Doug Kaplan, managing partner at Gravis Marketing, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday’s Breitbart News Daily to break down the latest Breitbart News/Gravis presidential poll, which showed a statistical tie between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, brought about, in part, by Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson’s voters breaking for Trump. “We take a random sample of voters, and we do both phone calls and online responses,” Kaplan said of the poll’s methodology.
He said those online responses were “different than online polls.”
“Most people would think we just go on a website. We have a panel that people have opted into, of cell phone users only that we email, which is about 30 percent of our poll,” he explained. “The other 70 percent we do automated phone calls, where we call a random sample off the voter list, and then we ask the questions, people type in on their phone, ‘press 1, press 2, press 3’ for who they’re voting for.”
Kaplan admitted he was “a little shocked” by the dead-heat results of the latest poll.
“We have some other polls in the field, not to disclose them at this point, but there’s been a movement for Trump since the last debate,” he said. “Something changed in the race, and it’s against the conventional wisdom. You see it in other polls, as well, where it’s significantly changed, where he’s closed the gap.”
Kaplan attributed this movement to Trump picking up independents and Gary Johnson’s voters “going towards Trump. Also, he said he could see Trump “consolidating the Republican base more, where he’s getting 90 percent instead of 80 percent, so he’s closing the gap, for sure.”
“It’s been better news cycles for him over the last week, since the debate,” he added. “A lot of the bad news, with the women and tape and all that, it’s been out there for almost a month, which is probably good for him because now … the focus is more about WikiLeaks or Podesta’s emails, the Clinton Foundation, and those are all great issues for him. I think that that’s why the Republican base is now going from 80 percent for him to 90 percent for him, and that’s why you see the race much closer.”
Marlow asked about poll “weighting” based on voter registration, which suggested a +7 Democrat advantage in the Breitbart News/Gravis survey, in line with the outcome of the 2012 election.
“If you look at the exit polls after people vote, they’re asked what party they’re registered in. You look at the voter files, and you see if this amount of people voted, what party they were in, Democrat or Republican. There’s anywhere from a seven -to nine-point advantage among Democrats in the country right now, just based on the last few cycles,” Kaplan confirmed.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00
