Latest / Man in America Podcast / Civil War by 2029? Expert Pollster Reveals SHOCKING Data w/ Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports

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Civil War by 2029? Expert Pollster Reveals SHOCKING Data w/ Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports · Man in America Podcast

• 0:14
  Seth Holehouse: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Hullhouse. As we approach the upcoming election and we are worried about the fate of our country, there's a lot of speculation about what's gonna happen. And what's interesting is if you look at the polling now I, you know, specifically ignore most of the mainstream polls because I believe they're just manipulations to try to get, you know, confirmation bias, and they're trying to get people to think, oh, well, if Hillary is at 99%, you know, to win the election, I should vote for her. I think that they're absolutely a tool of, you know, public manipulation.
• 0:48
  But Rasmussen polls is one of the few that actually I I pay attention to. They they seem to be the outlier where they're actually looking for honest data, and not necessarily, you know, right leaning data, just honest data. Right? Can you consider that most of the polls are heavily left leaning? So today, I'm gonna sitting down with Mark Mitchell, who's the head pollster over at Rasmussen polls, and talk about, like, what he's seeing.
• 1:10
  Because, you know, people that in the in the position of polling, they've got a really unique understanding of the the sentiment of America. And he's got some pretty alarming information that he shared with me, you know, one being that, you know, almost half of Americans are concerned that there will be a civil war within the next five years. That's not a good sign. So we're gonna be diving into the data that that he's uncovering, what it tells us about the election, what it tells us about the future of America, and also what it tells us about the the, matters that really matter most to foe to people people here in America. So folks, please enjoy the interview with Mark Mitchell from Rasmussen polls.
• 1:46
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• 2:39
  Mister Mark Mitchell, it is an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I really appreciate it. We talked about how you wanted to go into one of my favorite topics, which is integrity in the industry, and I can definitely get everybody up to speed on what's going on there.
• 2:56
  Seth Holehouse: That's great. So, just a quick background. You're with Rasmussen polls, which is, you know, I'm looking at polling. I I kinda go right past almost every poll out there and see what you guys are saying. So can you just give us a a quick, you know, basic background on Rasmussen polls and and also, like, what your role is with them specifically?
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Polling's changed over the years. It's always been about asking Americans what they think and then reporting on it. In the past, there always has been election prediction, but a lot of it was focused on policy or social issues. We got into the media a lot with those kinds of things, but it seems over the last decade or so, in my opinion, the news has gotten much more interested in telling people what to think.
• 3:41
  Really, what's kind of been left is this election prediction game, which I think is important. Without pollsters asking Americans what they think about who's going to be the candidate and then reporting on it, you get what happened in Venezuela and we need that. The problem is that polling is difficult. It's harder than it's ever been. It's not magical.
• 4:03
  Everybody thinks that polling is about really predicting the future and nailing what the race outcome is going to be. What I think it is is just releasing up to date data. That's how I think everybody has to frame their opinions around polling is it's just a stream of data. When somebody looks at one poll and says, Well, they have Trump doing this, and another poll and says, Well, they have Harris doing this, you're looking at two different streams of data. And so I think there's a reason to go to one pollster and look at how they've performed over time.
• 4:36
  Also, I think that other polls, even the ones that lean heavily left, are data and can be looked at and can be used to understand the state of the race, But the problem is that there's a lot of tactics that people could use to change those numbers, and we've seen it time and time again. That's not our motto. We're independent, so that means we don't take money from any of the campaigns. It means that we're not affiliated with any political party. We're just trying to be accurate.
• 5:05
  If we have a sponsor, we'll disclose it. All of our income comes from either bespoke polling that's all disclosed who sponsored it, or advertising and subscription revenue. Literally, over time, if we're not accurate, we won't have subscribers. We do also because we poll on because we're independent. What's happened over time is the pollsters have all been sort of attached to mainstream media organizations.
• 5:31
  As you know, there are topics that you absolutely can't touch. But in our opinion, we've been doing the public service of asking about all those questions for the last four years. And so because of that, because we believe in press and the freedom of speech and journalism, we've been slandered as a right wing pollster. I think we are trying to be accurate and we, again, are independent. And if that's the kind of
• 5:58
  Robert Kiyosaki: moniker that we get for asking about things like election integrity, I guess so be it.
• 6:02
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. It's a good so be it. So, you know, the I don't pay attention to polls very heavily. You know, I'll see them going on Twitter. A new poll says this, or, you know, look at what, you know, Nate Silver is saying with five thirty eight.
• 6:14
  But I also know that that they're so manipulated. And if you look back at 2016 in the Hillary race, was like, oh, Hillary's upwards of 99% chance of winning. And when they were wrong, I went and found. I tried to find them admitting why they are wrong, but they actually couldn't make up a reason. Like, you the more you dig into it, it's like, well, we're not really sure why we were wrong, but hopefully, we'll figure it out.
• 6:34
  And I think that a lot of it was actually just manipulation. I think that if you look at, you know, a group psychology that if everyone's driving a red car, you think, maybe I should get a red car. Those are pretty popular. Right? And so for a lot of people that are undecided, they might look to that poll and look for that social validation.
• 6:49
  Robert Kiyosaki: Yeah.
• 6:49
  Seth Holehouse: And so, you know, what I'm seeing now in the polls, it seems like it's this this neck and neck race. Right? I'll see, oh, Harris is up up two points, and now now Trump's up three points. And it it feels like it feels like it's way closer than it should be, especially when I see someone like Elon Musk who does a poll on his Twitter following, and it comes out as, you know, 75%, you know, want Trump versus 25%, Kamalan. It's a sample of tens of millions of people.
