The Change Report™: Curtis Fric of Polling USA
On the use and abuse of polls, rage bait as a political tool, and making meaningful change in the 2020s.
Welcome to The Change Report™, an interview series exploring and explaining change from people who are making a difference in the world. This interview series is free but def consider supporting The Trend Report™ however you can, either by sharing this story or upgrading to a paid subscription 💚
It’s been a little over a half-year since a certain election in a certain country happened — and we’re deep in the ramifications of this decision.
Sadly, as expected, this June has proven to be a particularly brutal expression of this. War with Iran, mass deportations, emboldened tech lunacy, blocking trans rights, a big beautiful bill that will deal big bad blows: the state of things doesn’t look good — and that’s just within the halls of the house, not to mention the reverberations that are felt from the Canada to Palestine, India to Nigeria: the world continues to feel the tremors as everyone, everywhere is implicated in this recent political going on. We talk again and again that we’re awaiting an equal and opposite reaction to Trump’s brand of politics, which is to say: the Democrats have been fumbling to seize the moment. Are they capable of rising to the moment? Or are they damned to spin their wheels, talking about doing something without doing much of anything? It’s increasingly starting to feel like the latter.
But let’s pause for a moment. Outside of real, physical wars, a battle for the soul of people is happening online. As much as I continue to believe that logging off is the answer, we know that will be the mood and answer for the more discerning — and that the more mainstream and “normal” of us will remain in the social media trenches, entertained by casual feuds and whatever the day’s gossipy subject is. Yes, a lot of said gossipy subjecture is Blake versus Baldoni and whatever Sabrina Carpenter did — but know all these subjects slide down the funnel of literal and spiritual right wing conversation as politics now is a game of conversation that captures everything, that skirts between the entertaining and the enraging. Gavin Newsom can kinda sorta play that game! So can Pete Buttigieg! But we’re talking major leagues versus minor leagues when it comes to right wing figures like Trump, our Shitposter In Chief™ — and the left suffers from a supreme case of being non-posters, from lacking the sauce needed to dominate digital conversations. Just look at the differences between Truth Social versus Bluesky — and see that Twitter still “has it.”
In the hopes of helping to understand what the left could and should be doing online (and off), I wanted to speak with someone who I very much respect in the space: of and , the Ontario based digital marketer, pollster, and data analyst behind the wildly popular Polling USA (and Polling Canada). Curtis has done the rare thing with his social accounts that more need to pay attention to: shitpost and rage bait to court attention for the American left by using what is perhaps the biggest form of division of these times — polls. As a pollster, he knows how to look at data and explain what’s happening in an even-headed way. But as a poster? He knows how to get the feed going, scoring very viral posts that court angry right wingers into his replies, in the hopes of trapping them and courting them left (or, at least, using information to get them to question themselves). It’s a clever approach based in a knowledge of how the internet works that, when combined with a knowledge of politics and data, creates a winning combination in the conversation wars of the 2020s. Could someone like Curtis be the key to a winning strategy for the left? Or any political party, brand, or concept putting itself out there now? I’d say so.
If anyone knows how to make change online, it’s him — so I wanted to talk to him about it, both as a fan and as someone with shared interests. For well over an hour, Curtis and I chatted about everything from rage bait being the medium of the moment, to understanding why polls and pollsters repeatedly fail, what campaign messaging did wrong and right in the 2024 election, and what needs to change in order to take down conservatism, both inside and outside of the US. I love all of my interview babies but this one is one of the more illuminating and necessary. Enjoy!
KRF: What does change mean to you? How do you see change happening in this moment? Obviously this is a moment of change — but what needs to change to met the moment?
CF: My ideal version of change — generally speaking, from a political sense — is change that is meant to better people's lives. It might be done for self-serving reasons but whatever gets us there works. Having change that is ideally for the betterment of society, for the betterment of all of us, is the ideal outcome. In democratic states across the world, this buckling of democracy is because of things like social media and strains on society, whether financial or cultural, that is pushing people into a general sense of unease. People are not happy. They're not comfortable and you can't blame people for that. The change we’re feeling right now is creating bad vibes all around: bad vibes on the economy, bad vibes on society and culture, bad vibes in your daily life. And that sucks. There's a lot of reasons for that and it would take a long time to key into…but it's just a rough go right now, which is unfortunate.
