Fake Polls and Hateful Ads Are Poisoning American Politics (w/ Mallory McMorrow)

Everybody aye, this is Sam Stein, managing at the Blurk. I am pleased to be joined by Madame Magnoir, State Senator and Michigan, former State, former Senate candidate to many Senate. We're here to talk about polling. There was a crazy story that happens, it was two days ago now, where a pollster, a polling firm I should say by the name of Wedgewood Poles, announced that it had basically, not basically been fabricating polls, more or less as a social experiment, this cycle, to see how easy it would be to influence the median areas around campaigns. And the reason I wanted Madame to come on and talk about it is that of all the people who were victimized by this, I would say you were the most. Just a backster before I throw it to you. On June 29th, Wedgewood put out a poll, showing you, I believe it, 9%, is that right? - Yeah, that's right. - Not an absurdly low figure. It's kind of sent shockwaves through the media coverage of the race. You were running obviously against a bull, say it at the time, and Representative Hayless Stevens. Said it was at 46, and Stevens was at 39, with 6% undecided in the poll. It turned out that this poll was bullshit, like literally all made up. But it had an incredible ripple effect. And so I want to just talk to you about what the ripple effect actually was. - I don't know that it ultimately would have changed the outcome of the race. I know that a lot of people over the last few days have said, oh, this is just hope for where you are. I was in third place at the time. There was a Susquehanna poll that came out that also had me at 9%, but that poll showed that 50% of voters were still undecided. So there's a huge difference between being down 10 versus your competitors and down 35. Or something like this poll showed. And this was at a moment in the race where outside spending had already come in. There were ads up, I mean, we were doing everything we could. But the crown game felt good. There was another poll that had hit just a couple of days before this one, that was a Mitchell poll that also showed me in single digits. But right away, we smelled something was off with that. So we expected a lot of capital proving that that poll was bullshit. It was an open survey monkey link that somebody could send around to any of their friends. People were taking it multiple times. And we took some heat for calling that out, but Murs, the outlet here in Michigan, ultimately decided not to publish that one because their methodology was so bunk. So we went through that and then a couple days later, this poll comes out. And I got to tell you, it immediately dried up our donations. Our volunteers were apoplectic because we had expended all this capital to show. This is not the truth. And then this other poll comes out and it made people go, OK, but what if it is? I was on the phone with a number of our big donors who pointed to this poll specifically and said, hey, maybe it's time you've run a great race. Maybe it's time to think about if there is a path forward. And that's really hard. Reporters started hammering me with what number do you need to see to drop out? And more than anything else, I wanted to put out a tweet about this. And I wanted to show there were material impacts of this fake poll. But more than anything else, I hope we take away the lesson. It's bullshit. Just stop paying attention to polls and go knocks the doors. That's what I guess I quibble with you. I know what you mean when you say it wouldn't have changed the outcome. Like I get what you're saying is like in the grand scheme of things, you probably were not going to win the primary. Although I am whatever. But it did change the outcome on a micro level, right? I mean, like it determined where resources went. It put wind in the sales of Abdul Sayed, it set narratives. Like, maybe there wasn't an outside chance that you could have picked up steam. So I don't know if I agree with you that it didn't change the outcome. Yeah, it is a long race. And I look back on a year and a half of a campaign. And there certainly days that I would have done differently. There was also a lot just about the moment that it was outside my control. But especially in this race and in a state like Michigan, I feel like reporters and social media accounts and that's whole ecosystem is so ravenous for anything about the horse race. Like, and just like it, it's, I don't know how we beat it. Outside of what we got to clean the shit up. So you see this wedge would pull or whatever. Yeah, but I never heard of the firm. Obviously no one had because it just popped up. So you're in the campaign at the moment. You'd already gone, I won't say to war, but you've gone really hard at Mitchell for their terminology or methodology. What did you do with respect to wedge? What did you guys, were you asking in turn like, who are these people? Should we check out their methodology? Do we need to like figure out what's going on here? Did you reach out? We had the same conversations of who are these people. You know, I remember when we knew it was going to hit or we got wind that it was coming. And that was our first response was who the hell are these guys? We've never heard of them. But it felt like we had already expended all of the capital we had to go against the Mitchell poll that, you know, the morale hit to our entire team. Because this was, it really was just a few days within the campaign. And it was a one, two punch. It was hard. It was some of the worst days on the campaign. And I felt like there was nothing I could say to the team. And you start to believe it. You're like, maybe this is where we really are. And it's hard to pull out of behind this poll. Like there were human beings behind this poll. But they were just coast plain, right? Like