• 7:15
  Now granted, you could say that it's skewed data because he's become more right wing, right, you know, according to the media. Yeah. But so where where are are what's your current assessment on where things are at based upon how you're polling right now?
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, let's talk about bias first.
• 7:33
  Seth Holehouse: Okay.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: All humans have bias. There is no such thing as an unbiased human. Then all polling has also bias, but what it ultimately comes down to is if you have integrity and are trying to do a good job and you've discovered you have some bias, and by bias I don't mean ideological. I mean your numbers literally just need to be shifted left or right a little bit. Then what you do is you say, Oh, I made a mistake, and you shift it and go back.
• 7:59
  But then there's confirmation bias, which she talked about. I think that one of the kinder ways to explain the continuous leftward slant of the polling industry, and it is. If you look FiveThirtyEight put out a twenty twenty pollster ranking chart, and it's directionally corrects, and if you look at the stack ranked accuracy, starting at the top with everybody who hit a very small average polling error, right now those pollsters all show the race tied to Trump positive. Once you get to the bottom, it's all showing Harris leading, right? So that's the crazy thing about the industry.
• 8:35
  It's like the more inaccurate you are, the more likely you are to show the Democrats how to lead. Some of that's intentional, but some of that, like you said, is confirmation bias, which is, Well, my data says this and I want it to say this subconsciously, and so I'm comfortable with where it is at and I'm not going to adjust it. That's what happens. Then with Elon Musk's Twitter feed, that's selection bias, which is you can't just ask a random stream of people a question and not weight it to what the actual electorate looks like, and the truth is that even though he's not a conservative, his Twitter following absolutely slants towards open minded individuals who probably index high on objectivity, and those are pretty much Trump supporters, so that's how you get numbers like his. Now, the big fructs of the race, and I'll say in my latest numbers today, we have Trump plus two.
• 9:30
  We've had Trump plus two the last three weeks. I don't think the race has moved much, in my opinion, that's the big story, that despite everything that's happened, the polling, in my opinion, has been remarkably stable, Even when you look at individual pollsters' numbers, they're doing the same thing. So ABC, Ipsos, they have Harris plus four. Do I think she's up for it? No, but for the last month and a half, they've been pretty much putting out Harris plus four, and that's way different than it was in 2020, way different than it was in 2016, and I think it's because Xi's an incumbent, Donald Trump's been president, he's had everything thrown at him, and he's earned his followers at this point, which according to our polling, which we really don't mess with methodology, is higher than it's ever been in the last eight years.
• 10:16
  Then you come down to it like, Why is the race as tight as it is? This is a fundamental question that needs to be answered. There are a lot of things going on with people the way they think in this country right now because Trump wins on almost every issue, and yet the race is close. Just looking at Pennsylvania, number one issue is the economy. Trump leads on the economy, but we have Pennsylvania tie.
• 10:42
  And a lot of it is deeper because for instance, Democrats, their number one issue just up to maybe July or August was the economy, but now for Democrats, the number one issue is abortion rights and protecting our democracy. Maybe this is because in the polls I'm getting more politically engaged people. Maybe there are more CNN watchers. Maybe there are less normies or maybe really there is 46%, forty seven % in this country who is coming up with mental issues to convince themselves that Kamala Harris will be the better pick for the border, for the economy, for her gender values, like all this stuff that they index better with Trump on.
• 11:24
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. I mean, it's you certainly can't look past the role of the media, with this, and it's it's astounding to see. And even some of the recent polls I've seen or, you know, not say polls, but charts and showing that with among, you know, conservatives and Republicans and independents, their trust in the media has plummeted. At the same time, within the Democrats, their trust is skyrocketing. And so it's almost like everyone's really doubling down right now, and and and there's I don't really, to me, that shows not a big shift.
• 11:53
  Right? It shows that people that have their beliefs set right now are just kinda doubling down, whereas maybe the independents, could say, where those are the ones that maybe were kinda floating in the middle. They it seems like they've tend to follow the more Republican perspective on things, especially looking at some of the polling or some of the charts that came out after the debate, right, that showed that the independents were kind of tracking right with the Republicans in terms of their response to the discussion. So how so if you're gonna do polling, you know, walk me through like, can you say, for instance, that your polls right now showed Trump up about two points? How how many people is that based on, and what does that methodology look like to come to that place?
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: So one of the reasons pulling is gotten hard is you used to be able to just reach out on a landline and sample thousands of Americans who would happily pick up the phone, and that those days are over. There is no single source place to get a good sample of Americans, and everybody's wrestling with that in different ways. You have people that have built their own panels of individuals, and usually those are smaller samples, and in my opinion, most of those lean left because they're funded by major media corporations and they cultivate the data source that they want to see. In those kind of polls, Trump is losing among independents. In my polls, Trump is winning.
• 13:15
  Then you have people that are spending a lot of money to reach out to folks on cell phones, and it all has to be done with live dialing and it's very expensive. The problem is with how many scams there are, at some point you just say, Well, that's the gold standard. You're going be able to reach every American. Well, you're also reaching a person that might not represent the entire electorate that you can't adjust with the weightings. It's like the human that picks up spam.
• 13:46
  Who is that person? What we've been doing is we really lean heavily back twenty years ago in our founding into landline robo dialing. Over the years, we've built a brand. We've built a lot of people who have answered our polls, and there are still 400,000 Americans that have landlines that answer our call in the last three years. There are still 90,000,000 landlines out there.
• 14:08
  Now the problem is that they're all 55 and older, 50 and older, but the electorate turns out to also be more than half 50 and older, so what we have to do is find another source for the other half of our data and we use what other people do, which is online panel aggregators and online panels. Now, these are tricky. They're constantly changing. There are data quality issues, and we're aware of that and working very hard to maintain our data quality and standards. But if you are not trying to do that, I think that you get the kind of things that you might be seeing again in some of these left wing pollsters.