KRF: It’s funny because everybody feels or realizes that — but that's it. I wouldn't say it's a type of resignation but, to me, the world feels a bit uneven or unbalanced. Yes, things are bad, the vibes are off, but that’s because there is no equal and opposite to what's happening. Usually there are checks and balances, or a coalition of people on the same page of something that are working to combat it versus everybody feeling frustrated and annoyed and mad. How far down the path do we have to go before we realize we’re going in the wrong direction? When do you realize you have to turn around? That’s also why I’m interested to chat with you as your instrument of change is polling and, for at least the last three American elections, polls have become less and less enchanting. How can polling be used as a tool? Perhaps not for change but how can it help inform people to make change? How can data be used to make change? As polls stand now, they represent a really flimsy way of considering information that helps enable confirmation bias.
CF: Using polls as a form of change boils down to figuring out the answer to a very lighthearted subject like how Americans feel about trans people. Let’s take an example: “fairness in sports” when it comes to having trans people involved. Let’s say 65% of Americans say they don't think that trans people should be in certain sports because it's not fair and 35% are fine with it. If our goal is to say it is fair to have trans people in sports, that there are regulations in place to make that fair, what messaging do we have to look at to push people in the majority to that existing minority position, to grow the minority position? The polling can then help guide messaging — but there’s also a confirmation bias that, well, 65% of people are against us. How then can we use polling to message test, to understand people’s concerns about the issue, whether founded or unfounded? How can we address the issue without being inherently bigoted in that position? Ideally you then get community leaders and politicians that help push people in that direction.
That’s effectively what Republicans did but against trans people: they took a couple of these issues that people vote for, items that — without thinking about it too hard — they would agree with Republicans on, and they ran with it. That’s how we entered into the era of very anti-trans politics. That could only have happened because the right probably did some polling, saw where people were on an issue, and realized they wouldn’t win on the economics of things — but they could with the cultural things. They ran with that. And here we are.
KRF: That gets at a very interesting way of using polling. An issue like trans identity and trans issues are simultaneously an issue that touches everyone and no one, meaning it’s not healthcare, which truly does touch people. Not that trans issues aren’t important but, if healthcare gets fucked up, a lot of people will be affected in myriad ways. People always have to interact with healthcare — but they may never interact with or have a trans experience. That’s a good example of things that matter but also…don’t. To your point, it’s held in the same breath as healthcare and as the economy, which means polling helps people double down on distractions. It’s a wild art form that they’re good at which paints the whole room while keeping their opponents preoccupied. We see polling in a much more binary way: is someone winning or are they not winning? Those are the wrong numbers. The 2024 election was the third or fourth election where people got burned, even if they knew not to over-invest in whatever Nate Silver said, or whoever was in Iowa, whose name I’m forgetting —
CF: Selzer.
KRF: Yes, Anne Selzer. A lot of people knew to look away from that but they still held onto it amidst collapse. To literacy and reading a poll, it’s an expression of information that collapses issues. What’s your advice for encountering polls? They’re not going to go away, clearly.
CF: I always tell people it’s probability: a certain amount of people in a survey of 1000 people have a certain opinion and, while you could do another survey of another 1000 people, you might get broadly the same results but one or two points higher or lower. We have margins of error which means we’re ballparking it.
Using the presidential elections, part of the thing that burned people in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 — and to a lesser degree the 2022 midterms — is modelers. I’m not saying they’re bad at their jobs but they get the most attention. They take this information and say the Democrats are up: a poll will not tell you that but a modeler will. You have famous modelers like Nate Silver who point out projections and say “Well, I’m going to say it’s going to be this result….That’s the average!” That’s fair because that’s how statistics works. But it’s a literacy issue: people look at it and say “Kamala is gonna win 280 electoral votes!” — but then when she doesn’t, they say the polls are bad. It was all bullshit!
The last election that had a serious polling problem was probably 2020. If you believed the polls at face value, Biden was winning nationally by almost 10 points. He won by five — and we saw that the polls were doubling that win. That’s a huge miss. At the end of the day, the polls said Biden was going to win and he did.
In 2016 and 2024 — 2016 more — polls were ragged on because they were close elections. Everyone thought the favorite was Clinton. I remember a day before the election having a conversation with a conservative co-worker about who we want to win versus who we think will win. I said I think Trump’s going to win but I’d rather have Clinton win — and they thought the opposite. They called me crazy, because nothing was suggesting that. Trump hit all the right points narratively! It was possible to see how he could get there. The models, at the time, were saying Clinton had a 75%, that she’d win three out of four times. I don’t think people understand just how often a one-in-four chance can happen. 25% chance, yes, and you’d rather bet on the 75% — but that 25% can still happen and that’s what happened.
