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Fox News’ Frank Luntz: Successfully Inserting Opinion in Opinion Research

by Philip Bump | 11:12 am, September 12th, 2011

» 89 comments

In May of 2009, the Times’ Deborah Solomon interviewed pollster and messaging expert Frank Luntz for her weekly “Questions” column. She challenged him immediately:

Your new 28-page memo, “The Language of Health Care,” was sent to Republicans in Congress and recommends that they speak about health care reform in ominous phrases. For instance, you suggest that they refer to “a Washington takeover.”

“Takeover” is a word that grabs attention.

Is it a correct description of the president’s plans for reform?

We don’t know what he is proposing. We want to avoid “a Washington takeover.”

Last December, Politifact rated Luntz’s “takeover” its Lie of the Year. It didn’t matter: the refrain that Obama’s health plan was a government takeover was already consensus on the right. And Luntz emerged unscathed.

Frank Luntz is Fox News’ go-to polling and messaging consultant. It’s only appropriate: what his fellow Fox News cohort Sean Hannity is to objective journalism, Luntz is to opinion research.

Polling gets a bad rap. This is in part because it often tells us what we don’t want to hear: that our candidate is going to lose, or that our position is unpopular. That’s polling’s role – to suss out popular opinion.

But polling gets a bad rap primarily because people see polls as inherently flawed, as manipulations of numbers or as mere reflections of the desires of the pollster. Polling isn’t seen as a statistical representation of responses to particular questions; it’s seen as a useless thermometer for minutiae, at least when we disagree with the results.

Candidates use polling strategically to guide their campaigns – not, as the popular perception goes, to inform their positions on issues, but rather to determine how best to talk about them. Polling can be, and is, used to evoke nuance.

This is why it’s often confused with spin. Polling and messaging operate in sync; polling informs which messages are most effective. However, the two differ in one critical regard: polling is informed by data, while messaging isn’t. Polling is a science; message is an art.

Luntz blurs this distinction. He intimates that his analysis is informed by statistical analysis, when often it’s simply his opinion (or, worse, his client’s opinion). Luntz is a conservative activist dressed in the garb of a scientist.

That is not to say Luntz isn’t talented. He is. It is, rather, to say that he is not objective, not scientific, that his goal isn’t to inform an audience of what people think – it’s to shape what the audience thinks. It is this that he does well.

In October 2000, weeks before that year’s Presidential election, and months before it was resolved, the New Yorker ran an article titled “The Word Lab.” The lengthy piece was a detailed exploration of the new science of political campaigns: developing and testing resonant messages that informed how candidates described their issues – and framed their opponents.

Luntz was introduced in the third paragraph. The article presents him as a Svengali whose finger is surgically attached to the pulse of the American voter. Or, rather, consumer – Luntz is cited in the piece as saying that he intends to get out of politics, and instead focus on corporate and media clients.

A quick biography is given. Luntz grew up in the Republican establishment, working for, among others, Reagan’s pollster. He was hired early in Ross Perot’s quixotic run for the Presidency (the first one), providing the budget and platform to make a name for himself. After Perot, he worked for Newt Gingrich on language around the Republican “Contract with America” in 1994; later, Luntz helped Rudy Giuliani in his mayoral bids. When the magazine caught up with him, he’d just been hired by MSNBC to run focus groups at the party conventions in 2000.

Luntz’s contributions to the persuasive vernacular are legion. He’s credited with creating the phrase “death tax” (meant to replace “estate tax”), “climate change” (meant to soften “global warming”) and “tax relief” (instead of “tax cuts”). In 2007, he told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that “Orwellian” should be considered a compliment.

Less than a week after Luntz’s national coming-out in the New Yorker, Salon presented a different take. In an article titled, “Why should we trust this man?,” Dante Chinni walks through a litany of reasons why we shouldn’t.

Perhaps most damning: Luntz’s 1997 reprimand from the American Association for Public Opinion Research for the work he did on the Contract with America. Luntz presented the Contract publicly as having robust support – but failed to offer the data that supported his claim. Chinni pressed him on the issue.

But what about AAPOR’s claim that when you make results public, you owe it to people to release all the data. “I don’t agree,” [Luntz] says. “Say you poll on an environmental issue, and on eight of the 10 questions the numbers are in your favor. Why release the other two? It’s like being a lawyer … This is my case, and these are the strong arguments and these are the weak ones. You go with your strongest case.”

There are a few problems with this analogy. First, pollsters aren’t lawyers; they are (in theory) researchers, and are treated by journalists as such. Second, in a trial there are prosecutors and defense lawyers, and everyone is working off the same page. There is an established pool of evidence that either side can argue over. What Luntz proposes is a trial in which a lawyer makes his case with no opposition, and no opportunity for a jury to consider the source.

“These are not complicated questions,” says Diane Colasanto, who was president of the AAPOR when it reprimanded Luntz. “It is simply wanting to know: ‘How many people did you question? What were the questions?’ He did finally give us some information, but it wasn’t enough. It didn’t really explain what the figures were based on. All we could tell was it seemed like there might have been some survey done.

