Shooting the Messenger

hallmark of President Trump’s governance has been the disavowal of numbers he doesn’t like, whether it be the size of his inauguration crowd, his loss in the 2020 election, or the latest jobs report. So it fits the trend that, back in April, when public opinion polls showed Trump’s approval numbers taking a nosedive, he lashed out at the polls, calling them “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS” on Truth Social and demanding investigations into pollsters.

Politicians have always criticised unfavorable polls, of course, but Trump doesn’t stop at words. His actions—firing the director of the Bureau of Labor Statistics; filing suit against pollster Ann Selzer—could materially reduce the quality and availability of independent data. While legal experts see the lawsuits against Selzer as meritless, it’s possible that threats of lawsuits aimed at organizations producing unfavorable polls could have a chilling effect. Some of the most credible, highest-quality polling available comes from media organizations and universities, both of which have recently settled lawsuits with the administration.

“In authoritarian societies, they basically suppress these things as a matter of course,” said Robert Shapiro, a political science professor and vice dean of the School of International Public Affairs at Columbia University. Governments in countries like Russia, for instance, publicize favorable polls that align with their rhetoric and sometimes deliberately label independent pollsters as “foreign agents” to undermine credibility. China censors what surveys are even allowed to ask about. But according to Kathleen Frankovic, a former director of surveys at CBS News, regulating polls has historically been difficult in the US. “So many of them are done for the news media, and there is a strong history of the right to freedom of the press,” she said.