Sean Murray: Hello, everybody and welcome to Broker Fair virtual. Thank you for joining us
today. I'm here with Scott Rasmussen. Scott is long recognized as one of the world's leading
public opinion pollster. Scott Rasmussen is constantly measuring and analyzing the mood of the
nation. Whether it's the upcoming election, underlying business trends, or the coronavirus
pandemic, Scott had the data you need to know. His latest polling results are released at
scottrasmussen.com, and by various media outlets, but the numbers are just part of the story. His
love of history and depth of experience helped put that data in a meaningful context to act upon. His
lifetime and broadcasting brings it alive during entertaining and informative presentations.
Additionally, ballotpedia publishes Scott Rasmussen number of the day, featuring newsworthy
and interesting topics at the intersection of politics, culture, and technology. So without
further ado, please welcome Scott.
Scott Rasmussen: Well, thanks, Sean. It's great to be here today. And you know, normally I would say
that and you're looking at people, you're talking to an audience, you're seeing some kind of
reaction. In this virtual world, it's a little bit odd, as a speaker, interacting with the audience
is a real key part of the presentation. I love to meet people before and after the talks. But also
during the presentation. You know, if you see people are really engaged in a certain aspect of
what you're saying, well, then you go on a little longer on it. And if you see people dozing off in
the corner, while you think maybe I better move on to a different topic, obviously can't do that
today. So I'll do my best to keep this moving. And, and then we'll have some fun questions when
it's all done. And I want to say right up front, these are strange times. But I still am very
optimistic. I'm very optimistic that our nation has a bright future ahead of it. And I say that
despite being very pessimistic about our political system. I believe the political system is badly
broken. The reason I can hold those two views simultaneously is because I believe the culture
leads and politics lags behind. So I'm not looking for whoever is elected to solve our problems for
us. I think there are greater forces at work. Now, you know, we're in this time when, well, Sean,
when you and I talked, maybe a month or so ago, we were talking about the pandemic is the big
surprise of the year now we've had the Floyd murder and these issues are just throwing
everything that we know about the political world upside down, and they're raising new questions for
us to wrestle with. Some of them have to do with federal spending and regulation and other policy
topics. Ultimately, they have a lot to do with who we choose to be as a nation. And it's with so many
moving parts, it's hard to figure out exactly what to focus on. So for me throughout my entire
career, as a political analyst, I draw on a lesson I learned from an earlier career when I was an
entrepreneur trying to start a crazy new business back in the late 70s. And by the way, normally, at
this point in a talk, I would say that, you know, I ask people to raise their hands if they remember
the 70s give me a sense of just how old the audience is. But in the late 70s, my father and I
learned about this new technology called satellite transmission. We learned how it can be used to
interact with cable systems. And we thought there might be an appetite for an all sports cable
network that we call the ESPN. And when we first had the idea, we were so excited that we thought
if we showed it to anybody, they would steal it from us. After we got rejected for funding by
every major broadcast group that was out there. We ended up getting to a meeting with Getty Oil. And
they said they gave us $5 million to begin building out the idea in hopes that it might work.
And we went through that money in just a few months. And then they expected that and in May of
1979. We had a meeting at the Getty headquarters, Wilshire and Western and at that meeting, we it
was basically the go no go decision. Getty was going to make the decision at this point whether
to commit what turned out to be more than 100 million dollars to the venture. And at the
meeting, when we were we were in this Boomerang shaped table in their boardroom, we were on the
inside. They had people arrayed around the outside to intimidate us in doing a very good job of it.