Chinni’s article gets at the heart of Luntz’s problem: it’s hard to see where the political advocate ends, and the political scientist begins. That is, if it ends at all – which poses a problem for a man looking for work from corporations and the media.

Luntz’s efforts in this regard got off to a rocky start. In October, 2001, Luntz’s firm, Luntz Research Companies, were hired by a prominent energy company to help suggest ways in which the company’s leadership could improve employee morale. It was an uphill fight, given that the company was Enron. It filed for bankruptcy five days after writing Luntz’s check. (And in a classic lie-down-with-dog-get-fleas scenario, Enron’s bankruptcy counsel filed a lawsuit in 2003 seeking to get their money back. The case was settled out of court.)

His relationship with MSNBC took a turn for the worse as well. In the run-up to the 2004 general election, progressive-leaning outlets – including Media Matters – took issue with assigning Luntz to provide analysis of voter reaction to political debates. MSNBC quickly fired Luntz, who insisted that he acted without bias, and had not done any work for GOP candidates since 2001. This claim was rapidly debunked.

By 2005, Luntz was a regular on Fox News. As the contentious 2006 and 2008 races heated up, he appeared time and again, opining on subjects not always directly related to polling or messaging. (The best catalog of these appearances is kept by Media Matters, an admittedly antagonistic foe of Luntz’s. And vice versa.)

Even when he was sharing his opinion on matters of messaging and language, Luntz often hewed more closely to his political prejudices than an objective assessment. Take, for example, then-Senator Obama’s famous 2008 speech on race and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, titled “A More Perfect Union.”

Take a look at Luntz’s opinion of the speech, as stated on Fox News. He implies that the speech was damaging, that it didn’t settle the Rev. Wright issue, that Obama should not have used a teleprompter. He accuses Obama of inciting class warfare, and raises questions about whether or not Obama heard Wright’s incendiary sermons in person.

In contrast, here are the views of academics and political experts who’ve presumably never worked for Republican candidates for office. They use words such as “stirring,” “serious,” and “brave.” None raises concerns over damage done. No one mentions the teleprompter. And Obama, of course, went on to overwhelmingly win the Presidency.

A similar pattern emerged in Britain’s 2010 election. Conservative David Cameron eventually won the position of Prime Minister after besting Labor’s Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. During the country’s historic television debate – a new addition to the 2010 election – Luntz led focus groups. He later reported his findings to the Sun newspaper: Cameron was most preferred, followed by Brown and Clegg. While matching the final results of the election, two independent polls of voters cited by the BBC indicated that the winner of the debate was, instead, Clegg.

There are links worth mentioning here: Luntz’s stateside employer at Fox News and the publisher of the Sun were one and the same – Rupert Murdoch. Of course, Murdoch’s ties to Cameron were revealed over the course of this summer’s phone hacking scandal; the conservative politician was also endorsed by the newspaper.

It’s unclear the extent to which Luntz lets his relationships color his opinion. At times, Luntz’s stated opinion on Fox is one that directly benefitted him or a client, as happened last year when he referred to a client’s ad as one of the best of the 2010 cycle. At others, the facade of objective research slips, as when he chided a focus group for returning a response he disagreed with.

During the 2008 election, entertainers Penn and Teller, frustrated with the media’s reliance on what they saw as biased polling, laid bare Luntz’s true talent: persuasion.

The segment ends with a call to action. When viewers see a poll, they’re asked to shout a battle cry against those who’d seek to use polling to shape public opinion: “Fuck you, Frank!”

Last month, he made an appearance on The Colbert Report, providing messaging guidance to Stephen Colbert’s nascent SuperPAC.

It was the perfect venue for Luntz. Colbert and Luntz are both showmen. A participant in a Luntz focus group describes the experience.

This is the Frank Luntz no one gets to see. This is the man at work. With the camera turned away, silhouetted by the TV lights in his suit and tennis shoes, he would hop, dance and thrust his arms about. As the group got rowdy, he settled his hands to silence the mob so the camera could zero in on a speaker. As the energy died, he would plead, point and coax the crowd until someone picked up the ball. This is what it takes to fill six minutes of television with an untrained, uncoached focus group. At the end of his symphony, there was no applause for Dr. Luntz.

The difference between Colbert and Luntz is in the show each puts on. The former pretends to be a media talking head; the latter, a rational expert presenting science. Luntz has a doctorate, but he only plays a doctor on TV. Who he actually is in those appearances (usually; not always) is a salesman – a huckster pitching his clients, his ideology, or himself.

Luntz has a framework to sell and Fox is his QVC. Make up your mind fast, America. Time is running out.

Deborah Solomon, fox news, Frank Luntz, Politifact

Anonymous

Hmmm, could you possibly be trying to blunt THIS information?

