According to the focus group for laughably-inaccurate pollster Frank Luntz, the candidate that won Thursday’s GOP presidential debate was … Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R).
Here’s the full breakdown of Luntz’s focus group:
My 25-person focus group’s picks for winner tonight:
• @JohnKasich: 18
• @TedCruz: 6
• @realDonaldTrump: 1
• @MarcoRubio: 0#GOPDebate— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) March 4, 2016
The Blaze reports:
When asked for a show of hands, the majority of members agreed on Kasich, who they said was the “only adult in the room” and was “mature” in his discourse.
The voters revealed very negative feelings about the debate, saying it was an “embarrassment,” “shameful” and “despicable,” voicing disapproval over the tone of the discussion and the personal attacks that ensued. One even described the evening as a “schoolyard brawl.”
Luntz’s focus groups should be taken with a grain of salt, as they are typically less reliable than a Magic-8 ball. After the first debate in August, Luntz essentially declared Trump’s candidacy dead since many members of his focus group came in as Trump supporters and soured on him by the end of the debate. Obviously, the implosion of Trump’s candidacy did not occur then and six months later it still has not happened.
Dr. Lonna Rae Atkeson, director of the Center for Voting, Elections and Democracy at the University of New Mexico, illustrated the problems with Luntz’s focus group to The Washington Examiner:
“We can only make it about those people in the focus group,” she said. “If we started out at 10 supporters and you go down to three, that’s all you can say. You can’t say that same decline would be seen in the broader electorate.”
“The unique thing about a focus group is they all sat there and watched,” Atkeson said. “Whereas 90 percent of the public didn’t watch the debate or think about it at all. That’s a huge difference.”
RedState‘s streiff explains further:
First, it is impossible to create a group model in a focus group. On one project I ran for National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the client wanted “two Hispanics, an elderly black woman, a three-toed red haired gypsy, etc.” (just joking about the last one). What they were trying to do with at twelve person focus group was create an demographic sample. You can’t do that. No matter how you choose them, you’ve just got a dozen plus people. Second, focus groups are only useful if you are using them in conjunction with a larger poll.
In other words, the idea that Luntz’s focus group is reflective of the overall populace is simply bogus. It’s also worth noting that Luntz is no fan of conservatives, as leftist rag Mother Jones has a recording of Luntz saying, “If you take—Marco Rubio’s getting his ass kicked. Who’s my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He’s getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others. He’s trying to find a legitimate, long-term effective solution to immigration that isn’t the traditional Republican approach, and talk radio is killing him. That’s what’s causing this thing underneath. And too many politicians in Washington are playing coy.”
“Frank Luntz saying how there was such a negative response to the debate, yet as his dials went sky high with Cruz talking, he cut away.”
Daniel Horowitz
With that in mind, this can’t be a coincidence:
Frank luntz saying how there was such a negative response to the debate, yet as his dials went sky high with Cruz talking, he cut away
— Daniel Horowitz (@RMConservative) March 4, 2016
Only in a Frank Luntz focus group could Kasich be the winner of that debate.
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