And somebody asked a question about our revenue projections for 1988. And to give you an idea of
how absurd this was, were in 1979, the industry didn't exist. You know, there were no 24 hour
sports, television networks, there were no 24 hour cable networks, there were no advertiser supported
networks. And they're asking me about the revenue projections nine years in the future. But I was
young and stupid. And I gave them a very precise and totally worthless answer. I explained that
there's 12 million cable households in the US. And if this percentage of them sign up for the
satellite, and this percentage of that percentage sign up for our service, and we get these ratings
during these hours, and our cpms are this and that, I went through this whole thing and put in
some growth rates and said, You know, so that's how you get the answer. And at that moment, Sid
Peterson, who was the brand new CEO of Getty was sitting right across the table from me. And he
said, he has no more of an idea about what the revenue is going to be in 1988 than we do. What we
have to do is look at his underlying assumptions. Will the cable industry grow and embrace the
satellite programming? You know, will viewers tune in to an all Sports Network? In those days, we
call that narrow casting because we it was different than the big mass audiences we were used
to. And most important of all, would sponsors actually be willing to underwrite programs to
sponsor programs? Targeted is such a small niche audience. And what Peterson said is, you know, we
forget all the specific numbers, we need to base our judgment on those underlying assumptions. What
are the fundamental assumptions in play? I was a little hurt. But you know, he was right. All my
numbers weren't nearly as important as those key drivers of the process. And by the way, I should
add it the time I made that projection, there were 12 million cable households in the US. And I
projected that by the end of the 80s, ESPN alone will be in 30 million households. And let's just
say they were a little skeptical about it. And I was way off. It turns out that not 30 million
households, but by the end of the 80s, ESPN was in 60 million households. And the reason it worked
was partly because of Gettys funding. And partly because Sid Peterson looked at the fundamental
issues, he encouraged his team to look at those issues. So when I look at the political world
today, I take that same approach. And in a presidential election year. There is always a key
driving issue. The last two times that a president has run for reelection. We see this very clearly
in 2004, George W. Bush running for re election. The big issue then just coming was the first
presidential election after 911. The big issue then was the war on terror. And at this time, in
2004, this time of year, the President's job approval ratings were in the mid to high 40s
probably wouldn't have won reelection if they'd stayed there. But bit by bit over the months
leading up to the election, confidence that we were winning the war on terror increased. So did
the President's job approval. And on Election Day 2004, Bush's job approval rating was a 51%. 51% of
voters thought we were winning the war on terror, and 51% of Americans voted for him. In 2012,
Barack Obama's job approval ratings right now we're about 47%. They had been there for most of
his term. His big issue was the economy coming out of the Great Recession. And bit by bit over that
summer, and leading up to election day, we saw people getting more confident about their own
financial condition, how they were feeling about their own personal finances. The President's job
approval rating improved, and President Obama was reelected. So before the pandemic hit, and all the
other news I would have expected to be here. Actually, I would have expected to be in a room
with all of you talking about, well, here's what's happening, here's the driving issue of the Trump
administration probably would have been focused on the economy. Would have been talking about how our
suburban women reacting to it and things of that sort. But instead, the world got turned completely
upside down. You know, we had this pandemic, and then we had the Floyd murders and or Floyd murder.
And everything that would have been appropriate to talk about even a month ago just seems like
ancient history. We're now at a point where there are two major issues in the campaign. Both of them
have arisen in the last six or eight months of the campaign. So it's not a case like with Bush or
Obama, where the Policies had been in place for most of their first term. It's, it's a very, very
volatile situation. When people ask me today who is going to win the presidential election? My
answer is, it's, we have no idea. If things break a certain way, President Trump could not only be
reelected, he could win a majority of popular vote, he could expand on his Electoral College map
from four years ago. On the other hand, if things break in a different manner, it could be a Herbert
Hoover like rejection. And that would be, you know, a fundamentally different world that we
would come out of that election with. You know, earlier, I said that I'm optimistic about the
future but pessimistic about our political system. I'm also I've been saying that, you know, things
will get worse before they get better. And I never knew what that was. But now we're living through
it. This is the crisis for our political system, and how we come out of it will be determined, in
the next several years, not just in this presidential election, but the election is going
to be a great starting point. So when we talk about all of these issues, again, I want to give a
little context, we're redefining the nation in a pretty fundamental way. The shortest history of
the United States that I can give is from colonial times, up until the 1970s, everything in America
began to get bigger and more centralized and more homogenized. Back then we thought that computers
and were only the tools of large corporations. And throughout that entire time in American history,
government grew bigger and more centralized, not really because of an ideological shift as much as
it was following the culture. That is, as companies got bigger, so didn't government people
like more centralization. And then in the 1970s, with the invention of the microchip, and Apple and
Microsoft, and even the cable industry, American society began to go in a decentralizing
direction. But the political system didn't follow hasn't followed, yet, the political system has
become much more centralized. And so over the last four decades, we've had this tension between a
decentralizing society and a centralizing political system. And that's the reason our
political system is so toxic and difficult and broken in these days. And that's the in those
tensions as they're being resolved. Turns out, they're going to be resolved through questions
about how we respond to the pandemic, and how we respond to the other ongoing issue in American
history. You know, the centuries of legalized racial injustice, the centuries and centuries of,
you know, really legalized racism. We don't have the legal forms like we used to, but we're dealing
with the echoes of them and dealing with the fallout from them at this point. So what does that
mean in terms of this election season? First, on the issue of the pandemic, largely, the themes
have been set. What matters is how things reopened between now and November. That is going to be the
dominant issue. If the economy does begin to bounce back, if the next jobs report is even
better. And if the next jobs report after that is better, and people are beginning to feel that when
the economy is on its way back. That will be very good news for Republicans and Donald Trump. And
the reason will be such good news is the President is clearly identified with trying to push to
reopen and democratic officials who have been clearly identified with saying, No, we need to be
more cautious. So if it's working well, that's great news for the President. If we have a second
wave of the pandemic, if the coronavirus comes back and we have more stories this fall like we
did last spring, it's going to be there's simply no way the President will be reelected. Now, the
other issue, the issues of racial injustice, are going to be there in a little in a secondary role.