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/09/12/oreilly-tells-ingraham-nbcs-todd-worked-lib-senator-his-wife-makes-li#ixzz1XkVkdhgOO'Reilly Tells Ingraham NBC’s Todd Worked for Lib Senator, ‘His Wife Makes Living Working for Democratic Party’”The story broken by NewsBusters last week involving Chuck Todd saying NBC’s pollsters were “concerned” about President Obama’s poll numbers has brought some scrutiny on the Peacock Network’s chief White House correspondent.”
“After radio’s Laura Ingraham questioned Todd about this issue Thursday, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly brought her on his program Friday saying, “We did a little research on Mr. Todd…His wife makes a living working for the Democratic Party. There is a report that Chuck Todd actually worked for Senator Tom Harkin, very liberal Senator from Iowa”"As for his wife, this is from her bio at Maverick Strategies and Mail:”"Kristian Denny Todd is a seasoned communications professional and a veteran of numerous successful Democratic campaigns. She recently served as Senior Communications Strategist to U.S. Senator Jim Webb’s 2006 victory in Virginia where she directed all earned and paid media strategy on behalf of the candidate. Webb’s victory tipped the control of the U.S. Senate back to the Democrats. She joined Steve Jarding and Jessica Vanden Berg in creating Maverick Strategies and Mail providing direct mail and consulting services for Democratic candidates and progressive causes.”"She began her career in 1992 in her home state of Florida as an aide to then-Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives Bo Johnson. In 1993, Denny Todd moved west where for five years she worked first for U.S. Representative Gary Condit (CA-18) and later for the Washington state Democratic Party, as well as, the 1996 Washington state Democratic Coordinated Campaign effort. In 1998, Denny Todd worked as Press Secretary in U.S. Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings’ reelection campaign in South Carolina.”"In 1999, she moved to Washington DC where she served as Press Secretary in the office of U.S. Senator Patty Murray (WA). [...]“”In 2002, Denny Todd returned to politics by accepting a position with U.S. Senator John Edwards’ (NC) leadership PAC, New American Optimists. She spent a year as a Senior Political Aide in Iowa where she was sent to lay the ground work for Senator Edward’s 2004 run for the Democratic nomination for President. In early 2002, Denny Todd was the first 2004 Presidential staffer on the ground in Iowa.”"Later in 2003, Denny Todd returned to her Florida roots when U.S. Senator Bob Graham (FL) entered the race for the Democratic nomination for President. Out of respect and admiration for the former Florida Governor, as well as a little home state pride, she went to work for his campaign as National Spokesperson.”
JohnJGuy

Didn’t someone say recently that Polls were for Strippers and Cross Country Skiers.

Oh well, Freddie Luntz has something to sell…to someone…somewhere…

Is any of it objective?

It could depend on who you ask and how much their paying!
Rhodes

As Mr. Carlin once said between beers: barf is now an unintentional personal protein spill; shell shock is post-traumatic stress disorder; wife beating is domestic violence; sneakers are running shoes Grotesque evasion that causes constipation, oops, occasional irregularity.
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

This piece was a well-read, but rambling and disorganized hitpiece. Not only does the author make claims that are rather unsubstantiated in the beginning of the piece, the evidence that IS used is irrelevant or nonsensical, logically. The author also reaches quite far, even going as far as using logical fallacies to reinforce his opinion, to which I point to his unsuccessful swipe at an ad populum defense.
Just some Blow Hard…

Uhm… Didnt you just prove the point?
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

This does well in pointing out the utter hypocrisy of the author. However I feel its message will be lost in being transcribed as one excusing bad behavior with more bad behavior. It’s not a belief that I personally subscribe to, but I feel that this is a definite possibility.
Anonymous

Clients of Mrs. Todd:

BOB JOHNSON
GARY CONDIT
FRITZ HOLLINGS
PATTY MURRAY
JOHN EDWARDS
BOB GRAHAM
Anonymous

Can someone at Mediaite tell Bump to go back to HuffPo? Do we need ANOTHER dedicated liberal to put their spin on this site? Really?
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

I’m seriously missing Mr. Matt Schneider. He had the best pieces of all.
Norbit

Oh, faux pas!

He should have said “defacto Takeover”!
Anonymous

Chuck Todd & his wife are both liberal tools. This is news? As for pollster Luntz; well, he is a pollster. Who takes them seriously?
Anonymous

Absolutely. This was seriously ‘all over the map’ post, and I love the Lutz segments and wanted to hear a critique, but instead its a mess of inuendo instead. Much of the meandering critiques seem to be that liberal writers attack his methods, without actually showing the issues.
Anonymous

Absolutely. This was seriously ‘all over the map’ post, and I love the Lutz segments and wanted to hear a critique, but instead its a mess of inuendo instead. Much of the meandering critiques seem to be that liberal writers attack his methods, without actually showing the issues.
Anonymous