they were not actually pollsters. They're using AI to generate like models of what a poll and could look like apparently just totally bullshit. Which is insane. With Thanksgiving coming up, my calendar is getting packed and cooking dinner during the week is just not happening. Or if it is happening, I'm afraid you can't call it dinner. Tempo has been a lifesaver when I need something quick, that's still a real meal. Tempo delivers fresh, chef crafted, dietitian-approved meals right to your door, making it easy to eat well and save time, even on your busy days. The meals are perfectly portioned for lunch or dinner in the ready in just two minutes. So instead of settling on a sad desk lunch or grabbing fast food, I can have something generally satisfying without the extra work. I love that there's so much variety, too. With over 20 recipes every week made from nutrient-riching greetings, you can keep things interesting and find meals that fit your timeline. Whether you're looking for an extra protein or more fiber or a Cali-conscious option, there's something for you. For a limited time, Tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box. Go to TempoMeals.com/Boretakes. That's TempoMeals.com/Boretakes for 60% off. I didn't say 16. I said 60, 60%, percent off your first box. TempoMeals.com/Boretakes Rules and Restrictions may apply. I want to, so let's talk about the kind of polling media ecosystem and how it takes on the life of its own. People see random bits of data, they don't contextualize it. Sometimes they don't even know where it comes from. And then there's just rapid fire reaction online. I view from the vantage point of a reporter who's trying to sift through or an editor who's trying to sift through with signals and noise. What is it like from the vantage point of a campaign to watch that stuff take off? Yeah, I mean, you have to separate something yourself from certain aspects of it. There's election Twitter, which is just like an insane sort of place where people parse through every bit of data at all times and live for all of this stuff. And then we certainly didn't make any campaign decisions based on polling from a pollster that we had never heard of. That is not anything that was an impact. But the real impact was, when the internet fury about this fills out into donors, people who know me supported our campaign, I raised $11 million with zero corporate pack dollars. We had, I think over 70,000 individual donors, we'd built up a massive operation. And to be on the phone with some people who knew the campaign, we were running, who knew the strength of our field operation, who saw something like this in that one, two punch, and they, they internalized that. And those are some of the hardest conversations 'cause it was people who told me. Wait a second, we don't know what this firm was like. I tried this, I tried this, but it's hard to break through. I remember being at a fundraiser. - So donors are influenced by Twitter, basically. - Donors are influenced by Twitter. And I remember being at a fundraiser and the host of the fundraiser even had to say, like, hey, if there's a bunch of garbage polls out there, don't trust those ones, the reputable ones. - Yeah, but that comes off as spin, right? - It comes off as defensively. It comes off as you're hiding something. And even, you know, even people in the room who support me, who believe in the campaign, it felt like this crux of, I believe in you, I support you and we have to accept this reality. And I was like, that bucket sucks, especially when you find out this many months later. - It wasn't real, it wasn't real. - So how do you clean it up, right? Like, I guess that's the difficult thing to conceive. Like, okay, 'cause this is actually not, then just smokes you know this. This is not the only, which is crazy. This is not the only fake pulse for this cycle. There was another one I think was called like, meridian or something like that. So like, this happened twice. And there's just no indication that this is not gonna be even worse in future slides. cycles, right? Like just the ecosystem kind of lends itself to these type of bad actors. So I don't know. I feel like someone needs to take legal action as a sort of debtor as something to like basically discourages type of behavior in the future. Is that something you're considering? Well, and it's, it's not happening in a vacuum. You know, one of the things that I think about all the time is, is just the fact that trust in not only institutions, but, but in any of this politics at all, is that an all time low? This is a piece of it, certainly but then there's scampacts. There's the fact that the number of people I say who I donated to you for the first time and now I'm on every candidate's email list across the country and I can't step away from my phone. I can't get my phone back. Scampacts that use candidates names without their permission is if they're fundraising for those candidates when they're not. You had polling operations. So I think they're just, I hope that Democrats have an amazing night in two weeks. I'm doing everything I can for that. And we got to be really committed to blowing up the system. So that's campaign finance reform is transparency reform media outlets. I think really seriously need to consider vetting polling firms before you bring a new polling firm into your polling averages. Yeah, but I don't the firm literally answered questions from the New York Times. They just made up a, yeah, they made up a fake story. I mean, I guess I could obviously insure that harder, but it's just the, the depths they went to to put up this facade is pretty impressive in a way. It's crazy. And apparently as of this morning, their Twitter account is gone. So, you know, the thing I retweeted suddenly disappeared as well. Okay. Are you, but I asked are you, I