• 14:47
  Now, again, they definitely use tactics to show a Democrat lead. I can point to clear cut examples where we've caught these people, but then at the end of the day, there's also they might, out of one of these samples, get 10% of the data points that you can just tell the person didn't read the questions, so you might have to put questions in to catch them or throw them out for taking not enough time to answer the survey. It takes the integrity to do that before you start waiting and trying to elicit an outcome in the results. We have a very diversified data source. We're using online and phone.
• 15:25
  It's people who have time and time again responded to our calls, and we're doing our best to make that match the electorate. We think we've done a very good job. We were about a point and a half, two points, two left in our opinion in 2020, and we think we've corrected for that. But our flavor of data is relatively stable because of that, and now in the same methodology that showed that Trump was down six points four years ago, we show him up too. So it's
• 15:53
  Seth Holehouse: I'm curious. Where where was your polling at heading into 2016?
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: '20 '16, I can actually pull it up while we're talking. 2016 was an interesting one. It's so very different than this cycle. We're rolling off Obama. People were kind of not very thrilled with his second term and Hillary Clinton was not a likable candidate and Donald Trump was very unknown and also in some ways not unlikable.
• 16:21
  So back then, they first started, Trump was getting numbers in 'thirty six, 'forty one, 'thirty nine back in even just the spring leading up to 2016, and Hillary Clinton wasn't breaking 40 most of the time either. Then because of that, they hit this knife fight in the mid-40s, the last couple samples. Again, we hit Hillary Clinton up. The reason we got called a right wing pollster in that cycle was just because we put out one or two data points that showed that Trump was up. But our final call was Hillary Where is it?
• 16:59
  No, that's 2020. Our final call was Hillary Clinton up too. Pretty good. The average of our last few weeks of polling looks like it would have been Hillary Clinton plus two or three. So we kind of nailed that, but what's different now is that where Trump was getting 43% of the electorate in our final call, he's getting 49% now.
• 17:21
  Where Hillary Clinton was getting 45, Harris is only getting 46 or 47. So he has, over the last eight years, picked up a ton of support and changed people's minds, and that's why we show him winning independence now in our numbers. If you look at any one of the mainstream media pollsters, what you'll find is that they still have Harris winning independence. Like you said, there's other forms of validation that show that independents are leading Trump, and that's why we're comfortable that our polling is right. But at the end of the day, there's a group of us who, and I say us, people who are showing Trump tied to slightly up in the national popular vote and not conservatives.
• 17:59
  I'm talking about like New York Times, CNN only has Harris up one, Atlas Intel's to the right of us, and The Wall Street Journal I think is in our strike zone too, and then there's everybody else that has Harris four to six points. Really weird to see them clustered that much. If the election were held today, one of us like, listen, it'll either be exactly in the middle and we were both equally wrong, but time always says that the higher average polling errors always lean left, which means I think we're right. And so it looks like it's Trump's race to lose right now subject to electioneering in the swing states.
• 18:37
  Seth Holehouse: I see. I see. And that that makes sense. And so what if so what are the other kind of types of polling that you're doing? Because I obviously, you're looking for determining, you know, who the presidential winner, you know, will most likely be.
• 18:51
  Right? That's probably the main poll that people are looking for right now. But I I also imagine that what you're doing is you're taking a pulse of the American people. And I feel that in a very unique situation where, you know, I'm reaching, you know, you know, couple on on any given month, I'm I'm reaching a few million people. Right?
• 19:06
  And so now granted, I have a following that's kind of that's gonna build itself around me on social media platforms, etcetera. So, you know, I get the opportunity to ask questions. Now, obviously, I'm speaking to a very specific slice of the audience. Right? And I'd say that it's probably a 0%, of, you know, Harris voters within the audience that I'm reaching.
• 19:25
  But, you know, beyond that, I'm able to ask questions like, how are you doing right now? What are you what are you worried about right now? And the responses are really helpful to see whether it's inflation or the border or, you know, the the the COVID nonsense, etcetera. So with with what you're kinda pulling in, what what what would you say is the sentiment of of Americans right now, and how would you say the sentiment right now is different than how it was, say, back in 2016?
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: Americans are mad, and they're on the brink of civil war almost.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've been pulling how likely a civil war is over the last couple of years and right now we got it at forty one percent and think it's happening in the next five years. Every form of it isn't just the media almost every institutionalized organization has lost a significant amount of trust under the Biden administration. You can blame it on COVID. You can blame it on the weaponized political system. But people are mad.
• 20:20
  Then looking back on Joe Biden's term, they tell us by quite a bit that his term was a failure and not a success and that Kamala Harris deserves most of the blame for his failures as well. Just things like 60% of voters think the media is the enemy of the people. A majority of voters think the FBI is Joe Biden's personal gestapo. Over 60% of voters thought that Joe Biden profited from Chinese companies. 64% think the media is getting talking points from the central intelligence agents.
• 20:55
  Stuff like that across the board. The question is, it's like, well, we're taking all this temperature. We think everybody needs to know the state of the lack of trust because if you were a politician in DC and you wanted to fix those things or if you were a journalist who wanted to hold power structures accountable, you would care what Americans think. And what's wacky is on all these issues, also election integrity, also vaccine safety, I could go on for hours. Nobody except our followers have cared.
• 21:28
  Nobody from Capitol Hill has reached out to us except for two people last week. Not even very many conservative journalists, to be honest with you. That's supported by anything more than the bare minimum of ads, they run from it. And especially the main conservative news cable channels. That's the state we're in.