And, you know, the reopening saga is going to be a daily occurrence. It's going to be something as
more people go to back to a restaurant for the first time as more people go back to a job for the
first time. Or even as some people you know, right now, 45% of all workers are don't see any
customers or co workers they're doing all of their job on a zoom conference call or other video
calls. 24% of them aren't seeing anybody else. But 45% are taking part in zoom calls on a regular
basis as those things begin to break down and more people get into the idea of actually working with
colleagues again, that will be a daily occurrence that will help society reopen, help the economy
come back and be very beneficial to the Republicans. The racial injustice issue is going
to flare up. You know, I am old enough, I remember the late 60s and I lived through some riots,
Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1970. And it's, it's not something that's there every day, but the
tension is just beneath the surface and waiting to boil up at some point. And this issue is not the
same as the pandemic, the response to the pandemic is pretty well baked in the political parties have
been identified with their position. On the second issue, there's still a lot to be sited about how
the responses will come. And there was tremendous danger for both parties. The reason there's danger
is about 8 out of 10 voters nationwide, recognize that there has been racial, systemic racial
injustice, they believe that black Americans are not treated equally with white Americans and 8 out
of 10 believe the protesters have legitimate grievances, and most of them are trying to respond
and express those grievances peacefully. They do acknowledge there's a few bad apples few rotten
apples in the batch. And so there that's causing some of the problems we're seeing with violence
and looting. But thinking that those people have legitimate grounds for protest, does not mean
people hate the police. In fact, a similar number 8 out of 10 say that police officers, by and large
are good people trying to do a difficult and dangerous job. But once again, there are some
rotten apples in the bunch. Most Americans about two thirds of Americans hold both those views
simultaneously. They're viewing the best in other people. And you know, same time recognizing that
none of us are perfect. And the danger for Republicans on this issue is that they're going to
look insensitive to the questions of racial justice, or perhaps even worse, look like they're
resistant to the cultural demand for reform for some kind of change in our historic policies that
will move us to a society that's a little closer to our founding ideals. for Democrats, the issue
is going too far the issue is turning it into the only way to support racial justice is to hate the
police or to defund the police. You know, that would be a losing issue. And what's going to
happen, this is not something again, it's not like what Bush or Obama had, where they dealt with an
issue throughout their first term, incidents are gonna pop up. There's some news coming out of
Seattle these days, that's, you know, one of these flare ups, we're going to see these throughout the
campaign. And so we'll have the larger setting of how the economy is reopening that will begin to
set the stage for how close the election is, and which way it's flowing. And if it remains close
these other issues, will ultimately determine the outcome. Now, what does that mean in terms of
policy or where we stand today? You know, right now, today, my latest poll shows Biden is up by 10
points among registered voters, Trump's support is a little more enthusiastic. So maybe you'd be a
few points closer. It could be that things are will tighten up before election day. And I would
expect that if the economy is doing really well, that the President's numbers will improve from
where they are today. Having said that, it's really important to recognize and this is a stat
that stuns people who live in brief politics. 22% of voters about one out of five, say that it
really doesn't make much difference whether Biden or Trump wins. Again, 22% of voters are saying
doesn't make a difference. Another 17% say it's all gonna make a minor difference. And as we look
ahead to November, these are the voters who will determine who is elected, you know, the base is
solid for both candidates. It's these swing voters that are going to ultimately decide and they're
going to be responding to events of the day. As they do this, you know, you'll hear lots of
discussions about specific policies and about whether we should spend more or stop spending.
