Here’s one of the stranger stories to come out of the Democratic primary in recent memory. Following the spectacular implosion of Senator Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and sudden withdrawal from the race, analysts were left to pick up the pieces and try to guess how it all went so wrong. But the Free Beacon picked up on one possible clue yesterday, suggesting that perhaps Harris never quite figured out how this whole political thing works.
Harris was obviously looking to gin up support for impeaching President Trump and removing him from office. So when a new Fox News poll was released showing some plurality support for impeachment, she hopped onto Twitter to point out that even Fox viewers want the President gone. Let’s see if we can discover the flaw in her analysis.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) failed to realize that news organizations do not just survey their own viewers when she used Fox News poll results to exaggerate popular support for impeachment.
The failed presidential candidate said a Fox News poll, which found that about half of voters support impeachment, demonstrated that “even viewers of Trump’s favorite network are turning on him.”
Like most major news outlets, Fox News teams up with dedicated polling firms that survey a nationally representative sample of random Americans by telephone. The poll cited by Harris sampled 1,000 registered voters and slightly over-sampled Democratic-leaning voters, 46 percent to 41 percent.
Here’s the amusing, if totally misguided tweet. (I’ll save a screencap of it just in case she decides to delete it.)
Even viewers of Trump’s favorite network are turning on him.
No one—including Trump—is above the law. He must be impeached. https://t.co/Yqys24vuyB
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) December 16, 2019
One of her followers who is apparently a bit more politically savvy was quick to point out the obvious.
https://twitter.com/dsonoiki/status/1206662080180490243
Obviously, this wasn’t a poll conducted among only Fox viewers. Doing such a poll would be expensive and relatively pointless, providing little data of value to the campaigns. The same could be said for CNN polls, leaving me to wonder if Harris thinks those only sample people sitting in airport terminals.
As the Free Beacon goes on to point out, this may not have been a simple slip up or one-time error. Harris previously told Anderson Cooper that she was one of the “top tier candidates” at a time when she was polling at 4%. (At the time, Harris was tied for sixth place, trailing Joe Biden by more than twenty and both Warren and Sanders by double digits.)
A lack of understanding of how national politics works may have contributed to Harris’ failure to close the deal, but that was only one small part if so. She ran a disorganized campaign that sent mixed messages to her staff, was in a nearly constant state of turmoil and she kept changing her positions on key topics depending on the venue she was speaking at. Also, her history as a “tough on crime” District Attorney didn’t do her any favors with a base that’s largely focused on justice reform.
And yet she’s still being touted as the hot pick for the eventual winner’s VP. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?