• 21:51
  If Republicans really wanted to win, the entire conservative thought leadership structure would be funding us to do polls because we can tell them how to combat this stuff. I think abortion is a very good example. 53% of the country says pro choice, only 37% says pro life, but only 15% of the country wants late term abortion. It's like one in four want abortion after three months. Everybody else wants heavy restrictions on abortions, and yet time and time again, Republicans and conservatives lose on that issue.
• 22:23
  Then the states were finding, we did a big swing state poll, we found very similar kinds of things where Trump is leading on almost every issue, but then tied on things like when considering gender and sexual identity issues, this is Pennsylvania numbers no, sorry, Arizona numbers which candidate's values are closer to your own, and Trump and Harris tie in 46. But then when you say, Do you agree or disagree? There's only two genders, 71% of Arizona voters agree. So that, you're talking about the media, something insidious is going on there. 27% of Arizonans support hormone replacement therapy and gender reassignment for surgery for kids, but they overwhelmingly support Harris, you know, with Trump on gender values.
• 23:14
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. It's it's hard to make sense of it all because if I listen to the issues that you just laid out there, right, border security, right, concern over civil war, trust in the media plummeting. And even what you mentioned about abortion, only 15% support late term. And, actually, the the the larger percentage want you know, they're they're more pro life. Right?
• 23:34
  Is that correct? The the larger percentage are are pro life. Right? That they're
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: No. No. Pro life loses.
• 23:40
  Seth Holehouse: Oh, okay.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: It's 53% to 37%.
• 23:44
  Seth Holehouse: They won
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: the argument. They have complete moral high ground and supremacy on the messaging around abortion even though if you were to get down to brass tacks, the nation sides with pro life people pretty much. That happens time and time again is that basically the Democrat voters lean somewhat conservative on a lot of these issues, and yet the core of the Democrat and leftist nexus is always left of where their voters are, but Republican voters are always right of where the Republican party is. Pretty kind of wild how that always happens time to time.
• 24:26
  Seth Holehouse: So because when I look at the different issues that you brought up and and where the where the kind of public is at, if if I took just what you told me and then you said, okay. Extrapolate from there and and and and kind of pick your candidate for the race, I'd say, well, based on what you're telling me, it seems like it'd probably be more sixty forty towards Trump. Right? You know, if you look at the economy, you look at them saying that, you know, that they think that Joe Biden's term was was atrocious. They they blame Harris for it.
• 24:53
  Yeah. You have all these things happening. So how is it that there's there's all those there's other polls that show the country is not happy with the Biden Harris regime or, you know, whatever you wanna call it, and that they yet there's it's still coming in, states like Pennsylvania as fifty fifty or even a national average, it's, you know, what, fifty two forty eight or or fifty one forty nine, you know, a two point difference. Like, to me, it's like, I I can't find I can't see how the relationship makes sense.
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: There I think of it like sports. There's Yankees fans and Mets fans, and maybe the Mets are always losers, but all of a sudden they got some money or they're turning it around or they just drafted somebody majorly. And I think the Yankees fans would just root for the Yankees harder. I think that's really what it is, and I have the media numbers that I want to tell you, but it's even clearer than that. In Arizona, let me find this one.
• 25:53
  We asked the question, if you were given the choice between two candidates, one who supported 100% amnesty and one who supported 100% deportation, the deportation candidate wins 51 to 33. Even though you literally have a deportation candidate and an amnesty candidate. Mean, it's just incredible. But here's you wanted to know, I think it almost all comes down to the media, to be honest with you. That's why what's happening isn't so insidious.
• 26:21
  Also think it's why, and listen, the conservative side is definitely guilty of Echo Rooms as well, but I think they went through an arc where they outgrew that and learned from it and are more seeking. I can feel people who follow my content slant conservative and are seeking objective thought and facts and information. I think the people on the left are seeking cozy blankets right now, but which issue is the most important one for the next president to solve? I gave him a limited list: abortion rights, legal immigration, rising prices, and protecting our democracy. Now, we also asked, Which cable TV news channel would you be most likely to trust?
• 27:05
  CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or Newsmax? You can see where this is going. People who watch CNN, thirty percent of them say abortion rights is the biggest problem. 34% say protecting our democracy. That's 64%.
• 27:21
  MSNBC, fifty five % of MSNBC watchers think protecting our democracy is the biggest. Another 30% for abortion rights, that's 85% of them. Only 4% of MSNBC watchers care about the border. Only 11% of them care about prices. But now Fox News watchers, 49% illegal immigration, Newsmax sixty seven percent illegal immigration, and rising prices gets you up to 82% of Fox News watchers care about illegal immigration and rising prices.
• 27:52
  Same thing for Newsmax. So it's two different Americas that are rooting for two different teams in a way that, like I said, has been making the civil war number tick up inexorably, and now even for the first time in this poll, we asked the question, Who's America's biggest enemy? And Democrats won now where China used to win. It used to be China, then Russia, then Democrats, Republicans. Now in Arizona, it's Democrats twenty four percent, China twenty percent, Republicans sixteen percent, and Democrats think Republicans are the biggest enemy and Republicans think Democrats are the biggest enemy and independents are depending on the state leaning more towards Democrats being the enemy.
• 28:35
  Seth Holehouse: Wow. So that's real that's really interesting to to think about that there's not just a divide. Right? Obviously, there's always been a divide. It's there's always been, you know, this two party system, which which I have a lot of problems with.
• 28:47
  I think that it's it's a it's very warped from what the country was originally supposed to be. Right? Where it's like, you can only become president if you're handpicked, basically, to be one of the candidates that, everyone's forced to vote for a or b. Right? It goes into Edward Bernays is given two choices.
