Vin Suprynowicz

WHAT THE MANIPULATORS ARE CLAIMING

“Former Nevada Attorney General and current Republican Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, backed by former President Donald Trump, has a massive 37-point edge over his closest primary competitor,” reported Jacob Bliss of Breitbart News on Monday, May 2. (Newsmax ran a nearly identical story, same day. There seems to be a lot of “borrowing” online.)

What was their common source?

“The WPA Intelligence poll showed that Laxalt has a clear 37-point lead over his closest opponent with the Republican voters in Nevada,” Bliss continued. “Laxalt garnered 57 percent support from respondents, and Sam Brown, his closest competitor, had only 20 percent of the vote.”

The poll found former Nevada attorney general Laxalt “has high name recognition and favorability in the state, with 88 percent name recognition and a total favorability of 70 percent. There was only 12 percent who had a negative view of him.”

The poll was taken by WPA Intelligence and conducted from April 24 to 26. There was a sample size of 503 Republican voters; those releasing the poll claimed a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent.

A similar poll, conducted April 25-28 and released May 3 by Trafalgar (also based in Washington City), reports Laxalt leading Brown 50-to-26, and showed former Sheriff Joe Lombardo at 26 points, leading challengers Dean Heller and Joey Gilbert, who each register 18 percent “approval.”

Why is this nonsense – especially with a month still to go in these increasingly heated primary battles?

Sorry. Even if these pollsters are honest and transparent – and they’re NOT being transparent – the methodology for ANY of these robo-dial phone polls has fatal flaws that only grow more problematic with each month that passes.

Oh, with big money and high-profile endorsements flowing from out of state, Adam Laxalt – who as AG signed off on the oh-so-hackable Dominion voting machines, who supports Mitch McConnell for Senate Majority Leader, who managed to lose the governorship to Steve Sisolak, most unpopular governor in America (It was Sisolak who caused thousands of Nevada COVID “ventilator” deaths by unconstitutionally barring Nevada physicians from prescribing cheap and effective therapeutics Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine) — could still win, even if Mr. “Laxalt’s” great “name recognition” is because he’s using not his father’s name (U.S. Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico), but rather the surname of his maternal grandpa, the late Nevada Governor and Senator Paul Laxalt.

Ditto Las Vegas Sheriff Joe Lombardo, better known in Nevada as “Mr. Gun Control”, or “Steve Sisolak with a badge” – a man who NOW claims to want to enforce our immigration laws, but who in seven years as Las Vegas sheriff apparently never noticed the major casino-hotels here employ thousands of illegal aliens, who even register and vote – a sheriff who allowed arrested illegals to walk out on bail without even letting his men hold them till they could be turned over to Immigration enforcement.

(Couldn’t figure out how to round them up, Joe? You could have requisitioned the same buses the Culinary Union uses to drive them to the “early voting stations” in supermarket parking lots every late October, instead sending them on a scenic one-way jaunt to Tegucigalpa. The week before the Consumer Electronics Show would have gotten their employers’ attention. Or should I say YOUR future employers’ attention?)

Either of these RINO Decepticons could still win. But by two-to-one? Or even 3-to-1?

Let me spell out the huge problems with the methodology of these supposed “live phone” polls, and then tell you the fantastically different results of a hugely more direct poll I conducted (sample size, 388) with some friends over the same weekend in question – April 30.

First, who is this pollster WPA Intelligence? At https://wpaintel.com/about-us/ we learn:

“WPAi clients win at a rate that exceeds the industry standard by double-digits. WPAi has been the data team behind the 2016 Cruz for President effort, the providers of data strategy for the Las Vegas Raiders relocation, an integral part of the RNC Voter Scores program.”

Wait. This “polling outfit” isn’t bragging about their ACCURACY? No. Instead, they’re trying to attract “clients” by asserting their work will “help clients win.” Like the way Ted Cruz won the 2016 presidential election? OK.

But these pollsters aren’t convening “focus groups” to help guide the candidate in shifting his message — for which it would be way too late, anyway. How can a “Have you heard of him?” poll help a client “win at a rate that exceeds the industry standard by double digits” . . . unless there’s something WPAi is doing under the GUISE of objective polling that’s specifically designed to help their clients “win”?

More importantly: Who were the “clients” who funded these WPA and Trafalgar polls, presumably in the hopes these “polling outfits” could “help them win” – creating an unavoidable predisposition to tell the “clients” what they want to hear?

They ain’t saying. I contacted both firms, both by phone and email, four days ago, to ask what “clients” funded these polls. No reply.

Wait, it gets better. Lots better.

