of votes. That doesn’t make it an actual threat.
Or, to put it in terms that are more equivalent to what Morning Consult actually did, why not ask people, “Are you more concerned by violence committed in the U.S. by white supremacists, or by the $700,000 that the U.S. government gives to every Black person?” or, “Are you more concerned by violence committed in the U.S. by white supremacists, or by how Democrats are trying replace the current electorate with new, more obedient voters from the Third World.” The first of those is from the Buffalo shooter’s “manifesto.” The second is from a Tucker Carlson diatribe. They’re both the same thing as what Morning Consult actually used: a conspiracy theory fed to respondents without qualifiers and given the same weight as a genuine, ongoing threat.
There are ways to poll over the concerns created by a racist conspiracy theory that was directly cited in the manifesto of a mass murderer as justification for his killing spree. Providing a poll that directly reinforces that racist conspiracy theory is not one of them.
It’s possible to ask about online radicalization without contributing to online radicalization. One other thing: Even given a false comparison, more Americans were still concerned about white supremacist violence.