Absolutely. This was seriously ‘all over the map’ post, and I love the Lutz segments and wanted to hear a critique, but instead its a mess of inuendo instead. Much of the meandering critiques seem to be that liberal writers attack his methods, without actually showing the issues.
Dandkenton

Luntz was the guest speaker at the Cal Chamber expo earlier this year. When it came time for the Q&A, he began using talking points rather than direct responses. He began to appear flustered when one person shouted that this WASN’T the Sean Hannity show and, after a few minutes, was ushered off the stage by a handler who ended up being Carla Beighton, a local Fox News affiliate. This was a pro-business audience that booed him off the stage, not a group of liberals or union members.
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

This is exactly how I felt–there was no real critique in the methods because a critique typically offers criticism, but in a constructive manner. This was nothing but belligerent attack, through-and-through.
Norbit

Typical Lib ploy, discredit the messenger.

Hey, maybe he’s a racist too?
Pathetic!!
Jerry Baustian

There are very few pollsters who do not have some kind of agenda. Gallup is the only one I know of that nearly always presents a totally unbiased product. Pew and Quinnipiac come close, some of the time. Any poll that is commissioned by the major networks or major newspapers can be assumed to be biased, 100% of the time.

First, they include respondents in their samples who do not vote, have no intention of voting, and pay no attention to politics, and yet they ask them for opinions about political issues.

Then, if they still don’t get the result they want, they add more Democratic voters to the sample.

Lastly, they report the results as if it is really news, but ignore any results from their own polling that do not fit their intended message.
Anonymous

What’s new here Luntz has been proven to be a lying hack a long time ago. He’s as bad as Breitbart, when his lips move he’s lying. On a good day 85 -90% of what comes out of his mouth is bullshit.
Anonymous

My goodness, an aweful lot of Media Matters research here. I guess that explains why this is a hit piece on an individual instead of researching left leaning pollsters as well. Nice hit piece though, too bad your obvious lack of objectivity takes away from it being seen as credible.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EOTQDJK7LUU43OZGQDCXABKJQM patrick m

Paging Saul Alinsky. Nice try MediaHype. Keep swinging Alice.
Anonymous

You were “up all night” (http://twitter.com/#!/pbump/status/113275632175169536) cobbling together MediaMatters and DailyKos oppo research on Frank Luntz?

Odd that you fail to mention Obama butt sniffer Bill Burton copying Frank Luntz while working for MessNBC.

Here’s an interesting tweet from Bump’s twitter stream:

@colbyhall
colbyhall
the demographic make up of Obama’s back drop is perfectly diverse, though there seems to be a dearth of white males.
Anonymous

It’s funny how Politifact is either the Gospel truth or unreliable, depending on whether or not they are pointing out leftist lies, like Rachel Maddows.
The Real Royal Emperor

Yes, she did. It was sort of magical, wasn’t it?
The Real Royal Emperor

Only a fool would believe anything Luntz says.
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

Do you ever contribute anything worthwhile?
http://profiles.google.com/fatlibertarianinokc Fat Libertarian

I think people overblow the Luntz stuff.
Anonymous

“Luntz blurs this distinction. He intimates that his analysis is informed by statistical analysis, when often it’s simply his opinion (or, worse, his client’s opinion).”

Analyses are opinions, that’s why analysts can disagree with each other.

But if Luntz’s polling analyses were wrong, his advice to candidates wouldn’t even work. i.e., warning people about a “Washington takeover” wouldn’t work if it didn’t strike a cord with a public who are weary about Washington takeovers. Language isn’t voodoo.

It’s fair to disagree with Luntz’s polling methodology, and I do disagree with it. Pollsters should always release all of their polling data, so people can tell whether something was fudged. Its also true that polling results, when widely reported, also help shape public opinion, because they give the public a type of impression (or mis-impression) about what the “issues” are, and also because people who aren’t fully informed tend to side with popular opinion.

But instead of a more reasoned critique, you say he’s purposefully lying, and your evidence is his analysis of Obama’s “A More Perfect Union Speech.” You contrast Luntz’s analysis with those of academic experts, who we’re expected to take your word for it, have a super-human knack for objectivity and never insert political bias into their analyses. The proof that Luntz’s analysis was wrong is that Obama won election! Give me a break.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TKY6GV6NX55P7MRB4667CVMWY4 Theresa

Oh, yeah… Media Matters is such an unbiased, trustworthy source that we should all believe anything they say about anyone. What a joke! I’m not a Luntz fan, but I would take his word over the Soros’ bought and paid for shills like Media Matters any day.
The Real Royal Emperor

Yes.
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

It must be a truly rare occurrence, then.
Anonymous

It always cracks me up when the little darlings start freaking out about a perceived slight that they themselves have the market cornered on, like .. Media Matters? Hey Philip, put a sock in it, man, no one cares. Surprised you didn’t call him racist, too. Oh, and politifact? Please…
Anonymous

I often find that Gallup doesn’t ask the right questions, or doesn’t ask enough questions, and that influences the impression that a reader gets from the polling results. In some cases they offer two or three polling choices, when there should be seven.