2024? All the polls said it was super close. It was always close after Harris got into the race. She did better than expected but polls also said Trump was doing fine. People thought the polls were super wrong because he took the swing states — even though modelers before the election were saying the most likely result was, if she wins, she has all the swing states. If he wins? He wins all the swing states because they all swing together. What we weren’t expecting was a national swing, as we thought that idea was dead since we’ve had swing states for the past twenty years. I can’t remember when a national swing election happened! That’s how we ended up with Reagan.
The American polling industry gets a lot of shit. It has its own issues. Trump always screws things though because, when he’s not on the ballot, pollsters are a lot better. 2018 polling was almost dead on! 2022 less so as people said there would be a red wave and there was not a blowout, as the polls said. American pollsters have gotten better at counting on how Trump voters interact with surveys. I don’t know what’s up with the American polling industry.
KRF: Hey, the US is very big and populated, as we know. It could be a size issue. I mean, Iowa. Poor Anne!
CF: Poor Anne! I still like the conspiracy theory that she purposely put out a poll that was wrong so she could finally retire. It’s either that or she just really underestimated something and made the poll a lot bluer than it should have been.
KRF: It’s funny. That poll came out and had a similar feeling to when the Trump tape dropped in 2016, that days before the election shocker. This one did what you just said, making people not worry, when we were dealing with odds that may not mean anything. Even if she was right, that doesn’t mean much to the rest of the picture.
CF: In 2020, Selzer released a poll in Iowa to say that the blue wave that people expected was not happening. It was a way redder Iowa than expected — and she was right. The reason why people were looking at the blue Iowa poll and thinking it could be close was because Anne had a really good track record. She nailed almost every election! She was very good at polling Iowa. Who knows what happened.
KRF: Who knows!
CF: It’s one poll — but it’s also a really good, gold star pollster. It’s hard not to tune your gauges to that poll when it had an end result like that. At least at the presidential level! The House and the Senate — the House was almost unchanged. That was the wildest part. At the presidential level, Democrats were shellacked.
KRF: Which is…something. I think all this is why your work has gained so much attention on social media because there’s something about polling where it’s not rage bait but it’s not not rage bait. It goes viral for a reason. People talk about polls for a reason, for all the same literacy things that we discuss. What’s your take not on using social media as a political tool but as a rage bait tool? How does shitposting play into this as well? Because that is also something you traffic in to great effect, which I don’t think the left in general does a good job of — but the right does. Clearly rage baiting is a big part of the picture!
CF: It’s still wild to me that Republicans did this before Democrats, using shitposting and rage baiting. In a way, I always find that Republican and conservative politics have a much easier time at rage baiting because they drill down on identity, culture, and society while the left focuses on economics and class. It’s easier for a right wing account to go out there and post a racist post that goes viral — and it spreads the message they want to spread. It’s easier to recognize someone who doesn’t look or act like you but it’s not as easy to see if someone is a billionaire. You’re not going to see Elon Musk at your local Walmart and, even if you do, will you know who he is?
When it comes to rage baiting and shitposting, it’s nice to see the Democrats have finally decided to let the intern cook on this front. Posting the picture of the cuck chair at Stephen Miller? That was insane. I don’t know who took over because, in February, something shifted because the leadership is shit, the messaging is shit — you have to do something. I think the breaking point was a leftist meme of text and everybody bullied them. Then they came back and started shitposting. So…does bullying work? That is something that needed to happen in center and center-left politics: right wingers online aren’t going to care if you’re nice or mean to them — so you might as well be mean to them because then at least you get other people on the sideline seeing you attack versus letting it happen. That’s a big issue that Democrats face is that they’re seen as very passive — and so is their party and so are their representatives. That’s why Republicans have been able to steamroll them!
As a political tool, shitposting is a way to convey a political message to people who are apathetic to politics, who think it’s boring. Throw shitposting memes their way! That’s something Republicans have been doing well. They piss people off — but they get their message to a bunch of people in apathetic circles. Democrats and lefties generally should push to make fun of these people and make them feel like toddlers because that’s what they do to the opposition: they treat them like they’re stupid and like babies. Stop being nice! Where did being nice in politics ever get you? Break out of the envelope! The other point to this is for someone in my generation — younger — shitposting is…there’s a built in nihilism to shitposting. There's a built in helplessness to shitposting.