HANGIN’ ON THE TELEPHONE

WPA bases their report on a respondent “sample size” of 503; Trafalgar on a respondent “sample size” of 1,017.

So: are we to believe Trafalgar merely dialed up 1,017 registered Nevada Republicans, while WPA simply dialed up 503, and asked them what they thought?

Interestingly enough, the folks at Trafalgar and WPAi actually DO answer those questions – albeit a bit indirectly.

Trafalgar reports a “response rate” of 1.41 percent. WPAi’s “response rate” was slightly lower – close to 1.2 percent.

That means, if I’m doing my math correctly (again, neither firm would get back to me to confirm or deny these numbers), that WPAi’s robot dialer dialed about 43,000 registered Nevada Republicans to get their 503 “respondents,” while Trafalgar dialed some 73,000 registered Nevada Republicans to get their 1,017 “respondents.”

Were those calls to land lines only – no cell phones? The pollsters won’t say, but I’m guessing they were. That’s a good way to reach older folks and businesses, but that method increasingly screens out younger, on-the-go folks who depend largely on cell phones.

More importantly, since smart pollsters are more likely to concentrate on weekday evenings, are we really to believe 98.6 to 98.8 of those 43,000 to 73,000 Nevadans weren’t home or didn’t hear the phone ring? Highly unlikely.

Rather, conservatives, patriots, Christians, gun-rights advocates, and Donald Trump MAGA supporters are less and less likely to cooperate with “Legacy Media,” Silicon Valley, or any of the other “woke” corporate entities who today massage and manipulate ALL their data to support their pre-arranged narratives. (No evidence of massive election fraud in 2020; COVID jabs that actually cause blood clots, miscarriages and death are “safe and effective”; Hunter Biden’s laptop, with evidence the whole Biden Crime Family including “The Big Guy” are paid off by both Red China and Ukraine to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, is “Russian disinformation,” etc. etc.)

We’ve learned the hard way how polls can be manipulated. A close race is reported as “Deep State Democrat leading by 30 points,” in hopes we’ll say, “Why bother even going to polls, Ma, this thing is all over.” OR, a race in which a MAGA conservative is actually 15 points ahead is reported as “too close to call” . . . so when crooked Democrat election officials “find” an extra 20,000 ballot in their car trunks at 3 a.m., the media can report, “Well, the polls said it was gonna be a squeaker, and these late-arriving ballots, 97 percent marked for Joe the Grifter, just show they called it right once again — right, Tiffany?!”

So somewhere between 42,500 and 72,000 Nevada Trump and MAGA voters – the most energetic and motivated segment of today’s Republican party — refused to pick up their phones. These outfits rely on the presumption that samples of any 500 to 1000 respondents will be predictive within 5 points or so. But that’s true only if those samples are truly RANDOM. If I can CHARACTERIZE a large chunk of those who refused to participate, don’t you suppose that might skew these pollsters’ results?

But enough complaints and speculation. This time, instead of just itemizing the somewhat inflated claims and dubious motivations of pollsters who won’t tell us who hired them (Paging Mr. Lombardo; paging Mr. Laxalt; paging the Club For Red Chinese Growth), who have their robo-dialers dial 43,000 to 73,000 Nevada phone numbers and then report the results they obtain from the 1.17 percent of presumably land-line telephone owners who answer their phones and agree to talk – at which point they’re basically asked “Have you seen this guy’s TV commercials? How about this other guy’s? Whaddaya think? Did those professionally produced TV commercials make this guy look handsome? Strong? ‘Caring’? . . . Did they give you a ‘good impression’?” . . .

. . . I and some friends decided to see if we could come up with a MUCH more rigorous method to poll the opinions of registered Nevada Republicans, selected by a method which guarantees participation by residents of all 17 Nevada counties in a ratio approximating each county’s percentage of the state’s registered Republicans . . . participants we can be virtually SURE will vote in the June primaries.

We decided we weren’t going to settle for tallying the opinions of folks who merely agreed to answer the phone – a “beauty contest” in which we’d essentially be asking “have you heard of this guy?” and recording a vote in favor of any candidate about whom the phone answerer responded, in essence, “Yes, I’ve seen a TV commercial for him.”

No, we wanted to be MUCH less casual, MUCH more rigorous. So we told OUR registered Republicans “If you want to take part in OUR poll, you have to drive to traffic-snarled downtown Las Vegas on the lovely spring Saturday of April 30, AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE. Even if you’re from Ely or Elko or Battle Mountain (as much as 400 miles away), to participate in OUR poll, you have to pay for gas, meals, and a hotel room AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE. Not only that, if you want your opinion of these candidates registered, you have to PAY A FEE OF $150 per person – for which you’ll get nothin’ but a turkey or roast beef sandwich for lunch – JUST TO ATTEND.