• 29:01
  Right? Coke or Pepsi, and that's it. Yeah. But if you look at if you look at that, like, what that tells me and you look at that in correlation with the civil war numbers is that not it's like, okay. In America, the the division in America is not like this.
• 29:17
  It's not like a or b. It's like a or b. It's it's like the the the gap between the two types of people in America, I feel like has never been larger. And I don't and I don't see that changing, but is that are you is that your kind of your same sentiment? Folks, hold off on purchasing your first order from Balance of Nature because I have some important information you need to hear.
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• 30:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, as measured by civil war numbers, yes. As measured by a domestic political party being selected as America's biggest enemy? Yes. In my numbers, we look at each question based on the demographic results to find where the biggest signals are. It used to be that the biggest signal was in maybe party or ideology.
• 31:04
  It's like in the age of Trump, party seems to matter a little bit less. Now in every single question, the biggest difference is always in Biden approval, always. There's probably a better question than that, but maybe Biden approval represents some proxy for blind trust in power structures and authority, maybe, but we're talking about, I'll ask a question and 80% of Republicans will think this and 40% of Democrats will agree, but then you get out to Biden's strong disapprovers and it's like 93%, and then the strong approvers is like 91%. So there's something about him and this administration, I think, that drove that wedge for sure. You mentioned the two party system.
• 31:53
  I'm trying to be a little bit of a futurist here or try to attack it from a different angle in that there is just going to be this ideological yin and yang of people that want maybe statism versus freedom or whatever the two different spectrums are, so it makes sense to me that these types of political conversations happen mostly on a spectrum. But what might be weird to me is how all of it is headquartered in one place aligned for a very particular interest. That's potentially, in my opinion, the bigger problem. I think you look around and you see all this vitriol and wonder where it's coming from, and I ask, Well, who has deescalated any of it? Show me a sign of anybody deescalating.
• 32:41
  I think people on the right would probably say, Well, no, we're right. We shouldn't deescalate, and people on the left, they want to win no matter what and maybe aren't even thinking about right or wrong. I think the RFK endorsement might've been really the only thing we've seen, but Republicans in DC are capitulating over and over again on things that Republican voters want. They're just losing. There's really no nexus of support behind Donald Trump for former conservative or Republican.
• 33:15
  It's kind of like in 2016 when he won the horse race, everybody who lost out on a future gravy train because of it became Trump deranged and funded in order to do that. I think that's how you got the Lincoln project types. Basically it's because we didn't get what we wanted, and so I don't know. I think maybe there's a way to ask on that, but maybe I should put DC. Is DC the biggest enemy that America faces?
• 33:41
  It really could be.
• 33:45
  Seth Holehouse: Looking at the the division that we're seeing and the the people that I think you said about what, you know, 41% are concerned that civil war will happen in the next five years, which is frightening because I think that that's, you know, that's a lot of people. That's almost half the nation that believes that the country will descend into civil war, which we haven't had here in a very, very long time. And it's like, that's a that's a pretty big belief. Right? Like, if if close to half the nation thinks that in the next five years, there will may potentially be civil war.
• 34:17
  I mean, how do we even look towards the future if that's the belief that people are arriving? I mean, it's it's a you know, you mentioned Americans are angry, and they're they're they're mad, and that they're concerned about civil war. So what do you think that in terms of the polling, where's that anger coming from primarily? Like, and and what's what's fueling that?
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: I'll try and give you some examples. Like, I I told you the one about Joe Biden making money from China. I told you about US intel agencies seeding political news with talking points. Over 60% of Americans think that January 6 was a Fedsurrection. I think it was 64%, sixty five % of Americans agreed that the political prosecution of Donald Trump was like something that would happen in a banana republic.
• 35:08
  In COVID. We had polling that showed that half of Joe Biden's strong supporters wanted to put unvaccinated in prison camps and imprison people who spoke out about the efficacy of vaccines, so everybody lived through that. I think election integrity is the other one, right? People were concerned about the twenty twenty election. All of them?
• 35:27
  No. But then ubiquitously across the board, every media outlet, even conservative ones, even Republican leaders everywhere in DC said that it was the safest, most secure election in history. But 49% of people said, Hold up. I'm concerned that the outcome might have been affected by cheating. Then for the last four years, we've been covering the investigations.
• 35:48
  Are some. They're embarrassing, but there are some and they have very important information. You haven't seen anything about that in any of the mainstream conservative organizations, certainly, only in independent media. But now 66% of voters, including pretty much half of Democrats, I forget, I think it was a majority, but maybe not, think that the outcome of this election is going to be affected by cheating. That's what happens, right?
• 36:13
  It's like, okay, you gaslight, you sweep it under the rug, and the concerns grow. I think they're doing that about all types of things. The Republicans, it's like they don't have any other option than the Republican Party, but we just pulled on the SAVE Act, and I think it was 80% of Republicans and 56% of independents wanted the government shut down to get legislation to prevent illegal aliens from being registered to vote. Even 47% of Democrats supported that, and it's like, well, no, they just kicked the can, right? So there's no de escalation, there's no resolution to the core concerns that citizens have, there's no seemingly strong non Trump centralized leadership addressing authentically the concerns of the voters in my opinion.
• 37:07
  I think that's kind of what the polling is trying to tell me subconsciously. Yeah.
• 37:13
  Seth Holehouse: You know, I because I and listening to you say this, I feel like that, you know, so many people are focused on, of course, the presidential poll. But, like, to me, the much bigger story is where Americans are at psychologically. I mean, this is it's it's like regardless of which candidate gets in, our our country is a wreck right now. Like, it is you know, people are stressed, angry. They're they're struggling to get by.