Right now, hardly anybody believes the federal government should stop its spending. Instead, they
believe that something has to be done to help deal with this economic crisis. Nobody's sure what but
they want some government engagement. At one level, it's a sense of they broke it, they bought
it. There's a strong belief that if a small business was hurt, by government shutdown or The
government should compensate them for those losses. But as you go beyond this, the deeper
question is about who is going to be really in charge? We did a polling question about a week or
two ago, and asked about whether business owners had the right to determine whether or not they
wanted to require masks on their customers. Do business owners have the right to make that
decision? 48% of voters said yes. 47% of voters said no. When we took the question, do governments
have the legal authority to require citizens to wear masks on the street? Well, most people said
yes. But we had a pretty big partisan divide in really a an ideological and generational divide on
questions about who should make decisions. And I want to be clear, this is a question about who
decides not what is decided. Because in today's environment, if a business owner had the chance to
require or not require, their customers to wear masks, most would, at least strongly encourage the
possibility because they want to get people into their stores. And, you know, I walked through the
streets of New York last night, we're supposed to all be wearing masks, but there's an awful lot of
people who aren't doing it. So these, you know, it's really not the ultimately it's how people
respond to these things that matters. But the question is going to be, do businesses and, and
private groups and individuals have that right to make most decisions on their own? That would be
consistent with a decentralizing society? Because we all have so much access to so much information
these days? Or, or do we end up going in the other direction saying no, we need more decisions made
by political processes and political authorities. That question of who decides, is going to be
ultimately the outcome of all the turmoil we're going through. And in terms of your industry, it's
very, very significant. If we ended up going in the direction of a stronger regulatory effort and
more authority being given to governments, both federal, state and local levels. If we go in that
direction, there will be significant, significantly higher levels of regulation on all
industries, and especially on the finance industry. If we go in the other direction, it will
be more up to consumer choice. But a lot of what happens will be determined, again, not just by the
political events, not by who wins the election, but by the behavior of businesses themselves. You
know, the more that corporations and small businesses appear to be responding to the cultural
trends and appear to be dealing fairly and appropriately with customers and the community at
large, the more likely it is that the regulatory touch will be lighter. The more that businesses
seem to engage in either political activities, or activities that are that rub against the cultural
grain, the more likely it is there will be political solutions imposed. And that's something
that really every business leader needs to to keep in mind. So to sum it all up. Right now, we're at
a point in time, where there's volatility in the political process. Is volatility caused by the
fact that we're finally wrestling with this huge disconnect between a society that is
decentralizing and putting more power and information at the hands of individuals, and a
political system that over the last four decades has become more centralized? That's the struggle,
I'm optimistic, I do think, ultimately, we will go in the political system will catch up and be more
in tune with the social system, the cultural decentralization, but it's going to be a very
messy process. And if you want an understanding of why it's so messy, look at the fact that we have
two men who are over 70, who are running for president. And neither one of them really gets the
digital era that we're living in. So we're going to have political leaders who are a bit out of
touch, trying to wrestle with these questions. And it's going to be a very disruptive time. And Sean,
on that note, I'll be happy to take any questions that you or anybody else might have, and see if we
can continue the discussion for a little bit longer.
Sean Murray: Thank you, Scott. Wow, there was a there's a lot to unpack from that. And with what's
going on currently in the country. I want to back it up a little bit to the economy, because my
understanding is that the economy has historically dictated whether it's Not a president gets
reelected. And I think we're starting to get lost and some people are starting to get losses, what
is the economy? Because one thing that has increased recently is the national deficit. And
you know, we've increased it a lot in recent times as part of the stimulus. And I'm wondering if the
national deficit and the national debt if that is going to factor into how people feel about the
economy, or they're really going to come down to whether or not they're employed and have income
and have a job? You know, how do Americans feel?