Because of that, I often find polls done by Pew or Rasmussen more meaningful even given the visible biases by the analysts.
Anonymous

I love reading people bring up Alinsky’s name, as if you were aware of his existence before Beck started talking about him. Or, at the very least, you didn’t start exaggerating his influence until Beck said something.
caconservative

Penn and Teller. Useful Liberal idiots?
Anonymous

“Analyses are opinions, that’s why analysts can disagree with each other.”

Statistical analyses, which is what was mentioned, are not opinions.

“But if Luntz’s polling analyses were wrong, his advice to candidates
wouldn’t even work. i.e., warning people about a “Washington takeover”
wouldn’t work if it didn’t strike a cord with a public who are weary
about Washington takeovers. Language isn’t voodoo.”

Yes, even if his analyses are wrong, they will still work for politicians. That’s because Luntz is a wizard at tugging at one’s confirmation bias. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of cognitive psychology will tell you that the human brain unconsciously works to reinforce currently-held beliefs and positions. Luntz is essentially telling people that already are weary of the government that, yes, they’re right and they should be more weary.

“It’s fair to disagree with Luntz’s polling methodology, and I do
disagree with it. Pollsters should always release all of their polling
data, so people can tell whether something was fudged.”

I agree. Just like how social scientists are required to release sample size and demographics. Without these, we have no idea how meaningful his results are and to whom they are meaningful.
Anonymous

Wow, this article really brought out the Foxsuckers and the listeners of National Hate Radio. They actually swallow the whole myth of “liberal media bias,” which itself was made up by Fox and guys like Luntz.

I happen to know Luntz. He’s about as genuine as his hairpiece. When the cameras are off (and no microphones are on), he’ll tell you he’s in it for the money (lots of it, which he now has) and the Republicans have more of it than the Democrats do. Luntz stokes his “results to conform to the message the guys paying him want to put out. He is VERY good at it.

Behind his shit-eating grin and “aw-shucks” public persona (carefully crafted, as everything else about him) is a razor-sharp mind with no scruples whatsoever. Luntz is a perfect “end-justifies-the-means” Republican propagandist. He makes no bones about it, is proud of it, and has made a fortune doing it.

Foxsuckers whining here about a non-existent “liberal” (I’m from the South, so our Foxsuckers say “libbrul”) media should get themselves alone with Luntz, one on one. He’ll probably not only inform you that every “negative (Luntz himself wouldn’t see it that way)” thing said about him in the article is true, but if you ask surprised, he’ll probably ask you “is there a problem for you in this somewhere?”
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_EOTQDJK7LUU43OZGQDCXABKJQM patrick m

I am your worst nightmare, a Polysci major in the 70′s baby…:) And I paid attention and graduated. Keep swinging Alice.
Anonymous

“Statistical analyses, which is what was mentioned, are not opinions.”

They’re opinions on how to interpret the statistics. Not the same thing as political opinions, but still opinions.

“Yes, even if his analyses are wrong, they will still work for politicians. That’s because Luntz is a wizard at tugging at one’s confirmation bias. ”

His analysis is of what biases the public have to tug at. Some analyst might tell a politician that the public’s mood is in favor of government involvement, another analyst might say that the public’s mood is against it. In order to tug at confirmation bias you have to have the correct understanding of the public’s mood … and that’s the point of polling.
Anonymous

OK so ” OBAMA REGIME TAKEOVER ” would have maybe been more appropriate wording, big hairy deal.

There are you left wing bomb throwers happy now that I’ve corrected the official record?

I know….ofcourse you are not….you losers never are.
Anonymous

Cool story, bro.
Anonymous

Rambling, disorganized, unsubstantiated, irrelevant, non sensical, logical fallacies! You’re kidding,… rambling maybe! The rest is “some” opinion, mostly documented examples and sources. Have a few others done the same, “yes”. You can regret Luntz and “Fox” being called on what we have always known, but to discount the piece is denial!
Anonymous

So, after your stupid rant, what’s your point? That Luntz is in it for the money? Sonuvabitch, imagine that. And here we were thinking he worked at a bowling alley and did this shit in his spare time. Jesus, could you get any dumber?
Anonymous

All you did was pitch the “flip side”!
Anonymous

You’re right Soros “sucks”! the Kochs are much better at paying and proping up their home boys at “Fox”!
Anonymous

Or establish the public mood, which he does quite well.

First, he uses loaded questions. The study of decision making has indicated that regardless of a person’s own opinion, loaded questions significantly influence their choice. Secondly, when a person makes a choice, they have an unconscious drive to be consistent. This is what underlies the phenomena known as cognitive dissonance. Third, polling has been shown to cause a bandwagon effect in people. Which is to say people see how others feel and, due to unconscious pressure to remain consistent with one’s in-group, they will be more likely to side with the majority position, even if they had previously indicated that they felt differently.
Anonymous

The points you’ve listed are what I was criticizing about reporting polling in general in my first comment. They aren’t problems specific to Luntz, and neither did those issues with reporting polls appear just when Fox News appeared.