• 37:34
  They they they're, you know, struggling to know, they're choosing between heating their house or buying groceries. They're working two or three jobs. They're they're seeing their neighborhoods, like, know, get taken over by immigrants. Like, look what's happening across Ohio. And so I I feel like that that's like and hearing you talk like this, that's what I'm I'm I'm kinda seeing in this is that the American people have this sense that something's really, really wrong in this country, and I think that it's it's it's a very accurate sense.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Are you better off than you were four years ago? Arizona numbers, only 34% say yes. Will today's children be better off than their parents? Only 17% of Arizona voters say yes.
• 38:17
  In our national right track, we do right direction, wrong track. Every night we pull it, and the numbers for right track have been about 35%, but they're being driven up by Democrats of whom 60% say we're on the right track, but independents and Republicans, it's like seventeen and twenty five say we're going in the wrong direction. I think that's all a referendum on the Biden administration and sort of the overreach of power and the inefficacy and a guttural fear everybody has or is America safer than it was four years ago? Only 25% of Arizona voters say yes.
• 38:56
  Seth Holehouse: Which isn't crazy that it and now where where are you where's Arizona in terms of Trump versus Harris?
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: We hit Arizona at Trump plus two. I will say this. So again, looking back at 2020, we think we were about on average two points, two left, but we were like six points on average, two left in the swing states. We didn't do much state polling. It was really tough.
• 39:20
  Trump outperformed in the polling across the board, everybody. Mean, there were people like 12 points, two left. So we corrected for some of that, but it's like you don't just chase the last election, right? So we think that there's probably still a few points of Republican overperformance baked into our swing state polls, which means that now Trump goes from Pennsylvania tied to maybe plus two, and then Arizona plus two to maybe comfortably outside the margin of error. But then also what I'm not doing here is looking at headlines about Scott Pressler's work in Pennsylvania or how Republicans have an early vote advantage and then using that to create a positive upside scenario with my weightings to try and predict the outcome.
• 40:09
  I'm supposed to be reporting on what should happen, not what could happen, but I do think there's a case to be made that Trump will potentially outperform our polling in a very real way in which Casey's winning a ton of swing states and it looks pretty unwittable for her. The case for her outperforming the polls is like, well, maybe ABC News and Morning Consult finally got it right or maybe they upped their turnout game somehow in some way that was not symmetrically met by Republicans, which does happen often.
• 40:46
  Seth Holehouse: And so looking at the the drivers of the sentiment that the American people have, you know, you you've talked a lot about the media. How considering that we're at this place where, say, you know, over 40% believe that there will be civil war within the next five years and and the the division that we've talked about thus far, how much of that do you think is caused directly by the media? Like, you you mentioned some of the data already, you know, based upon who watches MSNBC and what they think. But in terms of just the high level picture of what you're seeing, how much of this division, this you know, really, the the hatred, I feel like that's between the two parties in our country. How much of that do you think is on the shoulders of the of the media companies?
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: Hard to hard to assign a percentage, you know, but I will say it isn't I use the word regime, I think. Is very real connections between Democrat power structures and entrenched government powers and the media 100%. All of them, no. All the time, no. But look at that ABC News moderator debate.
• 41:55
  It still exists in a very real way. But I also there definitely is some blame to be placed on the individual voter. I'm very worried about, again, I talked about integrity. I'm also very worried about just the values in this country. Just using religion as a proxy for values in national numbers, Donald Trump wins, depending on the poll, between twenty and thirty points with evangelical Christians by a smaller margin among Protestants and Catholics, but he still wins.
• 42:27
  But the atheists go for Harris by 70 points and the agnostics and others go for her by twenty, twenty five points. So there's something probably more fundamental about that and maybe it can be approximated by religion, maybe it can be approximated by watching the MSNBC versus Fox News, but you look at the rants that Josh Garbero says and it's like, are they coming from him or are they coming from somewhere else? And then there's this aspect of even the assassination attempt, 65% of voters think that there will be another assassination attempt on Trump just in the next month, and it's 75% of Republicans. That's a really big number. But was the second assassination attempt against Trump, was it more likely that people are suffering from mental illness or that they're motivated by the rhetoric of Trump's enemies?
• 43:20
  49% rhetoric to 36% mental illness. Even the voters kind of see that there's, and it's Republicans, sixty three percent rhetoric, 28% mental illness. I think a lot of blame is being placed. That doesn't say media, but it says Trump's enemies. There are other pollsters that have come out and shown that even almost a third of Democrats say that it would have been better for the country if Trump had been assassinated.
• 43:48
  Think some of that's on the voters, and again, I don't know if you can blame the lack of religion. I don't know if you can blame the desperation to win. I don't know if you can blame the echo chambers. I'd really love to figure out how to put my finger exactly on it, but that's why we're trying to innovate every day.
• 44:03
  Seth Holehouse: Gosh. What what an interesting point, though, the point with religion. And to me like that because I, you know, I, you know, observed in in my, you career is now as an independent journalist looking at what's happening in this country and looking at the trends. Right? And it's I'm commonly, you know, the the the more I dig into a phenomenon, like, look at the recent stuff with with Diddy and and the entertainment industry, etcetera, the more I arrive at the point where it's like, this is just a battle of good versus evil.
• 44:31
  Right? And I'm not saying that anyone who's a a, you know, Democrat is evil. I'm not saying that. But what I'm saying though is that when you look at that, what you said, what you showed there that if you kinda plot that that map of voters that, you know, you've got the you know, you said almost almost 70% of atheists are are, you know, pro Harris. And the the vast majority, the much larger majority of, say, evangelicals or other, you know, Christians are much more Trump.
• 44:57
  To me, what that like, that's I agree that that's one of the driving factors. And if I look at the bigger picture, you know, which I tend to, you know, kind of dive more into the, know, the bigger picture, more conspiratorial, like, okay. Is there an agenda to get rid of God in America? Right? Is there some sort of, you know, deeper thing behind this?
