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Im Mike Redford.

And this is the Follow Up coming up on this edition of the Follow Up.

With less than a month away from the midterms.

We will take a deep dive into polling data with one of the state's premier pollsters.

Who does he think has a leg up on the governor's race in the battle for Michigan's U.S.

Senate seat?

How to pollsters go about getting our opinion in the first place?

Can we trust the results?

And how does AI impact the work of pollsters?

You will get those answers next.

But first, don't forget to help drive the conversation here on the show on our social media platforms.

And you can also engage with us on DeltaPublicMedia.org.

In addition to watching any of our past shows this season, now on for tonight's show, our two guests joining us virtually a Bernie Porn.

He's with the president of Epic MRA out of Lansing.

He's with the president of Epic MRA out of Lansing.

He's one of Michigan's premier pollsters.

Well thought of.

So we're glad to hear he's with us.

Joining us from Lansing and my good friend Art Lewis from WSGW radio.

and my good friend Art Lewis from WSGW radio.

I feel out of place.

Yeah, I don't know about that.

Well, it's not the first week that's true, Bernie, that we're going to tag team against you or with you.

I'm not sure what we're going to do here, Art and I, but, what had happened?

Yeah.

You know, you do a lot of polling, particularly this time of year leading up to the midterms.

I'm going to start the discussion by dissecting the polling and the race for governor and the US Senate seat.

That's the one that those are the two races people are really jabbering about.

I know you plan you'd like to release a more updated poll the closer we get to November 3rd.

Prior to that, the most recent significant poll you guys did was sort of early September, late August.

And at that time, here's what they said.

The November race for Michigan governor, The November race for Michigan governor, the Epic MRA poll showed Democrat Jocelyn Besson, leading Republican John James, 48% to 44%.

And then when it comes to the U.S.

Senate poll at that time and again, we're talking late August, September, you had Abdul El-Sayed, leading Republican Mike Rogers, 50% to 45%, with a handful of undecided on both races.

So any inkling if you were to come out with a poll in the next three weeks, end of October, would those poll numbers change drastically and or what would history tell you about that?

I think that the numbers are probably held in, as a matter of fact, El-Sayed led probably held in, as a matter of fact, El-Sayed led when it is simulated by more than what Benson led James.

And the numbers that you provided are in fact the simulated numbers.

The.

And that is where we take the undecided voters and apportion them based on the Partizan leanings, because they are likely to end up voting in that manner.

The without the simulation, it was 45 to 41 for Benson over James, and it was 47 to 43. for El-Sayed over Rogers.

And then when simulated, those were the numbers that you showed.

And a more recent Marist poll had El-Sayed up by 7 points and Benson up by 12 points.

And so the average of all of them, I think, is about three and a half to four points in a lead for El-Sayed over Rogers.

And I think it's about ten points for Benson over James.

And since we did our poll, that's when Benson started doing a lot of advertising.

She really was not advertised as much when we did our poll.

And so that has had an impact.

And plus a can have an impact on these kind of statewide elections.

And as well as debates, we saw a debate, involving Will Lawrence and, and Tom Barrett, the seventh Congressional District.

And there are parts of that debate that may, cause some difficulties for the incumbent Congressman Tom Barrett, all developed around AI and data centers.

Let me ask some philosophical questions.

Bernie, why do we need polls?

And here's why I ask.

Are you at all afraid that when you issue polls, particularly the closer you get to election, that by its very nature it could influence voters?

I understand when parties do internal polls because they need to know what's happening.

Do we really need public polls?

Well, I think absolutely.

The public polls, the the media wants them.

There's polls that causes discussion among groups.

And I think because the polls are more likely if their guy is behind.

They're more likely to wake up and try to turn out.

Although this year I think it may be different.

And that is largely because the President's numbers, and it is probably going to be a difficult time for Republicans unless all of the polls and I'm talking about thousands and thousands of interviews, unless all of them are wrong.

There's a very good chance that Democrats may take control of the U.S.

House of Representatives, and they have a very good chance of taking control of the U.S.

Senate as well.

I was largely dependent on El-Sayed winning in Michigan to keep Gary Peters seat.

But there's also a number of other states where, surprisingly, in rural areas, Democrats are having a very even up chance or slightly a slight advantage in terms of winning U.S.

Senate races.

And a lot of that is because of tariffs as well as the Iran war causing increased prices for gasoline.

And in the urban rural areas where there are farmers.