Scott Rasmussen: Well, the first part of that's really easy to answer, the deficit and the debt
are not a part of the discussion right now. It's simply doesn't matter. We've done a lot of polling
on this, you know, should Congress stop spending should do more we phrased it in different ways,
basically, about anywhere between 14 and 20% of voters have told us in different polls, that
Congress should stop spending now. Which means now there's different ideas about how the money should
be spent, and what should be done with the idea that we should just stop spending because of the
debt or the deficit does not enter the equation. What does enter it is perhaps a longer term
perspective. And maybe it's comes I guess, it comes because people are looking at this almost
like World War II is viewed in a sense. In World War II, the the national debt grew tremendously,
because we were fighting an existential enemy. And after the war, over the next couple of
generations, the the debt level was dramatically reduced going from more than twice the national
income to down to about a third of it. And people are saying, Okay, we got to spend what we have to
right now to get out of this crisis. But looking down the road, we're going to have to be we're
gonna have to rein things in a bit and get that debt back down to a manageable level. In terms of
what the economy is, most of it will come back to how do you feel about the way things are going in
your life. And right now, about four out of 10. Voters do know somebody who has who lost their job
due to the pandemic and has been rehired? If that number continues to grow, that would be a sign of
a more positive economy.
Sean Murray: So you say it's really not part of the conversation right now. And I noticed an
interesting stat that you had reported last month, it was that only 14% of voters believe that
Congress should stop spending money on new programs, and that among Republicans 63% were in
support of new government spending. Are we seeing this trend, because of the recent crisis, or our
republicans or the or the American public, just becoming more comfortable with government
spending.
Scott Rasmussen: The response to everything right now is a response to the pandemic. I mean, this is
something none of us have been through. You know, my grandfather had the Spanish Flu back in 1918.
But you know, even like, my time I knew him it was it was old news. So this is new territory. And the
old ideological discussions don't apply when you're in a crisis like this. What we do know is
that, for example, we ask people about, would this have been handled better if we had a single payer
health care system, only 22% of voters think things would have been better under such a system?
So it's not really that they're embracing new policies. It's this is seen as an emergency
situation, you know, you have your retirement fund as an individual and every now and then you need
to break into it.
Sean Murray: Okay, yeah, totally makes sense. So let's talk about the shutdowns and the lockdowns
because even New York is starting to come out of the lockdown finally, even though some other
states came out of them a few weeks ago, or maybe even about a month ago. And at one point, in May,
you reported that 41% of voters said that the lockdowns had done more harm than good. So my
question would be if there was a second wave in the fall, do you think that Americans will be more
or less receptive to another lockdown? Can we even will that even be tolerated at this point anymore?
Scott Rasmussen: You know, I live in New York City and I can tell you, you know how much frustration
there is with the lockdowns at this point. We even know some restaurants who if you call ahead and
order dinner to pick up they'll actually let you sit at the bar for a little bit while you wait for
your food and it's their kind of breaking the rules but let because they just know there's that
tension. It is hard for me to imagine support for lockdowns at the level we saw initially. If there
was another outbreak if there was another way, the data we're seeing now suggests people would look
for a more focused solution. But again, what does that really mean? The other thing I would say
about a second wave is it would have a tremendous impact a tremendously negative impact on consumer
confidence. When you normally in the in the economic world, when people get bad news,
confidence falls right away. And then when you get to report a good news, well, people don't really
reevaluate and bounce back up that quickly take maybe six months of good news to overcome one dose
of bad news. If we have a second wave of the pandemic, it will be like depression level
attitudes of confidence.
Sean Murray: Okay, I can totally see that. So then my next question would be, if there was a
statistic you threw out earlier, in the conversation, I think it was 22% of Americans felt
it made no difference whether or not Trump or Biden got elected. And I'm wondering, is that
consistent with historical elections? And is that a factor of hopelessness, in-difference, or more
that Americans feel that local government is likely to have the biggest impact?
Scott Rasmussen: It is, it's hard to know how deep the history goes on that. But yes, it's broadly
consistent with what we know about historical elections, there's, there's always a base of
people who are passionate that believe that if our team doesn't win, the world will come to an end.
But most Americans are a little bit less engaged. Part, it's some of it may be hopelessness. But I
think more broadly, it's a lack of a sense of connection between, say, what a politician says on
the campaign, what they're able to accomplish, and then does it really make any difference in their
in somebody's life. And it's also consistent with this idea that most change two out of three people
believe that positive change in America almost always comes from outside the political system.
And so that's, that's part of the people are just they don't see. So what would be a great example,
you know, if I, if a bank is trying to convince me to go to their to use their services, and there's
two competing banks, and neither one of them, we're talking about things that I care about?
