Should you trust Frank Luntz?

On May 20, the Huffington Post reported that GOP pollster Frank Luntz would not disclose who funded his playbook for fighting against health care reform. When asked who paid him to write the 28-page memo, which Republicans immediately began following, Luntz responded, "It's not relevant."

Luntz did specify that "no pharmaceutical company was involved." However, a quick glance at his firm's website reveals that Luntz's clients include the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, as well as the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, CIGNA Dental Health, HIP Health Plan of New York, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. (You may recall that Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has already initiated a misleading campaign against President Obama's plan.)

The lack of transparency from Luntz is no surprise - it has been a hallmark of his career. In fact, in 1997, he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to supply verification of his research.

 "In 1997, Luntz was formally reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for his work polling on the GOP's 1994 'Contract with America' campaign document," Salon reported. "Luntz told the media that everything in the contract had the support of at least 60 percent of the general public. Considering the elementary phrasing of that document (stop violent criminals, protect our kids, strong national defense), it seems almost laughably uncontroversial. But one of AAPOR's 1,400 members wasn't so amused, and filed a complaint requesting to see Luntz's research and a verification of the figure. Luntz's response? He couldn't reveal the information because of client confidentiality."

Luntz also has a long track record of twisting research to meet his ideological needs. Describing his tactics, Luntz explained, "Say you poll on an environmental issue, and on eight of the 10 questions the numbers are in your favor.  Why release the other two? It's like being a lawyer...This is my case, and these are the strong arguments and these are the weak ones. You go with your strongest case."

Furthermore, Luntz frequently attempts to manipulate how respondents answer questions by providing them with incomplete or incorrect information. For example, he told a focus group last September that Sarah Palin stopped the "Bridge to Nowhere," when in fact, she supported it.

In the book The Opinion Makers, David Moore, former Vice President of the Gallup organization and Managing Editor of the Gallup poll, wrote about Luntz's ability to manipulate public opinion:

An extreme example of how drastically polls can manipulate public opinion occurred shortly after President Bush's reelection, when he announced that he would try once again to have Congress pass legislation to permit oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). A national poll released by Republican Frank Luntz in January 2005, on behalf of the Arctic Power interest group, found a public that supported oil drilling in ANWR by a margin of 17 percentage points (51 percent to 34 percent). Yet in direct contradiction, a similar poll conducted December 13 through 15, 2004, by John Zogby for the Wilderness Society found the public opposed to oil drilling in ANWR, by the exact same margin (55 percent opposed to 38 percent in favor).

It seemed more than coincidental that the poll results happened to conform with the desires of the sponsoring organizations. And a look at the questionnaires shows how easy it was to shape the findings into mirror opposites. Luntz preceded his question on oil drilling with 13 questions that dealt with the cost of oil and with energy dependence on foreign countries. By the time the interviewer got to the question of exploring and developing oil reserves in ANWR, many respondents were primed to solve the country's energy needs by opening up that area to the oil industry. Zogby, on the other hand, framed the issue in a less biased way, asking only one question related to the oil industry before the drilling question. But that one question helped present the issue as an environmental matter, and in that context a solid majority of the respondents opposed oil drilling.

A key to understanding how easy it was to manipulate respondents into giving the desired answers is recognizing that most people had little knowledge about ANWR going into the survey. Eighty-seven percent of Luntz's respondents, for example, could not say where the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is located-the same percentage could not identify even one word of the acronym ANWR. In addition, only 8 percent said they knew either a lot or a good deal about the area. Despite this lack of knowledge, only 7 percent of Zogby's sample and 15 percent of Luntz's sample declined to offer an opinion. Clearly, information presented over the course of the interview helped many respondents form an instantaneous opinion.

Luntz may have a way with words, but his research is unreliable and his agenda is clear. All of which begs the question: Why would anyone trust Frank Luntz?