The diesel fuel cost that not only increases cost for our groceries because of the truckers having to pay for diesel fuel, but farmers have to pay diesel fuel to run their their tractors and their farm machinery.

And so that is causing the president some serious difficulties, as well as incumbent Republican U.S.

senators and incumbent congressional members.

One more philosophical question if I'm called for a poll, in effect, I represent thousands of people as one voice in that poll.

What's the science behind polls?

So people understand how you come to your accuracy?

Well, a random sample and we stratify it for for whatever the election is.

So when I say stratify, that means that every portion of the poll is representative of the geography and the turnout within those geographical areas of the state for either a gubernatorial election or a presidential election.

And presidential elections normally have a significantly higher turnout than gubernatorial elections have.

And that stratification has been very, very accurate for us in 2022.

In the last gubernatorial election, Epic MRA my company was the most accurate with.

We're calling the Whitmer in a lead right before the election of 11 points.

She ended up winning by ten and a half points.

And the next closest was another Michigan pollster, Glenn Gareth, who does polling for the Detroit News and a number of other clients.

And he was at nine points, whereas all of the other pollsters, national and other pollsters in Michigan, they were significantly off the mark.

So when it comes to doing the polls that you do, you sort of rely on outside organizations, groups that will come to you and say, here's what we need to be pulled for us.

You need to track this for us.

But they've got to they've got to pay the tab.

Right.

And that's what's calling us in the challenge of whether or not you come up with a more updated poll on the races we're talking about closer to Election Day, right?

Yes.

The media clients, for a variety of reasons, decided not to participate in the polling program that we've had for decades.

And so we're paying for our polls by selling questions.

But we always include our questions which deal with the the gubernatorial race, the US Senate race.

If we do another poll, also test the attorney general, secretary of state and the two ballot proposals.

And in the 2022 election.

Of the three ballot proposals we had to the percentage, the percentage, yes, vote for two out of the three and the other one, there was a significant amount of late television advertising against that proposal.

I believe it was proposal to where that resulted in a slightly different number than what we had, but still within the margin of error.

Bernie, is is AI going to have any impact on the future of polling?

I think that AI is in a in a increased sense of doing a lot of automated polling.

They're not going to have people that get on the phone and talk to you directly.

But a, I believe, is writing a lot of polls and increasingly they're doing a number of polls.

I'm not sure how accurate they're going to be.

I kind of like the polling where our live operators talk to our random sample of voters and come up with the results of the questions that we ask.

And if you look at our website and look click on the press room.

You can see the consistency of questions.

We publicize every poll.

And when you look at the favorable and job rating for Trump, for Whitmer and other questions, you can see the consistency on a variety of different questions.

And those numbers show that there's a consistent, very accurate representation of the the voting public in terms of their opinions.

So on the two races, we're sort of focusing on the US Senate race and the governor's race in terms of questions that you're asking people.

It's more than simply who do you favor in that race?

How many more questions you're asking, what kind of questions you were asking people beyond the fact who you favor or who you don't favor?

Well, we always ask favorability questions.

And in the August survey, we had, Donald Trump with a 57% unfavorable rating, 34% favorable.

And among those who had a favorable rating.

76% of Republicans offered a favorable rating, while 96% of Democrats offered a negative or unfavorable rating, and 62% of independent voters offered an unfavorable rating.

And then when you look at the job rating for Donald Trump, he ended up with only 30% positive and 67% negative.

And his 76% favorable rating dropped down to 65% positive job rating.

So he lost 11 points among Republicans.

They like him more than they think.

He's doing a good job.

And, Democrats overwhelmingly give him unfavorable ratings as well as the negative job rating.

And even among independent voters, 77%, well above the 67% statewide numbers offered a negative job rating.

And so all these Republicans that are running and have in the past supported maybe 95% or up to 100% of the policies of Donald Trump.

They have, as the old saying, would go some some splashing to do in terms of their votes in the past.

And you see a variety of them nationwide.

If they're in a competitive Senate race or a U.S.

congressional race, many of them have scrubbed any reference to the president out of their websites, and they're trying to change positions on something like data centers, where they may have voted for the one big, beautiful bill, which limits local governments ability to limit or to control data centers and other issues surrounding data centers.

They're now stuck with the record, and now they're saying that, we want to control them.

And for Tom Barrett and Will Lawrence in the in the congressional debate just tonight, that created problems for the incumbent.

I have to ask you.

