[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15148]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        POLLS HAVE BUILT-IN BIAS

  (Mr. SMITH of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, both the Washington Examiner and 
Washington Times recently have reported on a practice that is resulting 
in overly low approval ratings for President Trump. Pollsters are not 
necessarily rigging their questions to get a desired result; instead, 
they are creating a biased result by how they select people to poll.
  Frequently, the pollsters contact more Democrats than Republicans. 
Unsurprisingly, the results tilt anti-Trump. The Examiner pointed out 
that this ``robs Trump of about 8 points in his approval ratings, from 
46 percent to 38 percent.''
  The Times noted that in polls including Presidential approval 
questions, the Economist relied on a sample that used 58 percent more 
Democrats than Republicans, which ``gave Democrats a 14-point edge, 
while Reuters and Gallup gave Democrats an 11-point and 7-point edge in 
their samples.''
  Mr. Speaker, as the 2016 election taught us, we shouldn't rely on 
biased polls if we want accuracy.

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