mean, is legal action an option here? You know, we haven't made any decisions and I don't think it's not something that my campaign would be interested in taking on like I just, I don't believe it's helpful for I got into the race for the larger goal of beating my crutches and for Democrats winning. So I'll leave it there. But I hope again, you know, we, we do a lot of work to blow all this up and make a better system. Yeah, but some of this is like, yeah, some of this is systematic reform on a legislative all about some of this is just the democratic institutions look policing their own actors. Right. You talk about scam packs and just the proliferation of the money. That's act blue and other institutions and democratic party cutting down on them and pushing back on them. And then, you know, the text messaging is out of control, obviously. So there are some democratic specific reforms that should be taken. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, my sort of wild fantasy that I don't know that we would ever do in this country is what if we limited campaigns to six months, we don't have to do this all the time, but it would destroy us and entire industries. I need something to love. Come on. I would love it. We have government. If people in office actually had time to just govern. I'm so nice. No, come on. Don't be crazy. I want to switch to Michigan just quickly. And then I'll let you go because we're now less than two weeks away. Are you surprised at how I guess this is kind of rhetorical? But are you surprised at how vicious and craving it's gotten against El Sayed? I mean, basically, they've never calling him a jihadist and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which usually they do it more subtly than that. And in this case, they are going really just aggressively at it without any of the pretext. So I guess it's a little bit surprising and curious what your thoughts are. Yeah. It is repulsive. It's horrendous. We get mailers in my mailbox at my house every single day. And it is like a big eight and a half by 11 mailer. I do know how to microtarget a little bit better. Apparently not. They're very bad. It's pretty obvious that this post Malar. But it's pictures of a duel in the Twin Towers. It is just veil off. It's complete bullshit. It's disgusting. And it's dangerous. And it is trickling into all of these other races where I think that is setting the tone on campaigns here. But there are Sarah Pounds. I just reposted one of her videos and Instagram. She's a candidate for State House. Every single woman running for state legislature has received credible death threats to the point they've had to cancel their events. So it feels like, you know, any sense of decency is gone. And this party, this mega Republican party that's been taken over will literally do anything, anything to not talk about the economy, to not talk about gas prices, to not go against the president, make it racist, Islamophobic, and dangerous for candidates running for office. And what that means is voters don't have an opportunity to meet people that could potentially be running. It is, I will be so happy when the next two weeks are over. And I hope there's a massive blue wave that shows that this incredibly disgusting, hateful style of campaigning doesn't work. And it's not just us, you know, look at Ohio. We're next door. And that race, like Jesus Christ, it's just awesome. I don't know. I mean, I hope it will it work, right? Like it's, I would like to think Craven politics like that is, you know, turns out. I mean, that is why, I hope it does too. And, you know, part of the reason I, I endorsed a bit, the second of the primary is the stakes here. It adds to the stakes here, right? It's like a course show. It's a path to work there. And it has been escalating. You know, I, I was in the state Senate when we had the protests on our state capital, the armed protest where there were nooses and swastikas and there was a gallows hanging outside. And I looked up in the gallery from the Senate floor to see men with AR-15s leering down at me, even just in the last, you know, 24 hours, somebody said, responded to me. Again, I did not say that what happened with Wedgewood would change the outcome of the race, but I wanted to highlight the real damage of something like this. And somebody responded and said, I should face a firing squad. It is, you know, it's, you get used to it in a way, you shouldn't have to. But I really worry that it is going to over the long haul. If they're, this fever doesn't break, people are not going to want to run for office and you're only going to get craven lunatics who want to do it because they're the only people willing to put themselves through it. Yeah, you either get that or you get people who just have no, you know, or like the blandest possible human beings on the earth because you just can't, you know, nothing to hide. Well, listen, I appreciate you doing this. I know this is kind of a weird story to tackle with, you know, 11 days left on the campaign. We're talking about it into a fabricated polling fair, but it happened. And I wanted to make sure I responded to it because I think I am one of just a very small number of people who actually knows what the real impacts were. So that people get pissed off and we end it because it's, it's can't stop. People need to be able to trust it. I think I know the answer is, but I should ask, like, has anyone associated with the Wedge Wood initiative reached out to you at all to like apologize? No, not at all. It's not that I was like, that's probably two. That's too high a bar for them to clear. All right, Malibu Maro Senator from the great state of state center from the great state of Michigan. Really appreciate it for those who watch and appreciate it to do. Please subscribe to the feed and we'll talk to you later.