Some voters who supported presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden are already experiencing regret, according to a new poll.
Roughly 17% of Biden voters said they wouldn’t have voted for him if they had known about his record as well as that of President Trump, found the survey commissioned by the conservative Media Research Center.
The biggest movement away from Mr. Biden was among his voters who only after the election learned about shady business deals involving Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter. Forty-five percent of Biden voters said they didn’t know about Hunter Biden’s deals, and 9.4% said they would not have voted for the former vice president had they known.
“The national news media stole this election,” Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III said on a conference call with conservative activists. “As far as I’m concerned, they stole it from President Trump by deliberately censoring and keeping from the American people those stories which had the American people known would have led to his reelection unquestionably.”
The Media Research Center said the stories that moved Mr. Biden’s voters included such issues as Hunter Biden’s business dealings, sexual misconduct allegations against Mr. Biden, and presumptive Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ ranking as the most leftist senator. Items that reflected more positively on Mr. Trump also made an impact, including news about job growth under Mr. Trump, details about the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, and Middle East peace agreements brokered by the administration.
The voters’ reactions were gauged after they learned details about Mr. Biden from the pollsters.
The Polling Company, which was founded by former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, surveyed 1,750 individuals online who self-identified as Biden voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The survey was conducted Nov. 9-18 and the poll had a 2.34% margin of error.The poll included responses from Democrats, independents, and Republicans, though the Media Research Center did not disclose how many respondents came from each political affiliation.
Many Americans are skeptical of polling results after outcomes in the 2016 and 2020 elections contradicted the picture of public opinion provided by pollsters during the campaign seasons.
FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon insisted that Mr. Bozell’s data matched the experience of his activists in battleground states. FreedomWorks is a free-market advocacy group.
“What Brent’s data shows, we saw on the ground. When you can talk issues, our candidates win,” Mr. Brandon said on the conference call. “When you do not talk issues, our candidates are at a disadvantage because this is still a center-right nation that doesn’t buy progressivism, and it doesn’t buy defund the police, and it certainly doesn’t buy the Harris-Biden agenda.”
Looking to future elections, Mr. Bozell urged conservatives to tell their stories however they can and to no longer rely on established news media.
“We have to become the storytellers. We cannot rely on the news media,” Mr. Bozell said. “We must continue telling, making the statement made to the American people: Do not trust these people. These people are, I don’t like using this word, they’re frauds. They’re frauds. When they call themselves journalists and reporters, they’re spitting on journalism. These are not journalists, they sure as hell aren’t reporters.”
Several websites are quickly becoming less hospitable for conservative publishers. On Tuesday, YouTube suspended the conservative One America News Network for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy and removed a video.YouTube’s action came amid a call from Democratic senators for the site to ramp up its content moderation practices before the January runoff elections for Georgia’s Senate seats held by incumbent Republicans.
Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Gary Peters of Michigan on Tuesday demanded YouTube “take responsibility and immediately stop the spread of misinformation and manipulated media.”
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