Not long after he was again blackballed from MSNBC’s chart of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, as The Inquisitr previously reported, Andrew Yang took to Twitter Wednesday to suggest that political polls are underestimating his support in the race to challenge President Donald Trump.
“Most political polls are done by calling people with landlines. I have the feeling that this may underestimate our support. Still we have to reach people where they are. We have a lot of work to do.”
Yang isn’t wrong. Politico reports that the majority of major media polls conducted by CNN, Fox News, CBS News, ABC News/Washington Post, and NBC News/Wall Street Journal — as well as academic polls that frequently make their way into the media — are still using traditional phone methodology to create random samples of Americans.
But support for this form of data collection is on the decline.
According to the Pew Research Center , response rates for its phone polls in 2018 was only 6 percent. Politico reports that the drop is a continuation of a long-term pattern of declines in phone polling. The trend has even caused Pew to move “the lion’s share” of its tracking methods to its online platform.
“We felt like we were sort of at this transition point,” said Courtney Kennedy, the director of survey research at Pew.
Andrew Yang to pay second voter $1,000 a month https://t.co/MzQdxTHuoO
— Caroline Kelly (@caroline_mkelly) June 12, 2019
Despite this pattern, Politico suggests that shifting political election polling into the online sphere will be difficult because national panels are too small to survey individual states.
“There’s a real challenge, particularly for political campaigns and advocacy groups interested in measuring public opinion in smaller states and geography below the state level,” said Mark Blumenthal, a pollster and co-founder of the website Pollster.com.
Yang is running on a platform of a $1,000 Universal Basic Income (UBI), which he has branded the “freedom dividend.” He believes that it will combat job losses due to automation and also suggests that it will reduce stress levels and improve the mental health of Americans across the board. Yang believes that much of job stress comes from a survival instinct, and by dousing this instinct, many struggling people would likely respond differently in many situations thanks to a more secure financial future.
As The Inquisitr previously reported, Yang’s Iowa campaign coordinator, Jonathan Herzog, echoed Yang’s sentiments and also said that UBI would curb antisemitism. He claims that automation “will likely” fuel antisemitism through “winner-take-all dynamics and resentment,” and believes that the UBI is a possible solution for this surge.
“We can talk about anti-semitism or we can do something about it. The #FreedomDividend might just be that something.”