So you 80% of the people that you're talking to, you do it through cell phones, right?

The other 20%, largely through landlines, right?

Yes.

That's correct.

And it used to be when we first started ten years ago, it would be 20% cell phones and then we up to 30%.

And then just a growing number of people abandoned their landlines and are going to cell phones.

And that is particularly true among younger voters that we were wrong years ago in the governor or the mayoral election in Detroit, because we did not connect to enough younger voters who were supportive of the candidate that was was shown to be losing against Gil Hill.

And he ended up winning the the, mayoral race in Detroit.

That's because we didn't talk to enough cell phone users.

So we dramatically increased the number of folks we contact by cell phones.

And now it's 78 or to 80% on just about all of our polls that we do.

So the people in my inner circle will say, okay, ask Bernie this.

How can you tell or trust what that person on the cell phone is saying?

You ask them questions about certain candidates.

And what if I'm not truthful?

How can you trust with some of those folks are saying, well, the consistency of the polls.

If we see that demographic groups are consistent with what we've asked in our number of polls before, odds are that they're telling the truth, especially if there's an election held and we're very close to what the results are.

That is especially true in the district polling that we do for school districts on bond and millage proposals, where clearly we're about 85% accurate within just a few percentage points of what the election results are.

When we see that kind of a pattern.

We know that there's not a great deal of lies.

Plus, if someone is going to lie on some questions, especially on the race for governor or race for attorney general or or for U.S.

Senate, we have other questions which will show the inconsistency.

Great example.

In the 2024 election, we were somewhat off and I forgot to ask a Follow Up question.

We had 7% saying that they were going to vote for a third party candidate.

It ended up only being one percentage point.

And what I wanted to do is those who voted, who said they were going to vote for a third party candidate.

I wanted to do a Follow Up question where we asked, well, if it came down to a choice between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which candidate would you vote for?

Because I think that would have erased just about all of those folks that said 3rd party candidate, so that they didn't want to admit that they were going to be voting for for Donald Trump.

So that brings up my next question, which you just touched on in all your polling and all the years you've been doing it.

Have you seen any signs that we may be ready for a third party if that party had a charismatic leader?

Well, we've had Ross Perot, and that's what other candidate, other candidates that took enough of a vote.

I think that it's entirely possible that the, Bill Clinton might not have won election, were it not for the votes that Ross Perot took during that election.

And there are other cases in Florida with the name is escaping right now.

But, there was enough of a vote, 5000, I believe, for.

Gosh, the the the name has escaped me, but, he took 5000 votes and and, Al Gore lost by 500 were it not for those votes.

That were taken, odds are that Al Gore would have won Florida and also won the presidency.

You talked a bit earlier about the president's sort of unfavorable ratings, and that the love for him is under declined, to say the least, which I'm assuming is helping, El-Sayed.

And not so much Mike Rogers.

So when it comes to the race for governor, Jocelyn Benson coming off the Governor Whitmer coattails, what benefit or does that help or hurt Benson coming off a witness?

Two terms.

Well, surprisingly, after months and months of surveys that showed that Governor Whitmer got 53, 54% favorable rating and a 52 or 53% positive jibe rating, which is unusual to have that kind of a closeness.

In terms of those two numbers, in our August survey, she had a 55% negative job rating, 41% positive.

And I think a lot of that is due to a number of issues.

For one thing, she supported openly with TV ads Stevens in the primary.

And a lot of El-Sayed voters, I think, are somewhat negative on her.

Plus, she supported data centers and has modified that somewhat in terms of controlling them.

But that is an issue that I think, maybe help to reduce her support.

Plus, she has not been a strong in opposition to tariffs, which Michigan voters are very much opposed to, especially tariffs imposed against Canada.

How how long does certain issues linger?

By that I mean, if we look at the governor's negative ratings versus positive ratings, is there still a Covid effect from the way she handled Covid, that that could be something that would have an impact.

However, after Covid, for the last many months, before the last few, few surveys.

She was getting very positive numbers.

And I think a lot of that was because of the exchanges she had with President Trump.

Where people responded positively to what she said and negatively to the kind of things that President Trump said.

And so, things can be very lasting.

One example is that we tested.

During Governor Snyder's, term of office in 2012, we tested the idea that had been proposed, and that was that he would support if he supported a right to work law.

Would that make you more likely or less likely to support him?

And in December of 2012, we tested that what if question and, he significant percentage said they would be less likely to support him.