SUU-PRISE: A LOT OF CANDIDATES APPARENTLY DON’T LIKE TO CAMPAIGN

Off hand, you might think turnout would be kind of slim. In fact, as opposed to the 500 randomly selected telephone owners picked by the “professional pollsters” at WPA, when we looked out over the room we’d rented to conduct our poll, we found just shy of 400 registered Republicans – Republicans REALLY SERIOUSLY MOTIVATED to study and choose among these candidates – looking back at us.

Furthermore, we didn’t want those participating in OUR poll to base their opinions just on whose TV ads they’d seen, or out-of-state endorsements by people in Florida or Washington, D.C. So we went further. Adjoining the room where we gathered the 400-or-so Republicans willing to participate in OUR poll, we provided a room where any Republican candidate registered in any 2022 race could rent a table for $300, staff it, cover it with fliers or brochures, and make him or herself available to meet our poll subjects, all day long.

We called this gathering of folks participating in our poll the “2022 Nevada Republican Party State Convention.” Almost one month to the day before our June primaries, I’d argue it was the single most important place on the single most important day for any Nevada candidate – especially a candidate for a statewide federal or state office – to show up and campaign if he wanted to reach hundreds of Republican activists who could be trusted to bring their first-hand impressions home to the 16 counties outside Clark.

And that’s when I noticed something odd. U.S. Senate candidate and wounded warrior Capt. Sam Brown (retired) not only rented a table, he was there all day, standing at the back of the hall or in the hallways or foyer outside, willing to shake hands and answer any question from anybody who cared to chat.

Poor guy barely had time to eat his sandwich.

Same thing for gubernatorial candidate, activist anti-mandate, anti-shutdown attorney and former middleweight boxer Joey Gilbert – there all day (though the suit jacket came off in the afternoon), willing to shake hands and talk to anybody.

North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee, a fine fellow, was there briefly, Friday at suppertime. Heading out to Amargosa Saturday, he told me.

Supposed front-runners (based on how many TV ads they’ve been able to buy with out-of-state money) Adam Laxalt (for U.S. Senate) and former sheriff Joe Lombardo (for governor)? I wandered that “candidate room” several times, looking for their tables. Neither spent the $300. I was told Mr. Laxalt invited some folks to a “hospitality suite” at Palace station from about 6 to 8 p.m. Friday evening (“soda pop and light snacks”), but I was there all day Saturday, till the post-7 p.m. adjournment, and I never saw either man in person.

Which confirms what folks had been telling me: Adam Laxalt is extremely reluctant to appear anywhere if he knows rival Sam Brown will be there. Joe Lombardo is curiously shy to appear anywhere if he knows rival Joey Gilbert will be there.

The most important time and place to do a few hours of personal campaigning, one month before the primaries, and BOTH SUPPOSED “FRONT-RUNNERS” WERE NO-SHOWS.

And we’re supposed to believe either of these lurkers in the shadows is going to put on bright armor, mount his charger, and carry the proud Republican banner of reform into glorious battle against the crooked Democrats come November?

Come on. It’s no secret that Adam Laxalt doesn’t LIKE to campaign. And till I see evidence to the contrary, I suspect Sheriff Joe Lombardo doesn’t know how. Trusting The Boys to spread the money around, sure. But taking tough questions from a bunch of yokels who don’t know how to salute and say “Yes sir!”? Not so much.

Instead, their supporters tried repeatedly, during the early part of the day last Saturday, to get the gathering at Palace Station to CANCEL one of their main reasons for being there – the vote on party endorsements. A select committee headed by former Nye County Chairman Joe Burdzinsky had spent months – more than a thousand hours – inviting all registered candidates to fill out comprehensive questionnaires, then allowing them the option of a following up with an in-person interview to determine whether they could (and would) carry the party’s platform into the general election fray next fall.

Yet these supporters of Joe Lombardo and Adam Laxalt from Clark and Carson counties wanted no endorsement votes taken at all.

Maybe because they knew how those two supposed “front-runners” were actually going to fare?

NEVADA REPUBLICANS IN CONVENTION OVERWHELMINGLY ENDORSE SAM BROWN FOR U.S. SENATE, JOEY GILBERT FOR GOVERNOR

Because when it came time for our 380-odd registered Republicans to vote – and mind you, delegates were free to endorse TWO candidates in each race if they believed BOTH were capable and likely to carry the banner of the party’s platform through the November general election and into office – the results were . . . not what the telephone operators at places like Trafalgar and “WPA Intelligence” would have you believe.

Not at all.