There’s a really good video that explains the idea of “somebody has to do it” [by ]: everybody knows what you’re talking about when you say “somebody has to do it” because it’s a sign that you won’t be held legally responsible because you don’t know what I’m talking about — but also it’s pushing a political message of shit’s fucked, things are bad, and we can point to certain individuals for why it’s bad. It’s the TikTok-ification of language because you will get nailed for saying these things. It drives me insane when people replace words because they don’t seem like a serious person. It seems childish! The right will say the most racist, vile things possible and they make bank off of it. You’re afraid of saying the word “pedophile”? It’s cringe culture. Shitposting helps to post through the pain. That’s why a lot of young people post like this. Millennials are online and don’t post like this, Boomers are online and don’t post like this. It’s very specifically Gen Z and the youngest of Gen Z and those behind us.
KRF: I’ve talked about this at some length but, if the Internet is a country, its language is memes. And if you don’t speak memes? Or you don’t understand the basics of an image reply? Or get what the cuck chair is? Information online collapses and you aren’t getting the whole story: you’re getting a one dimensional form, as online talk is part communication and part jokes and part bullying. Unfortunately, Trump is really good at this, in and of himself. That’s why Republicans do all this so well because it’s a party run by a poster.
What is missing, what is not taken seriously on the Democrat side, is a lack of centering and understanding this. A really useful and important mode of communication. That doesn’t mean everyone holding office has to be 35 but that you have to be able to speak these languages. Trump inherently shitposts and rage baits. He’s entertaining! Which is now the name of the game beyond politics, to be Entertainer In Chief™.
That’s where this gets really frustrating is the whole “go high” thing which then is an embedded need to please everybody — which is a losing battle. Online? No, because you don’t know anyone online, whether they’re real or not. Offline? Yes, obviously be human and abide by these norms. There are obvious culture problems on the left which is how we ended up here. A window is closing too. Those who get it get it.
CF: You’re not gonna please everybody. A critique of the Harris campaign was the attempt to appeal to moderate Republicans. In politics, you want to get the most voters — but if you create a new voter out of thin air? You get one vote. If you take someone from your opposition, you not only get one vote but you take one too — and that’s the most ideal political transaction.
I would have to assume their idea was to try and peel away moderate Republicans who are voting for the Republicans which led to the dumbest decision of getting the Cheneys to endorse you. Dick Cheney left office with a 13% approval rating. Why would we want to do that? If there are people who, in 2024, are saying “I voted Donald Trump!” there is nothing you can do that is going to take them away. They are committed. You might have been able to do that in 2016 or 2020 but not 2024. It’s a giant thought experiment or what if but I don’t think you can please everybody. Harris tried to please everybody which is why we lost so many voters. If she had a different position on healthcare or was more full throated on Israel-Palestine — would that have changed things? We don’t know. But we can’t help but think…would it have hurt her? If you’re starting from losing, you can only lose more. If you go up? You have a shot.
When I shitpost, I am pissing people off and people comment that I am annoying and that I am on their feed all the time. I know I’m annoying. That’s the point. I’m also on your feed though which means: what I’m trying to do is succeeding. That’s the whole point! I’m supposed to be pervasive. People say they mute and block me — and I still show up in their feed.
KRF: That’s how the internet works now. That’s the game being played! If you don’t get that, you’ve lost. Trump, Hasan, Taylor Lorenz — you: they get that. They know how to speak into the void and get the void to speak back. But you also have to speak to real life too, right? If people are going in on the trans thing, why not talk about grocery prices instead? Talk about things that are real, which didn’t happen. It was all hypotheticals.
What do you think that’s missing from the political landscape then? It could be shitposting, it could be trans or Palestinian support: it could be that. Something big is missing in the picture, which may be more the mode of transport of information versus the actual information being transported. What’s missing? This could be for America or global too as everywhere is dealing with these problems, mostly for the left.
CF: You brought it up: the thing that bugs people is their root concerns aren’t being addressed. You have a housing crisis which is a mixture of the government doing nothing, whether making it cheaper or building public housing. Then there are other factors like not taking on platforms like Airbnb or Vrbo. These aren’t the main issue but they harm the overall landscape.