His advice to candidates is how to change the public mood, but you can’t change the public mood unless you have a good idea to what they respond to, which is what I meant by saying language is not voodoo. For example, “Washington takeover”. Is it a given that voters think this is a bad thing? In the late 19th century a lot of people wanted a “Washington takeover” of the railroad industry, which added to William Jennings Bryan’s appeal. The point is that he understands the biases of the American public, which is what makes him useful as an analyst and adviser.

But nobody has presented an argument here that he deliberately distorts facts, in order to lie about what the public feels.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

Nice collection of Luntz links, but I’m not sure that I get the point.

As far as I’m aware, whenever Frank Luntz is introduced if “pollster” is included in his job description, it’s always accompanied by something along the lines of “author of”, “message expert” or “Republican strategist”, while when people from Gallup, Harris, PPP or Rasmussen are introduced, they’re generally just pollsters.

After all, the tagline on Luntz’s website is “it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear” and the first paragraph describes the firm as a “powerhouse in the profession of message creation and image management’. Admittedly, I haven’t done a thorough analysis, but I’d say that every segment in which he’s interviewed, the focus is primarily on crafting or interpreting the message and though he makes his name in politics, his bread and butter seems to come from corporate clients.

Otherwise, I will say that the “right answer” Penn seized upon and the “numbers in your favor” in the quoted Salon clip are along the same lines; he’ll obviously admit that he sometimes seeks a specific answer, but that just underlines the messaging job. If he’s trying to find the language someone can use to sell a product or perspective, finding the right phrasing is part of the job.

Again, a nice collection of links and I appreciate the resource, but I don’t know that anyone thinks of Luntz as another Louis Harris. I’d put him more in the advertising game.
Glutton

I don’t think Frank Luntz ever claims to be in it for anything besides the money. He doesn’t preach political ideology but basic presentation. She’s advising Stephen Colbert on his SuperPAC for crying out loud. I think it’s obvious that he’s just a consultant.
Anonymous

No, actually the point is that Luntz formulates his “findings” according to who pays him. All you had to do was ask nicely, and I could have made your so very predictable typical Foxsucker rant up for you and saved you the effort. It was just the usual blend of right wing garbage, and that stuff is so cut-and-paste, they all sound alike. Extremists are pretty predictable anyway, which is presumably why about twenty right wing posters have about 150 identities between them.
Glutton

I don’t see how being a polysci major from the 1970s is a nightmare to anyone. I would be more concerned if you had a real degree.
Anonymous

You are right up to a point. He doesn’t directly preach political ideology, you’re correct. It is more accurate to say he tries (and does well at it) to shape discussion, and provide sound bites that simple-minded folks can latch on to (“Obamacare,” and “tax relief,” for example). But to say Frank is “just” a consultant short-changes him. He tackles the tasks he is paid to do with a fierce and focused energy, and won’t let truth or other inconveniences get in his way. To say Frank Luntz is “just a consultant” is like saying Osama bin Laden was “just a bad boy.”
Anonymous

Somewhere in Hell Goebbels is smiling. “Ja, das ist mein Kind”
Anonymous

Poor little frankie. He tries to be so hard-hitting, so in the know, with his little focus groups. The secret is he is only interested in directing their comments to his own purpose. But sean, the little frog, loves him. Doesn’t he remind you of the fat little boy in jr high school, who was editor of the school newspaper and annual?
fuul aluuf

Wow, and the sky is blue also! Amazing revelations here! Duh.
Everyone who watches Fox knows he is a messaging guy, not a scientific pollster (as if there is such a thing anymore, and as if every poll isn’t specifically worded to sway the answers.)

He uses focus groups to determine how his clients (Fox, conservatives, whomever) should construct their propoganda. The only difference between Luntz and Democratic Pollsters, MSNBC polls, etc. is that he does it on live TV and doesnt pretend to be doing anything else. Maybe originally – way back in 2000 – he was trying to become a scientific pollster but he abandoned that path a long time ago..

The real question about this article, Phillip, is: why are you taking credit for an article that MediaMatters wrote for you?
Anonymous

Awesome how you have me pegged, knowing nothing other than I disagree with you and think you’re stupid. (which you are)

Of course, you’ll be glad to tell the class what other identities I use. Go ahead junior, I’m all ears.
Anonymous

People who followed academia and not just politics probably knew of him by reputation. And for people into politics, it was widely known that Hillary Clinton wrote a senior honors thesis on him.