Well, how do I make the choice? And if I don't believe that either one of them are going to
really deliver on everything, they said, again, how do you make a choice, ultimately, these people
will make a decision first on whether to vote, and then second, how they will vote. And that's where
you'll get the late break in the election.
Sean Murray: I'm thinking now about Biden as a candidate. So we have the economic factor. We have
what's happened with George Floyd. Right? And I'm wondering if Americans are going to feel or do
they feel that Biden because he was chosen as the candidate before a lot of this happened, if they
feel he is the appropriate candidate, to champion their causes?
Scott Rasmussen: So we did we actually asked recently about, we asked both Biden and Trump
supporters, are you enthusiastic about your candidate? Or is it simply the lesser of two
evils? And for Trump, about three out of four said they're enthusiastic about him? For Biden only 49%
say they're enthusiastic. 41% say, he's just the lesser of two evils. So, you know, there's not
going to be a groundswell of enthusiasm. I think the it will be a broader issue, the greatest
turnout vehicle that the Democrats have is Donald Trump, which by the way, was the same, you know,
Republicans turnout was always goosed by Barack Obama. So, I mean, that's something that will
help. The other thing, and this is something which hasn't been talked about much, but Joe Biden, I
think, has been hurt by the pandemic, in a couple of ways. First, he didn't have that repeated
string of victory is dominating the news for him to win the nomination. You know, when candidates
are when victories are reported, people get more excited about a candidate. The other thing that he
hasn't had is the opportunity to take part in a lot of debates. If you went back to 2008. And you
watch the very first debates that Barack Obama took part in, he wasn't very good. But as the year
went on, and he practiced in lots of debates, and then when he had Hillary Clinton had a lot of one
on one debates. He became very skilled and he dominated John McCain in the debates that year.
Joe Biden, I think, is going to have missed that practice.
Sean Murray: Yeah, personally, I love the debates. I can only imagine what there'll be like this time
around.
Scott Rasmussen: Yeah.
Sean Murray: I'm sure as we approach the election, both sides are going to find a party to blame for
at least the the lockdowns and the pandemic and the response. I'm curious to to know what, who
Americans feel is, you know, are responsible for what has happened? Are they are they blaming the
government? Are they blaming China? And are they blaming their their neighbors for not social
distancing? Who do they think is to blame for what happened?
Scott Rasmussen: Well, I would start by answering that people think there's plenty of blame to go
around. So China gets the brunt of it. Americans overwhelmingly think China lied about the
Coronavirus. They think that it reported disinformation, intentionally that has harmed and
the world's ability to deal with it. There's strong support 7 out of 10 voters say they want
all this is done. They want us to trade less with China. And you know, some of them are saying
complete ban. Some of them are saying a ban until we negotiate better relationships. But what
there's a desire among Americans to see China punished at some level. Beyond that, that's pretty
simple. If you're a believer in lockdowns, then you think that Donald Trump is the evil who's
caused the problems, because he's urging people to go out and ignore them. If you believe society
should reopen more quickly, well, then you have the opposite view. And, you know, early in the
comments, I mentioned how people looked at the protesters in the police these days. There's
something similar going on here, you know, people looked at the protesters and said yes, most of
them had legitimate grievances. They were trying to respond peacefully, but there were a few rotten
apples, same said about the police. In these lockdown questions in the political world, it's
become, almost if I ask a question about lockdown people ask. It's almost they're responding almost
as if I'm asking about Donald Trump. But what most voters tend to respond more to is if you're
talking about reopening with some kind of health protocols. Well, then people are very supportive.
They want both. They don't want social distancing to end they want the formal mandated lockdowns to
end and then they expect business owners to say, okay, we're going to, we're going to be concerned
about our workers and our customers. So we're going to put our own protocols in place. And it's
that mixed view that people in the middle have, that they don't want to vote, they're not ready to
support Bill de Blasio, his approach to lockdowns in New York City, and they're also not ready to
just open the gates and say, let's see what happens.
Sean Murray: Right. A few weeks ago, we talked about a conspiracy theory. And I think a little
bit of how that's been disproven over time. The theory was in some of the, you know, grayer forums
online was that Biden was potentially going to be replaced as a candidate as we lead up to the
election. Is there any chance that that could happen at this point?
