‘Ridiculous’: Dem Strategist Flips Out, Threatens to End Interview When Challenged on Biden Polls

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg threatened to end an interview with The New Yorker over the suggestion that some polls have been “skewed toward Democrats,” giving the party — and Joe Biden — a false sense of optimism.

Rosenberg runs the Substack Hopium Chronicles and describes himself as a “30-year veteran of US politics” working on “strategies to defeat MAGA.”

The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner interviewed Rosenberg about his belief that “the President’s chances are better” than the polls suggest. Chotiner referred to an updated rating of pollsters by FiveThirtyEight that said many favorable surveys cited by Democrats showed bias toward the left.

For The New Yorker piece, Rosenberg repeatedly told Chotiner that the conclusions made by FiveThirtyEight were inaccurate. Not taking no for an answer, Chotiner cited the piece for a fourth time:

CHOTINER: As FiveThirtyEight makes clear in their piece, “While the polls in a few closely watched races—like Arizona’s governorship and Pennsylvania’s Senate seat—were biased toward Republicans, the polls overall still had a bit of a bias toward Democrats. That’s because generic-ballot polls, the most common type of poll last cycle, had a weighted-average bias of D+1.9, and polls of several less closely watched races, like the governorships in Ohio and Florida, also skewed toward Democrats.”

ROSENBERG: I’m ending the interview. I’m ending the interview because what you’re doing is ridiculous.

CHOTINER: Wait, wait—why?

ROSENBERG: Because I have definitive proof that what you’re saying is not true. And I don’t care. I know what FiveThirtyEight wrote. I live this every day. And so, the point is what you’re saying is wrong. I am on record saying that what FiveThirtyEight has written is incorrect, and I’ve given you definitive proof otherwise. So if you want to keep coming back at this, do it. But this has become one of the most ridiculous interviews that I’ve ever done my entire professional career.

CHOTINER: Oh, O.K. Sorry.

ROSENBERG: So, the point I’m making is the polls couldn’t have been correct in 2022 if RealClearPolitics ended up at fifty-four seats in the Senate. I mean I just . . . it’s not possible, right?

CHOTINER: Totally fair.

Read The New Yorker article here.