• 45:15
  And I think absolutely there is. And I think that what we see with the polling is that this is what happens. Right? You know, I've it's just that it's very obvious that that the people that I think have faith and are look to look to above for for guidance are in a very different place now than those that are atheist and agnostic and that don't you know, that you know, who knows what their belief is about the afterlife. It's just it's an interesting data point.
• 45:45
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• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I this is a very important issue for me personally. I was raised as a Methodist, and so I've seen a lot of stuff happen, like, recently. It was fascinating to me how strong the evangelical signal is, especially in certain states in Pennsylvania. Again, maybe it's just an outlier sample, but Trump was winning evangelicals by almost 50 points, but it was much closer with Protestants. You're like, Okay, well, they're kissing cousins.
• 47:10
  What's so different? It's like, Well, Protestants are more likely to be aligned with the strong leadership of a denomination. Well, that's power structures, right? I think people are less trustworthy of power structures or more interested in investing their trust in them. So there is, in my opinion, an inexorable march of religion being attacked, but I don't think it's like this overt I mean, I do think there is overt attacks on religion, but I think it's almost like the supplanting of religion with something that functions almost as another quasi religion, and that in my opinion is the real problem.
• 47:51
  I think COVID did that to people, whether it was worship of the science or worship of the unity. Then there's this aspect, and this is getting into Jordan Peterson territory, but fundamentally I think people are mostly agreeable and to acknowledge the fact that things have gotten this bad in the country, that we may have a president that's mentally has no capacity or is taking money from our foreign enemies. It takes a certain amount of discipline and disagreeableness to allow yourself to come to those conclusions, I don't think some people have it. I think they're seeking unity. I think they're seeking the idea that they still can trust these people and like, fundamentally, it might be a different reason for every one of them, but that's what what I think has happened.
• 48:45
  Seth Holehouse: So you mentioned that you're not seeing any efforts of de escalation. Right? Which, you know now I I did see Chris Cuomo come out after the the second assassination attempt and say, hey. Look. You know, this isn't acceptable.
• 48:56
  You know, we have to take some responsibility for this. You know, you know, there's little snippets like that, but whether that makes it to, you know, you know, Rachel Maddow's show is a different story. How in in your opinion, if if people are trying to heal this country, which is that's what you know, even though my audience is very, very conservative, you you'll never hear me talk about the the Liberals as, you know, demon rats or Libtards, you know, because to me, they're they're still Americans. Right? And I I think that that's the you know, we're focusing on the wrong enemy if we think it's our neighbor with the Biden sign.
• 49:24
  Right? That we've bought into the the the SIOP to think that that guy is the one who's gonna destroy our country instead of the the the powers that be that are pulling the levers and manipulating in the media, etcetera. So the in your kind of from your perspective, how do you see a way forward where we can come back together as Americans again? Because I'm concerned that the that the trend is just kinda going like this, and and it's it only goes one direction, which is complete chaos.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I like to back up every conclusion I have with data, and then I'm also very concerned in understanding public opinion and predicting where people are going to be. I think we're at peak gaslighting right now, and that makes me super mad because what it means is that American voters who should get what they want are being lied to and misused. I very much think it isn't just a right left thing.
• 50:17
  I think it's power structures in general centralized in order to maintain a status quo, and so I don't think anybody's going to get things that would de escalate, but I can give you a really great example of how to do one. So it's like if you just look at Arizona voters, we ask them, is the government doing too much or too little to reduce legal border crossings and visitor overstays? 6% of voters said too little, only 7% said too much. There's a gimmick. Shut the border government, that would deescalate the conservatives quite a bit.
• 50:56
  Just shut the border, just do your job, And the answer is it's not going to happen. It might not even happen if Trump wins. So why is that and why can't the voters get what they want? And I'll give you another one. It's like, okay, late term abortion.
• 51:12
  Only fifteen percent of people want abortions after six months. Okay. You know what I mean? But it's always maximalism, and I don't think they actually want it. I think that maximalism is some way to assert the laser pointer, essentially.
• 51:28
  Right? I think there's a lot of laser pointers happening right now.
• 51:30
  Seth Holehouse: I I see. Not a lot of action. I see. So as we're wrapping up, I wanna bring attention to your your the main Twitter account for rasmussen, rasmussen underscore poll. You you got a great following.
• 51:42
  Right? You know, you know, almost, you know, you know, 560,000, you know, followers, which is great. Your website, rasmussenreports.com, you know, Mark, your here's your personal Twitter, which I I really enjoy seeing what what you're talking about on there, which is mark underscore r underscore mitchell. So as we're as we're wrapping up, do you have any any kind of final thoughts or or final comments for folks?
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, if you're not on Twitter yet, get on Twitter. I think it's great that we do have these independent media sources on the right. I do think, though, that there is a place where objective dialogue could happen, should happen, and I I would tell people, Try and learn, give everybody the benefit of the doubt, wait until you see a logical fallacy before you troll back because some of these people can be reached.
• 52:33
  I'd love to have everybody at YouTube too. I do sort of ten- to fifteen minute deep dives into the crosstabs. Really, we are the only people right now putting out this kind of thought work. It just isn't really being done by the industry anymore. Hopefully, will be more focus on it because I think, I mean, literally, we've, in my opinion, proven that there's vaccine safety issues that Americans are concerned about that aren't being addressed.
• 52:59
  That's just one of the things, right? And nobody else has pulled on that. Nobody else cares or has done any investigative reporting. It's just a topic of conversation that can't be validated in rethinking media circles. So we think we're out there doing a good job.