For governor, Joey Gilbert got 210 votes – a two-thirds majority of Nevada’s most knowledgeable GOP activists. For U.S. Senate, Sam Brown got endorsed by Republicans who had all day to meet and talk to him, 258-65. That’s an 80 PERCENT ENDORSEMENT.

Former Sheriff Joe Lombardo? Only 31.5 percent of these activist Republicans voted to endorse him – he failed by more than two-to-one.

At which point a couple of dozen Lombardo supporters, most looking age 18 to 30 to me, wearing black T-shirts with the name “Joe Lombardo” in red at the pocket, trooped out of the room with a bad case of the sads, dragging their tote bags behind them, showing no interest whatever in helping the party conduct the rest of its business, including the amendment and adoption of the 2022 party platform.

It reminded me of Napoleon’s armies withdrawing from Moscow. I also couldn’t help wondering who actually paid THEIR $150 apiece, if they had so little interest in the rest of the agenda.

But the real stunner was the vote on endorsements for U.S. Senate. Old Joe Burdzinski’s endorsement committee recommended endorsing both Sam Brown AND Adam Laxalt – asserting either could win (they’ve each got more than $2 million) and that either could advance the party’s agenda.

So we proceeded to endorse blowed-up combat veteran Capt. Sam Brown by a huge margin – 258-65.

(A Suffolk/Reno Gazette-Journal poll conducted April 2-6 showed Brown should beat Cortez-Masto in a close, 1-point race, by the way, whereas an outfit called “OH Predictive Insights” still shows incumbent Catherine Masto beating EITHER Brown or Laxalt by the same 8-point margin — a curious artifact in a year when Democrats are committing national political suicide by destroying our energy industry, turning groceries and gasoline into luxury items via Weimar-style hyper-inflation, and freaking out every mom in America by having green-haired “non-binary” teachers coach our little boys that what they should really want is to wear dresses and get castrated. At any rate, so much for “Only Laxalt can win in November.”)

( https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/23/biden-hhs-nominee-defended-subjecting-kids-to-chemical-castration-n1427782 .)

Then came the vote on endorsing Adam Laxalt. They had us using these little hand-held push-button things (“assembled in Thailand.”) So we all push a button and the numbers pop up on the screens at the front of room. Out of 388 registered delegates, 183 voted to endorse Adam Laxalt, while those voting NOT to endorse Adam Laxalt counted . . . 183.

The FRONT-RUNNER?

THESE AIN’T MAGA GUYS:

Stunned silence, then various noises of astonishment, then everyone looks at the chair.

“And on the tie vote . . . the motion fails.” NO NEVADA REPUBLICAN PARTY ENDORSEMENT for Adam Laxalt for the U.S. Senate.

So Captain Sam Brown walked out ALONE with the state party’s endorsement to face Manny Cortez’s daughter, come November.

Convention 2, Trump 0.

And I talked to a lot of people; this was a room FULL of rabid Trump fans. He just picked wrong, that’s all — tried to pick “winners” instead of MAGA footsoldiers. So the convention fixed it for him. (Sam Brown has been a Trump volunteer and FUND-RAISER, for heaven’s sake. Joey Gilbert declares himself a huge Trump supporter, as well. )

These are only endorsements, of course. There’s still the primary next month. But something’s happening.

“The fact is Laxalt supported Red Flag guns laws as Attorney General, first reported by me in 2018,” writes Rob Lauer at 360 News Las Vegas, in a piece accurately headlined “Did the Nevada GOP just reject Trump by voting for Gilbert & Brown? Nope.”

“The fact is Laxalt signed off on the Dominion Voting Machines,” Mr. Lauer reports. “Laxalt said he supports Mitch McConnell for Senate Majority Leader. Laxalt refuses to support impeaching Biden. Sam Brown said he would support impeaching Biden after the Afghanistan disaster. The NVGOP voters did their research and simply don’t trust Laxalt.”

( https://360newslasvegas.com/did-the-nvgop-just-reject-trump-by-voting-for-gilbert-brown-nope/ )

Even Adam Laxalt’s own family members warn he’s not really a Nevadan:.

https://secondnexus.com/news/laxalt-family-wrong-choice-nevada-governor

Whereas Las Vegas sheriff Joe Lombardo, who now bills himself as “pro Second Amendment,” simply LOVED gun control — including gun bans, and limiting pistol magazine capacity for us unruly peasants (though not for his own Boys in Beige, of course) back in 2016:

See: https://360newslasvegas.com/sheriff-joe-lombardos-call-for-ban-on-high-capacity-gun-Liombardo loved gun control in 2016:magazines-in-nevada-drawing-fire-from-gun-rights-group/