WASHINGTON—The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics opened hearings Thursday into the sudden reliability of late-cycle campaign data. Expert witness Dr. Thaddeus Mbeki-Ransome, Chair of Applied Hype Studies at the Institute for Trending Phenomena, took the stand to clarify how national pollsters measure voter enthusiasm in the final Senate race polls.
Q: Dr. Mbeki-Ransome, could you explain how your firm generates these late-stage numbers?
A: We simply call landlines. Then we slaughter a goat under the waning moon. If the liver shimmers red, we project a tight Senate race polls environment. If it shimmers blue, we add three points to the incumbent.
Q: So the data comes from blood magic?
A: Mostly. We also check Pew Research Center cross-tabs. But blood magic gives us that tight 3% margin of error.
Q: Are you saying all major polling institutes use dark arts?
A: Of course. Marist uses necromancy. Monmouth reads tea leaves. You cannot capture likely voters through random digit dialing alone. Nobody answers the phone anymore. So we summon the ancient spirits of the Sumerian dead. They always vote independent.
Q: Is this practice legal under federal election guidelines?
A: Gordon Flense, Deputy Undersecretary for Things That Were Fine Before, authorized the incantations in 2012. He found that sacrificing a bull offered cleaner demographic weighting than online opt-in panels. The methodology is peer-reviewed. The demons demand strict sampling sizes.
Q: Does the public know their preferences are determined by occult ritual?
A: The public likes pie charts. We give them pie charts. Nobody asks how much sulfur went into the pie chart. If we stopped sacrificing livestock, every single Senate race polls report would just say 'who knows' in big bold letters.