How about this, how many people heard of Leo Strauss before critics of neoconservatives brought him up?
Anonymous

FYF :-)
Anonymous

FYF :-)
Anonymous

I’d bet nobody who posts on Mediaite heard of Saul Alinsky before Beck made him famous. Now, he is a favorite bogeyman for, guess who? Glenn Beck fans.
Anonymous

But I was a polisci major in the ’70s and I turned out the opposite of patrick m. I do agree with you that a B.S. in Polisci is the purest BS in the world. (It also produces LAWYERS!)
Anonymous

Say what? Look at the obvious age difference. Hillary wrote that thesis about ten years ago? When she was 50? (Maybe 45, I don’t know for sure, but your claim just does not make sense.)
Anonymous

I only got polled once (not counting the popups when on a corporate site asking how was the service), but I did catch the bias in the last question asked. It was a Rasmussen poll.
I realized that polls could be biased, even as a naive teenager. It is so easy to do exactly what Luntz demonstrated. It doesn’t require a doctorate in communications.
Anonymous

Can you get any dumber?

You learned nothing from Frank Luntz. Even a child should know that you lose an argument when you end it with “can you get any dumber?”

You need many, many lessons from Frank Luntz. Pay him well, and even you will win an argument some day.
Anonymous

Buzz word stupid.
Worst buzz world in the world award goes to rajahaan.
Anonymous

Pure libertarians. Check out Penn Gillette’s comments sometimes.
To quote him, he is as conservative as can be on money, but as liberal as can be on sex.
That equates to zero social programs and zero moral legislation. Pure libertarian.

But you have to assume that Penn and Teller are liberals because they disagree with you.

Learn from Luntz. Don’t say idiots. Say misguided. (Not that they are.)
Anonymous

Soros = Glenn Beck bogeyman.
You have tagged yourself as a Beckerhead.
Anonymous

You make some valid points, but, and it is a big but, a scientifically designed poll can and must contain a large enough group to represent the entire population (not just voters because voter’s opinions are swayed by non-voters and today’s non-voter may decide to vote tomorrow) who are randomly selected, and the questions can and must be designed to avoid indicating a “correct” answer.

Example: “Are you a racist?” Will get a 100% NO answer because that is perceived to be the correct answer. (Even a KKK member will say no if you ask him on the street because he wants to remain credible for the rest of the poll.)

Do you think race matters in an election? Is a vague question. Everyone wants to say It doesn’t matter to ME, but I think it matters to others…uh…a few others…uh…I don’t know how many others. Can I say maybe?

A much better question would be Does race matter to you in an election? But, it would still get a false answer, again because it clearly isn’t the “correct” answer.

This best question, if it is important to the poll to ask about race, would be: Do you think that a significant number of people are influenced by race in an election? Choose YES, NO, or MAYBE. That makes it non-personal and leaves room for the maybe option. Even that will still probably get more NOs than is really true because we ALL know that race is not supposed to matter any more.
Anonymous

Nice. I notice that no one wants to answer the question, but on the other hand, you can’t. I just didn’t expect you to advertise your stupidity.
Anonymous

I do not support the claim that people post with multiple screen names to build up the appearance that their side is more popular. I see no point in that.
I do say that you do need to learn a little about being convincing, and that includes dropping the word stupid from your on-line vocabulary. As Frank says, know when to use positives.
Or, as Forrest Gump says, “Stupid is as stupid does.” In your case, you tie your screen name to the word stupid because you use it so often.
Anonymous

Don’t be sad, did you end up marrying the jock instead, who still works as a clerk at AM/PM? :)
Anonymous

really? Gosh you’re so smart. We already proved even to dumb Darla the left wings bias for the year so we are good! Carry on.
Anonymous

Hi devils,

Just responding to your example —

At some point in our history, if there were a poll question “Do you think race matters in an election?” you would have had a large number of white people answering “yes”. The fact that you’re less likely to get that today generally will mean something about people’s views in and of itself.

You could claim that would be merely reflective of the political pressure not to appear as a racist, rather than people’s actual viewpoints. However, if there actually were a large number of people who were racists, there would not be so much political pressure, because nobody would feel a need to hide their views.

What you can’t measure is unconscious bias, regardless of the respondents views on the matter. However, if people view that it would be wrong for them to be racist, you could at least say they’re trying not to be racist.

About Luntz —

His primary body of work as a pollster has been determining what language works and what doesn’t. That’s why you see him analyzing speeches and advertisements on TV , and he can effectively do that. If Obama gives a speech that the public reacts negatively to, he can do a good job at determining that. To do that he has to be able to understand public attitudes and biases.

He doesn’t try to examine, as far as I’ve seen, what people’s policy preferences would be if they were fully informed and their biases were put aside. Those are two different jobs, and he doesn’t need to be doing both. Some people seem to be suggesting, that because he does the first job only, he fails at the second. But different pollsters do different things.
Infantry LT

Has Mediaite done any articles on Operation Fast and Furious? How about the raid on the Gibson Guitars, which would be interesting from a pop culture perspective? Whatever happened to Matt Schneider, by the fairest writer on this site? You click on this place now and there’s like 37 different articles by Tommy Christopher
Anonymous

You mean the fried brain liberals at Media Matters? You’d be correct.
Anonymous

Stick a sock in it, bub. There’s not a mainstream conservative out there who hasn’t been labeled stupid by progressives as a bloc, and I only point this out to show the hypocrisy of your comment, not that I actually give a shit what you think, or what progs say.
Just some Blow Hard…

Gary Condit, John Edwards, and Bob Johnson are the same person. At least according to the sign in sheet at the hotel.