Scott Rasmussen: You know, under any normal circumstance, I would say no, Biden has won
officially enough pledged delegates, he will be the nominee. The only way that would change is if
there is either something new comes out about Joe Biden, which I can't imagine he's been a public
figure for four decades. Or if he really has some, you know, if if he looks really incompetent when
he begins to emerge from the basement, if, and, again, I think those are very long odds. When you
and I spoke earlier, a few weeks back, it was still a long shot, but I think it was more
plausible at that time.
Sean Murray: Right, yeah, I think you're right about that. I don't know if you know the answer to
this question. But you reported that and one of your numbers of the day that 68% of voters have
had protests in their area?
Scott Rasmussen: Yeah.
Sean Murray: Do you think whether or not there have been protests in their area could have an
impact on someone's view versus whether or not they haven't had protests in their area? Because
it might make it a little bit more real to them versus whether or not they see it on TV?
Scott Rasmussen: Actually, the the bigger difference we did a follow up question as part of
that was whether the protests in their area were generally peaceful or if they turned violent. And
there was a bigger gap between those who have seen a violent protest or a protest that turned
violent, and those that haven't. So that's, that's where the gap is at this point in time. It's also
really, you know, there's, there's a great book by Ed Catmull, the founder of Pixar, called
creativity, Inc. and he talks about the ways we can keep creativity going in organizations. And
one of the points he made is that it's hard for us as humans to see what's right in front of our
eyes. What happens is only 40%, what our brain sees only 40% of it actually comes in through our
eyes, the other 60%, we fill in with our own baggage, what we expect to see what are what
patterns we recognize. And when you talk about the protests, people can look at the exact same thing
and have entirely different conclusions about it being you know, based on whether what their own
political views are going into that. And that weighs more on the issue than than anything
they're seeing. I liken it to two guys, considering a sports bar rooting for different
teams, and a referee makes a tough call and one guy thinks it's brilliant. And the other guy
thinks, you know, the referees, a scumbag, because they're rooting for different teams, they looked
at the call through, you know, their own fan lens. And we all do that. So a liberal democrat and a
conservative Republican could look at the exact same protest. They go into it with different
views, and they come out of it with different views.
Sean Murray: Sure, and this is my final question for you.
Scott Rasmussen: Okay.
Sean Murray: Because that's all the time we'll have. One of your recent numbers of the day was
that 48% of voters believe businesses can decide whether their customers must wear a mask. I'm
wondering, are you going to be asking such questions at a later date as well? Because I'm
wondering as, as we move on, whether or not people will continue to feel the same way or some of your
data is just a reaction to the crisis? I mean, are people going to feel this way three years from now
that 48% of them, you know, say they they should be allowed to dictate whether or not they can wear
a mask? Or is this just a reaction right now?
Scott Rasmussen: So let me start by saying on almost any question, any data that I've talked
about in this, we're going to be pulling it again, you know, we're tracking right now. 29% believe
the worst of the pandemic is behind us. That's double where it was, you know, about six weeks
ago. So we're seeing a trend there, we're gonna be measuring whether people think the economy is
getting better or worse on a regular basis. So we do track all of that. I'm actually beginning to
wonder right now, if we need to modify one of the questions we've been having, because events are
changing. We've asked people whether they were more concerned about the economic threat from the
pandemic or the health threat. And early on, it was clearly the health threat. Now, a slight
majority believes it's the economic threat. So we've seen a trend there. But I'm actually
thinking we're gonna have to start including an option for neither was a threat, because that's
the way a lot of people are responding. When you ask about the question in businesses deciding
masks, I certainly hope it's not an issue three years from now. But what we will ask continually
is who has the right to make decisions? And that is a fundamental divide in America today, you
know, do you believe primarily, that government has the authority to make almost all the decisions
about what businesses and individuals do? Or do you believe that individuals and businesses should
make decisions on their own within some, you know, important guidelines? But where is that balance of
power going to be? And that question of who decides? Bluntly, that question goes all the way
back to the colonial era? It's been an ongoing debate in America. It's why we have a federal
system. It's why states and the federal government argue with each other. And that is going to be the
outcome of that question, but who decides will determine the world that my children and
grandchildren grow up in?
Sean Murray: That's great. Well, thank you very much, Scott. That is all the time we have here
today. I know earlier, you mentioned how important it is to be able to see the audience and get their
reaction. Unfortunately, you can't see what their responses right now, but I'll do the awkward clap
for you that you see, I'm sure they're all doing that right now at home. So appreciate your time
and thank you for being here.
Scott Rasmussen: Thank you, Sean.