I met Frank Luntz when I was in DC for meetings.
We were both at the building where the GOP headquarters are. Luntz had returned from lunch with Eric Cantor, a Republican big wig at the time. He walked by me wearing that toupee that looks like a raccoon humping his head.
I said, “Hello”, as Luntz was ushered back to meet with Michael Steele. Clearly he had clout, because I waited in the lobby for some underlings to meet with me.
I knew him like most people. From his focus groups. I took them at face value. But I should have known not to do that.
Here is Luntz proving that he warned Republicans about Trump. In other words, he didn’t want Trump to win:
Luntz raised my eyebrows when Obama was elected in 2008. The man who is almost always touted as a “GOP pollster” is anything but. Luntz is a stone-cold Democrat.
On the night of Obama’s election, Luntz was overjoyed. Exuberant!
I saw his reaction with my own eyes, and he was euphoric about the Obama win. No serious GOPer was happy about that day. We accepted the outcome. But you couldn’t be happy knowing what was coming.
But Luntz looked and acted like a school girl who just met Elvis. In that moment, I knew he was a fraud.
Later, one of my friends tipped me off to Luntz’ focus groups being frauds. She reached out to me to say that Luntz stacked a focus group. She provided the evidence, and sure enough Luntz had lied about one of his “independent” people in the group. The person was a Leftist zealot. If I’m not mistaken, it was Linda Sarsour who he touted as a “potential Trump voter” or something like this.
Well, now we get news that could confirm what I suspected.
According to Salon, three employees accuse Luntz of being a GOP and polling fraud:
Republican pollster and Kevin McCarthy friend-slash-roommate of Frank Luntz isn’t afraid of boasting about his personal achievements. “Dr. Frank I. Luntz is one of the most honored communication professionals in America today,” reads a biography on his website. But some of his former employees tell a remarkably different story.
Chris Ingram, a former senior vice president at the Luntz Research Company who worked at the company from 1997 through the early 2000s, told Salon that Luntz’s claim to deliver objective data is a “total shtick and a scam.”
Ingram described observing Luntz trying to manipulate focus groups that used “dial testing,” in which participants spin a small handheld device, yielding real-time results in response to questions asked by the presenter. “Frank, when he would be hired by clients, whether they would be corporate or political, would sit in that room yelling, ‘Keep turning the dials! Keep turning the dials!'” Ingram told Salon in a phone interview. Luntz’s primary concern, Ingram said, was results that would yield more “compelling” data to be “present[ed] to the client.”
Frankly, all the pollsters are frauds as far as I’m concerned. Look at how they were used in the 2020 Presidential Election.
But Luntz goes farther. Because he manipulates focus groups, presenting his findings as gospel.
I know I’m not the only person who knows he’s a fraud. The GOP must know. And they are making this fraud rich, pretending that his focus groups have meaning.
Sadly, before my team realized who he was, we relied on his groups many times to report certain findings. In our defense, I suspect Luntz played a strategic game of giving red meat to whatever group is willing to pay for what they want to hear.
Nice job if you can get it. And Luntz not only gets the job, he keeps the job.
