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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
Frank Luntz is king of the pollster pundits, but don't ask him where his numbers come from.
May 26, 2000 | Whatever it is about the pollster Frank Luntz -- the baby face, the unctuous charm, the ever-changing hairdo -- no one seems to be able to get enough of him. Even since last week, when his sole candidate, Rudy Giuliani, made a tortured exit from the campaign trail, Luntz still makes the media rounds, from CNBC's "Rivera Live" to the New York Times.
He's possibly the best example of what we could call the pollster pundit: someone who both purports to scientifically poll the opinions of the public, and then also interpret that data to support his own -- in Luntz's case, conservative -- point of view. This is what allows Luntz to face a room full of journalists and, in all seriousness, proclaim George W. Bush's jittery, time-delayed appearance on David Letterman -- the one which prompted boos from the audience -- a total success.
It's what allows Luntz to proclaim that Giuliani would've been no more hurt from his admission of marital difficulties than his admission that he has cancer. "He beat crime, he beat drugs, he beat unemployment, he beat welfare, he beat trash in the streets, he beat the squeegee guy," Luntz said. "He's like a mayor machine."
What's more, it's what allows Luntz to do this without citing a single polling result, a single number, and yet still be taken quite seriously as a pollster.
In a city full of cynical, number-hungry journalists who pride themselves for taking no one at their word, this would seem to fall under the category of a neat trick. Then again, Luntz is a special case. Since about 1994, he has been a rising star in politics (Time listed him that year among "50 with the requisite ambition, vision and community spirit to help guide us in the new millennium"), part of a new class of media personality, the celebrity pollster. Along with fellow Republican darling Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, he's regularly called upon to explain candidate strategies and voter reaction.
But while the media can be disdainful of Fitzpatrick (through the occasional referring to her as a "pundette"), Luntz gets the heavy-hitter treatment, frequently getting called in by the networks to offer color commentary on politics even when he has no poll to cite.
The day Luntz spoke of W's Letterman appearance, he wasn't just beguiling an uncombative TV audience. He was addressing the Sperling Breakfast, the long-held meeting of powerful journalists organized by Godfrey Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor. (Full disclosure: I'm a Monitor political columnist.) These breakfasts can certainly be stuffy, but there's no denying that an invitation to speak at one is tantamount to a stamp of approval by Washington's establishment press, with previous invitees including Al Gore and Ken Starr.
The morning of the breakfast, Luntz showed up ready to talk about politics armed with nothing more than a tape of himself conducting a focus group on MSNBC. He spun fast and furiously, and then told everyone in the room the reason he was giving them his information (the less-than-shocking revelation that Bush needs a good chunk of McCain's supporters to win the presidency) is that he wanted the press to pass along the news to Bush. He would have told the Bush campaign himself, he said, but his commitment to his job as a media pollster -- with occasional gigs for outlets like MSNBC and U.S. News & World Report -- forbids it. The crowd chuckled, nodding knowingly and kept writing.
Of course it's hard to know how seriously to take Luntz. His "polling" and "analysis" always seems half-serious and half performance art. Whatever he really means, however, the media generally seems to take him at his word. Much of the polling industry, however, has been more circumspect.
In 1997, Luntz was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 "Contract with America" campaign document.
Luntz told the media that everything in the contract had the support of at least 60 percent of the general public. Considering the elementary phrasing of that document (stop violent criminals, protect our kids, strong national defense), it seems almost laughably uncontroversial. But one of AAPOR's 1,400 members wasn't so amused, and filed a complaint requesting to see Luntz's research and a verification of the figure.
Luntz's response? He couldn't reveal the information because of client confidentiality.
"None of those people have ever worked for a private client," Luntz says now. When told that some members of AAPOR do actually work in the private sector, he replied: "Then they should understand about confidentiality."
In fact, Luntz says, the AAPOR slap had a surprising effect. "Look, I shouldn't say this," he says, "but I made money off that incident. People basically said, 'If you're willing to go through that to honor your commitment, I want to work with you.'"