• 53:15
  We're trying to stay objective. We think we're going to be right about the election, but a lot can happen between now and election day. If it's like the kind of things we've seen so far, it's probably not going to move the race, But if what might happen is that very desperate status quo is worried about maintaining its power, then who knows what's going to happen because there's still stuff that could happen. Right?
• 53:41
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. And not to mention all the illegals potentially voting, you know, the the late night ballot dumps, the the lost USB drives, the the bathroom floods. There's all kinds of other shenanigans that we saw in 2020 that, you know, it's like, wow. You know, Trump could be leading in in every national poll by 10 points, and all of a sudden, you voted they they stopped counting at 3AM and say, hey. You know, mail in ballots this and, you know, whatever.
• 54:05
  And before, know, you wake up the next day, and it's, oh, you know, Kamala won by by seven points. And that's my that's my genuine concern with all this, unfortunately.
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know. We showed Virginia is only Trump down three. And, I made the case that I think my polls might be too left. So there is upside scenarios where Trump overperforms well and then we don't have to worry about Pennsylvania because I think the Pennsylvania situation I'm not saying that I want either candidate to win. I'm saying I want voters to be happy that a secure election was conducted and counted on time, and I think there's gonna be so much pressure there to extend as long as possible.
• 54:45
  And I don't think that's good for democracy.
• 54:47
  Seth Holehouse: Yeah. Well, I appreciate your effort to stay neutral on this. I imagine it's probably not easy. Like, you know, thankfully, know, in my position, you know, I'm I'm very non neutral, and and I I put my opinions out there, and and that's just what I do. I'm not really much more of a commentator, but I I do appreciate you trying to stick to the scientific method of polling, going through your data.
• 55:08
  You're not just, you know, drawing conclusions from potentials, but actually looking what the data is showing you. It's it's helpful. It's actually I I gained a lot of understanding just on where the American people are at from talking to you, which is really important.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: I have a friend who studied Plato, and there are two parts of our founding, Judeo Christian values, but also these westernized ideal of the logos. And it's like, yeah, I certainly have biases but what I try and do is base my judgment in objective fact and I have dialogue with a person to try and come to some understanding of reality. I think people who even consider themselves maybe ideologically biased could get pretty far by just being objective. You know what I mean? Most of these issues, there's a pretty objective argument about why we need to, for instance, close the border.
• 56:02
  Like, it's not a conservative liberal thing. It just isn't. No matter how much anybody wants to paint it that way.
• 56:08
  Seth Holehouse: Exactly. Exactly. Well, Mark, thank you for giving us your time. I I appreciate what you're doing. I encourage folks to make sure that they're following you on Twitter and just keeping up the date because we have to you know, as voters, it's our responsibility to stay educated, and I I appreciate what the education that you're doing for folks.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much. Really appreciate the conversation.
• 56:27
  Seth Holehouse: Alright. Take care. Anytime. Absolutely. Thank you.
• 56:31
  Folks, have you heard about Dinesh D'Souza's new movie? It's based on his book by the same name, Vindicating Trump. So this movie is a searching examination about the real reasons why the left and the Democrats hate Donald Trump so much. They call him a tyrannical dictator, but in truth, it's the American government's authoritarian regime that's afraid, afraid that Trump's gonna dethrone them again. And as a charismatic leader, he mobilizes the people.
• 56:55
  He gets things done, and they don't like that. So that's why they're trying to get rid of him, trying to throw him in jail using lawsuits and indictments, even trying multiple assassination attempts on his life. So Vinny Kane Trump reveals why Donald Trump is the one man who can defeat the tyranny of the left. So, folks, don't miss Dinesh D'Souza's unqualified defense of Trump, Vindicating Trump. It's in theaters nationwide starting Friday, September 27.
• 57:20
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• 57:32
  So folks, enjoy the trailer and make sure you get your tickets at vindicatingtrump.com.
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: Somebody has to help this country. And if they don't, the country and the world are in big trouble.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Someone's gotta overturn the tables in the temple.
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: Trump jumping into the presidential race. Power. She's a bit worried.
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: Of the apprentice guy? You know the feeling of power. Could you handle it or would it devour
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: power? They fear that power. You didn't do an insurrection. Had you called for one, there would have been one. And there would be one if you called for one now.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure I want that power. I want the power just to make the country better. America First.
• 58:13
  Speaker 5: And that scares them. A lot about Donald Trump scares them.
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: Let's look at everything. Campaign, his family. Let's get foreign eyes on him. We have one target. You know who he is.
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: Going after their companies, their families. That is a dictator.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: It's a very dangerous time for our country.
• 58:29
  Speaker 6: The goal is to put him
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: in jail because they're so afraid of his
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: voice. I am your voice. You bury him so deep in legal, it'll bankrupt them. Broke Donald in jail. Right before the election, that's hard for being that guy, but isn't that election interference?
• 58:45
  It's not interference if we do it.
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: We just want a free and fair election.
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: Sounds expensive.
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: Ballots ain't cheap.
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: Wait. Wait. Wait. Did you actually say the word buy the ballots?
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: We were able to purchase 10,000 ballots.
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: That's terrifying.
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: They cheat in many different ways. That's all they're good at. Ready to save democracy?
• 59:04
  Speaker 6: We need to stop him permanently.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: And that person will be risking his life.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: Too bad it's not the sixties. Right?
• 59:13
  Speaker 5: It's the way you survived.
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: I said, get me up.
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: Trump has beaten back every attack against him.
• 59:20
  Speaker 4: It's like a damn tourney. We're gonna fix our borders, and we're gonna fix our elections. We're gonna win. This is my legacy. Vindicating Trump.
• 59:29
  The best is yet to come. Only in theaters, September 27.