Bogus Polls Funded by D.C. Establishment Sell False Narrative in Mississippi Senate Race
Peter D'Abrosca
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Four public polls released thus far in Mississippi’s special election were funded exclusively by the Chamber of Commerce and outfits friendly to Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked appointed Senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith.
The net effect of this markedly biased polling is to promulgate the establishment’s preferred narrative that Cindy Hyde-Smith is leading conservative, America First candidate Chris McDaniel in the race for U.S. Senate to replace retired Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).
A May 1-May 3 poll commissioned by the anti-American, open borders-pushing U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows Hyde-Smith and Democrat candidate Mike Espy leading 30 percent and 22 percent, respectively, to State Sen. Chris McDaniel’s 17 percent (R-Ellisville).
The Chamber poll claims that respondents report “hearing an equal number of campaign ads about both Hyde-Smith and McDaniel.
While the Chamber had spent $750,000 in ads on behalf of Cindy Hyde-Smith by this date, neither the McDaniel campaign nor any outside entities registered any expenditures for ads on behalf of McDaniel. McDaniel has yet to run a single ad in the race.
Triumph Campaigns, a firm owned by Mitch McConnell hatchet-man Justin Brassel (more on him later) performed an unweighted April 10-11 poll of the four-way race showing Hyde-Smith essentially tied with Espy at 33 percent, with McDaniel lagging behind at 12.8 percent.
A closer look at the Triumph/Y’all Politics poll shows that women were vastly oversampled to the benefit of Hyde-Smith. About 67 percent of respondents were female, and 33 percent were male.
Of the respondents, 44.6 percent were Republicans and 55.4 percent Democrats and Independents. Mississippi is a heavily red state, indicating that Democrats and Independents were vastly oversampled.
Additionally, the poll left only 14.9 percent of voters undecided, which is unlikely given that it was taken in April, a full six months before the election.
A more recent Triumph/Y’all Politics poll from July 30-July 31 shows Hyde-Smith leading the race by a wide margin, but is plagued by similar issues.
Again, the poll vastly oversampled Democrats and Independents. Only 40 percent of survey respondents were Republicans, while 60 percent of respondents identified as either Democrats or Independent voters. Remember that Mississippi is a deeply red state.
It also oversampled women heavily. Women comprised a full 60 percent of completed surveys, and men just under 40 percent of completed surveys.
It also showed less than 16 percent of likely voters undecided four months before the election. Triumph and Y’all Politics also claimed President Trump is “popular” with a 51 percent approval rating in Mississippi. That is a number far below where President Trump’s numbers likely stand in a deep red state.
Unsurprisingly, Triumph has a C+ rating for its polling services on FiveThirtyEight.
Espy, who was once indicted for receiving improper gifts, is the next great hope of Democrats and an opposition media desperate for another southern Democrat in the U.S. Senate. The Espy campaign commissioned a poll by The Mellman Group that surveyed 600 likely voters from August 1-August 7.
Mason-Dixon Polling completed a fifth survey between April 12 and April 14. This poll achieves similar results to the other polls by neglecting to poll the Pinebelt, McDaniel’s home turf, where he performed extremely well in 2014.
This series of Republican establishment and Democrat-funded polls are less than reliable. In fact, Triumph Campaigns and Y’all Politics have a dirty secret that they are purposefully hiding from the public.
Y’all Politics is well-known in Mississippi as a blog that shills for the Republican establishment. It’s owner and editor is Alan Lange, who is also co-founder and managing director of a company called MuniStrategies.
MuniStrategies is a “Community Development Entity (CDE) as recognized through the Department of Treasury to participate in New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) financing and has been awarded $198 million in allocation authority,” according to its website.
Lange’s entire business – and therefore his own financial well-being – is predicated on multi-million dollar government subsidies that finance manufacturing plants and other industry in rural areas. If President Donald J. Trump’s agenda of lowering corporate taxes and ending globalist trade deals is fully implemented, thus spurring American manufacturing and industrial growth naturally without the help of government subsidies, Lange will go out of business. He has a vested interest in fighting Trump’s agenda.
Lange’s blog then purposefully commissions polls from Triumph, owned by Justin Brasell, who was swamp-dweller Mitch McConnell’s campaign manager from 2007-2008. He is currently the campaign manager for establishment hack Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), and works behind the scenes for Hyde-Smith, according to sources on the ground in Mississippi.
The mainstream press in Mississippi then reports on the biased polls, ignorant to the the fact that Lange and Brasell have a devious agenda.
Hyde-Smith is a former Democrat who has refused to voice her support for Trump’s agenda of building a Southern border wall. McDaniel has called on her to stand up to McConnell and the GOP establishment in support of the President, which she has not done.
“Cindy Hyde-Smith has been dead silent on this issue,” McDaniel said. “I’m calling on her today to stand on behalf of Mississippians; to push back against Mitch McConnell, to push back against the Chamber of Commerce, and to call for the immediate funding of a wall on the southern border.”
Hyde-Smith accepted a $250,000 campaign donation from Silicon Valley leftist billionaire and founder of Napster, Sean Parker, which she has refused to return. She was also a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential run, and lobbied for gun control during her tenure as Mississippi State Commissioner of Agriculture. She was a Democrat until 2011 when she switched parties to run for statewide office.
In terms of polling, it is clear that the fix is in to stop McDaniel. Mississippi overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2016, and McDaniel is the only America First, populist candidate in the Senate race.
This is another classic example of McConnell and his D.C. goons trying to derail the Trump train.
Big League Politics reached out to Geoffrey Pender of the Clarion Ledger, author of the Chamber of Commerce and April Triumph/Y’all Politics reports to see if he had looked into the misrepresentation of polling numbers.
He did not return a request for comment.
Follow Peter D’Abrosca on Twitter: @pdabrosca
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