And indeed after he voted, after he signed the right to work law, even though he had said he was going to oppose it in the past.

After signing it, he slipped in terms of his positive job rating, as well as favorably to almost exactly what the percentage was based on the less likely to support him.

That we tested in terms of the message testing and the in the 2012 election, and the same kind of thing often happens in terms of advertising, even for state rep races.

I remember working on a state rep campaign in my former life when I was working for 20 years for Democrats in the Michigan House of Representatives.

There was one Republican woman who was occupying a district that was fairly Democratic, and it always bugged me that whenever a Republican was able to represent the fairly strong Democratic district.

And when we first tested some negative messages, she had a 76% favorable rating and a 68% positive job rating.

And then we we did advertising based on the messages that we tested.

And within two weeks, she ended up with a favorable and a job rating that was below 50%.

And so, you can have a tremendous impact just in terms of the messages you choose and whether or not it resonates with voters.

And one way to test that is to say, well, you will you be more likely, you're less likely to vote for this person knowing this, which you described in terms of their record, and then you just prioritize what are the most salient to the least salient issues.

And I'm sure the pollsters, for both Republicans and Democrats are testing messages.

And right now, because of the difficulty in the numbers for President Trump, you have Republicans are attacking Democrats as being socialist and communist.

And indeed, we tested the the residents of of the socialist idea for candidates who claim to or have a record of being socialist.

And you have 50% in Michigan saying they have an unfavorable rating of socialists, and only 41% of Democrats said that they have a favorable rating.

And so that's why Republicans are attacking them.

But when comparing that message negative under socialism and being communist, which President Trump encouraged them to do, you end up, I think, having a greater impact of connection to President Trump as a negative than a negative impact on being a socialist or a or a communist, because some of it is a question of believability.

Well, you know, it's interesting that both sides do it.

When you look at the Kamala Harris race, they spent the entire race calling Trump and his cronies Nazis and what have you didn't tell us what they were going to do for the country.

Now, the Republicans have done just the opposite.

They're calling the Democrats socialists and communists.

And, you know, the unfortunate part about it, this and you touched on it.

You demonstrated it.

The reason we have so much negativity in political advertising is because it works.

Nobody could spend the money if it didn't.

If it didn't work, they wouldn't use it.

Yep.

And every once in a while you get someone who goes over the top.

For example, in the gubernatorial election where Bill Fitzgerald was running against the governor, Milliken, the Fitzgerald campaign attacked him for being responsible for the crisis with the, the the farms and, the I can't.

The issue is scaping me.

But they attacked him.

And as matter of fact, Tony Schwartz was the guy that did the radio ads.

And when I heard first heard the ad, because of the favorable numbers that Milliken had, I said, that ad is going to just backfire.

And sure enough, it did.

And that's because there were such very high numbers and favorable and job ratings for Bill Milliken.

And I know that the exit polling on the night of the election.

Then Speaker Bobby Crim said to me at 8:01, how can they predict the outcome of the election so quickly?

And I said, because, there's an accurate measurement there.

And our polling showed that, the the attacks that were used by the Bill Fitzgerald and campaign.

We're not working.

Hey, Bernie, the last minute here in the show, a lot more of us are voting earlier with a lot of changes in the voting laws.

Does that mean many more of us are making our minds up a lot earlier than Election Day?

And is that impact some of your polling?

Oh, sure.

That's why, as we get close to the election, we ask whether or not they intend to vote by absentee ballot or have already voted by absentee ballot, and also whether or not they voted early, so that we capture the responses of those people and molded in with the total responses to the election races that we ask.

Let me ask you both, Bernie, are you early voters?

Are you day off?

It depends on my schedule.

I've gotten this last election.

The primary.

I actually went down and got an absentee ballot, okay.

And turned it right in a box.

There's a box out front.

But if my schedule allows me to vote, I want to go to the polling place.

Bernie, how about you?

I got my absentee ballot just a couple of weeks ago, and when I got it, I immediately filled it out.

So did my wife and my son, and I had my son bring it down to the clerk's office and walk in and personally deliver it.

I mean, you're not excellent.

You're not going to let your poll influence, you know, he's not Bernie Porn from Epic MRA and Art Lewis WSGW thank you for this great robust conversation today, gentlemen.

And that's this edition of the Follow Up for this week.

Be sure to join us again next week.

We're going to have two leaders from some political parties to have at it a little bit of a date before debate before Election Day.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks for joining us.