Memo re: (rigging) Monmouth University Poll, Subject: Change the Narrative

Posted: Oct 11, 2016

https://www.scribd.com/document/324776022/Monmouth NET MESSAGE: HILLARY-RESURGENCE Key Notes: Birtherism – “Backfiring” Trump Unfavorables – “Climbing” Minority Voices – “support Hillary” Imply Racism (White Vote = Trump) – “Whites rally/cleave/etc. Trump” SCREENS AGE: Attached screens will move 80% of targets into the 30-50 age range. Use included statistical model to re-skew for publication. LOCATION The location call screens will favor south Tallahassee, east and north Gainesville, central Tampa, north and west Jacksonville, west and south Orlando and much of Dade/Broward Counties. Space Coast regions and similar must be carefully screened for demographic. DEMOGRAPHIC: This should be obvious. We are looking at a heavy minority foundation with a college-white salt. Favored are liberal arts degrees and especially sociology. See attached call files. EMPLOYMENT: We prefer polling areas of high unemployment for minority response. More are available to take calls during working hours and far, far fewer of them support Republican candidates. EMBEDED NARRATIVE It is imperative to create a morale boosting narrative in the liberal demographics. Our last published polling note gave liberals a “week before panic.” We must deliver on a turn-around in polls or risk collapse of enthusiasm. The data from our call / email sieve as well as legitimate polling indicates a level of despondency equivalent, roughly, to the Michael Dukakis candidacy. This is due to (a) Trump’s successful presidential-narrative surge and (b) a massive lack of enthusiasm on the part of minority and millennial voters who are beginning to view Obama as a failed president and Hillary Clinton as a ‘lying harpy.’ (word association testing focus groups). In order to rally the male-liberal base we will need to produce “resurgent” Florida polling. The conventional wisdom is that Florida will be the fulcrum state for the election and if it is seen as lost to Trump then we will have domino defections throughout the other swing-states. Presently, our internal analysis shows the Democratic Firewall in extreme jeopardy. This week the news cycle MUST show Hillary regaining the lead in Florida. STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, OPPORTUNITIES, & THREATS Strengths Almost none. The voter-registrations in Florida are balanced but we need to have at least D+3 to have a credible story. We also need to greatly oversample women. This shouldn’t be hard to manage as they are more likely to answer the phone and chat. Liberal self-reporters are tanking (around 12% in real numbers). We are going to have it at around 30% which we can probably get away with. Below are the target demographics our screens should produce with minimal manual intervention. Weaknesses Weaknesses abound. The first is that the birther message is penetrating: 73% of Americans are willing to say they don’t know where Obama was born. This was previously locked out via media shaming. Trump is immune so his followers are immune. The Florida geography is also working against us. Hillary has 53+ Field Offices and they’re empty of volunteers. This lack of enthusiasm is showing up in the voting responses and it’s killing us. The “cell phones” rationale will only hold out for so long. Opportunities PPP is burned. There have been too many leaks. Monmouth is less well known and less disparaged by conservatives. This is a good chance for you to build your brand both with naïve liberals and with some conservative moderates. The general reputation of Monmouth as a party-school will work against you here but we think that will be easy to gloss over with the chaos of the messaging. We also have a chance to build a White People Are Racist narrative. We’ve got some good story coming out of The Upshot with the headline that “Whites” are keeping Trump alive in Florida. If we can double down on that in the cross-tabs we can strongly insinuate that Whites (who code as racists in the media) like Trump (who codes as racist) and get an Ouroboros-Pattern established for undecideds. Finally, while we have been forced by intense public scrutiny to accurately report a Trump Surge, we think there is an opportunity here for demoralization by reporting a “counter surge” or “Trump Collapse” that will reduce momentum as the Trump narrative has shifted to talking about the polls. Threats People are leaking a lot. If you don’t want Enten’s gang all over you, we suggest you lock it the fuck down. There are a lot of people poking around the edges that are on to things and a bunch of stuff out on the Internet that is more hit-than-miss. PPP’s extremely unwise decision not to disavow the leaks on Twitter has costs us a great deal of credibility and voters are a lot more educated about cross-tabs and skewing and we may not have as easy a time of it as we did in 2012. Finally, we know you consider Quinnipiac a “rival school.” Put that aside and stand down your hackers and arson-units. This is a team effort. If we lose this election we’re all fucked. Ensure loyalty in your staff by whatever means necessary. Keep appearances up. DO NOT SCREW THIS UP. TREND-WATCH You will be required to do actual polling to give us insight into the information-battlespace. We are seeing some disturbing things in the cross-tabs from our other arms. Please conduct testing to validate or invalidate the following trends: (see link for charts) TREND-ANALYSIS If these results hold, we are seeing a complete fracture in the national narrative. Hillary’s messaging has failed and her intentions are being read as subtext-for-text. Under these conditions it will be impossible to win a general election. The Liberal base is demoralized—but will become more enthusiastic the more Hillary is seen as an iconoclast who will overturn the last foundations of Western Culture (as such, links to corruption and even outright crimes are seen as a positive rather than a negative). On the reverse side, the media has not been able to convince most of America that these allegations are false (the dual-channels have, unfortunately, merged and the conservative news firewall has broken down). The messaging to liberals is being consumed by middle America and they, for obvious reasons, do not like it. If the above responses hold for major swing states more drastic measures will be needed and we will need to begin preparations sooner rather than later. ;