It’s walking this tightrope. I use something like housing as an example against immigration. When a country like Canada — which is small, relative to the United States, where people are packed into urban areas — Canadians don’t have a lot of places to go. You have to build up as opposed to building out. That’s how the country is structured. It’s expensive to build housing, there’s not enough labor for it, and corporate rentals are taking up space — and housing becoming more corporate in general — that gives this problem strength. Couple that with immigration! In Canada, there were huge immigration targets to build the economy — if you have the infrastructure in place. Canada doesn’t have that. People are fine with immigration but we don’t have the immigration because healthcare is under strain, we don’t have enough schools to house new kids, and there isn’t enough housing or jobs. Because of that, right wingers use immigration as a blunt cudgel to just be xenophobic and racist, saying it’s the others who are causing the problems — not us. They’re not incorrect that immigration is causing issues but that it needs to be more calculated and narrow: that would be great. But if you take an issue like immigration, the answer isn’t open borders and figure it out, as some on the left say, that anything less than opening borders is racism. We know that’s not fair.
KRF: That’s not a winning argument.
CF: Yes. And, if your opposition is being violently racist against immigration, I can understand the want for more liberation and immigration. Both sides would do really well to come to the middle ground, which means less people but also a more empathetic society. Immigration is the big issue. That’s why hard right and neo-Nazi and fascist parties succeed is because of immigration.
Not to the same extent as Republicans but, in Denmark, which has a center-left government, they have an immigration platform that looks a lot like Donald Trump’s because they let many less people in and they’re much more stringent. That’s not very popular on the left. But the rest of the government? They spend on social programs and grow the economy equitably, to prevent people at the top from getting everything.
In countries like the United States where everything is polarized, it’s hard to get those middle ground positions. Maybe Democrats would do better if they were harder on immigration without doing heartless, cruel shit like breaking up families and deporting families just because they decided to. If people are saying immigration is a big concern, the last thing you want to do is say: your concern is not a valid concern. It’s the same thing as inflation and prices. If you tell people, “The economy is great! Especially compared to everyone else in the G7!” then Americans are going to say their rent has gone up, their food prices have gone up, their wages have not — and you are telling me the economy is good? Where? You can’t sit there and disregard people’s concerns. That’s the biggest issue, when you disregard the things that affect wide swaths of a population. That’s how you lose really hard. If you don’t address these problems and if you disregard real life problems, that’s how you get Donald Trump — who will do the objectively worst possible things, enacting human rights issues. In a system like the United States, it’s the devil you know or the devil you don’t. It really is the lesser of two evils. I wish it was not that way. I wish there were gold standards of ideology that you could show up for — but that’s not real.
KRF: You’re right, to the point of groceries and inflation, is that change comes from actually listening. Immigration is an issue, yes, but when we talk about immigration we’re not talking about border crossings: you’re talking about lack of housing, jobs, not feeling safe in cities because they aren’t being invested in, a lack of social services, larger systems breaking down because they aren’t being cared for. Immigrants are a great distraction from the real problems! I don’t condone anything that Trump, et al, has done but you can condone more mindful immigration policies while addressing the aforementioned problems, to remove the idea that immigrants are the root evil for X, Y, Z issue in society. Instead, Trump is using them to convince people that they are stealing your money and your identity and your life, as if aliens or demons. That’s not true. The reality is there aren’t enough jobs at all and there are a lot of workers and things like tech dissolving jobs — but also more old people are still working, not freeing up jobs, because they cannot afford to leave their jobs. Of course there are no jobs! Because boomers exist doesn’t mean immigrants are the problem. It means they — the Boomers, like all of us — do not have enough social support to stop working, that they cannot rely on the state or themselves for survival.
This boils down to daily life. The reason why people voted for Trump is because of things like they wanted another $2K check. Is that going to happen? No! He could send them a $200 check! He could! Will that change their life? Probably not. But will that mean they will vote for him again? Yes. He’s the nice rich man who gave them money for nothing. It’s a dumb fucking dopamine hit that works wonders in the same way rage bait does because it appeals to you and your emotions, right now, in this moment. It fulfills basic needs.
CF: I need people to understand politics is politics — and it’s working right now for some people and not others. It needs to be different for a myriad of reasons but the biggest of them all is that people do not feel like they're having their issues addressed. That can take a hundred different forms in a hundred different ways — but the fundamental thing is, burying your head in the sand and pretending that issues don't exist, is not an option.
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