Did you know Condit was in a movie with George Clooney? Granted, it was Return of the Killer Tomatoes.

Its true, look it up.
Just some Blow Hard…

Instead of saying that Alice or Frank are liberal/conservative/what have you, lets just bask in the thought of questioning EVERYTHING you see or read about politics. A well informed person questions everything.
Anonymous

So long as people know that Luntz has an agenda, that’s OK. However, (IMO) his talent does not lie in using polling to find out what words do work and don’t work in swaying opinion. His talent/skill/science must lie in knowing beforehand what words will or won’t work. If he doesn’t already know that, he doesn’t deserve a doctorate in communications.

To put it another way, that is what he did his studies on, and now he is using what he already learned to shape strategy, advise on speeches and policy statements, and give hope to right-wingers who watch Fox while left-wingers are not watching Fox and don’t perceive things the way Fox viewers want them to.

This makes Luntz little better than Hannity. Hannity also knows how to communicate to Fox viewers. Meanwhile, Luntz may be able to get a respondent to appear to change his/her mind as the poll takes place, but is that lasting? If he changes a person’s mind because of the poll, then he has earned money from a conservative sponsor of his poll, but does that last until ballot time?
Anonymous

Thanks.
Anonymous

@rajahaan:disqus I did not try to answer your question because I did not accuse you of using multiple personalities. Therefore, I claim to be smart for refusing to answer a question that was not to me.

Clearly, you have an anger problem, and it severely limits both your intelligence (knowing whom to attack) and your (stupid) vocabulary.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TKY6GV6NX55P7MRB4667CVMWY4 Theresa

Surprise! I knew all about Soros, Theresa Heinz, et.al., before I ever heard of “Mr. Hysteria” Glen Beck. Glad you’re one of those newcomers to politics that think that Beck was the first to discover all about the One Worlders’ agenda.
Anonymous

Surprise back at ya!
Those people don’t matter. Nobody but you cares what they think or do.
I know because I have been watching politics since 1970. You?
Anonymous

At least I found out where the “teleprompter attack” came from.
Those who repeat that one show total weakness to Luntz’s persuasion. Every president who spoke since the teleprompter was invented use it. Michele Bachmann messed up her last speech, the one after the Obama speech, by refusing to use a teleprompter. He looked down at her notes instead, and never had a full second of eye contact with the cameras because of it.

Come to think of it, that makes two times she proved that she isn’t even capable of using a teleprompter. The first time she looked only at a teleprompter, and never at a camera. The second time, she didn’t use a teleprompter, and had to read from her notes instead. She was always looking down.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/TKY6GV6NX55P7MRB4667CVMWY4 Theresa

Learned politics at my Daddy’s table every evening at dinner so I’ve been “watching politics” beginning with a photo of me as a toddler on President Harry Truman’s knee. I just love you “kids” who don’t know your history let alone politics, but you certainly are convinced you’re “the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Thankfully, I won’t be around to suffer what is coming to this country at the hands of “those people who don’t matter,” while you dupes will receive exactly what you’re begging for.
http://twitter.com/danielmchick Daniel M. Chick

You in no way countered my argument throughout your paragraph until the very end. If I wanted a summary of what I had written, I would have given one myself. If you wish to truly argue what I am saying, then you best offer some reasoning behind it, not just some unreasoned summary and blathering about denial.
Anonymous

No summary of a “sheeps” thoughts,..ok! You ramble on about non-fact based opinions , someone points that out and they’re the ones that are “blathering”,…. priceless! Another “tea” denial,… oh wait, there it is again “denial”! I know, I know, you’re right I’m wrong, now start the name calling!
Anonymous

If you were really politically savvy, you would see that political sentiment swings back and forth like a pendulum, and our country will sail on in a moderate way for a few more centuries, at least. We occasionally have a Joe McCarthy (crazy right) and a Jimmy Carter (incompetent left), but the minor names that have you Beckerheads all riled up have had no impact, and will continue to have no impact.

I know the history that led up to the Great Depression, and it looks just like what the Republicans want to do now. The whole world was headed to recession, at least, and that is true today. There were three presidents in a row in the US who were small-government, do-nothing “leaders,” and everybody was against free trade.

Why have liberals dominated our politics for most of the last century? Because when conservatives get control for a few years, they blow it and the citizens take that power away from them. I hope you do live to see that, and many more years of it.

Heck, even if Republicans do drag us even deeper into recession, I still hope you are around to see that “victory.”
Dlambertson

Polls are meaningless – we should stop paying attention to them

http://wordsofwhizdumb.com/2011/08/poll-duncing.html