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Column: This GOP-leaning political polling firm has turned into a purveyor of anti-vaccine propaganda

Published

2 years ago

June 23, 2024

Column: This GOP-leaning political polling firm has turned into a purveyor of anti-vaccine propaganda

Rasmussen Reports used to be a fairly creditable and credible political polling organization, good enough to be included among the pollsters relied on by services such as FiveThirtyEight to give a broad-spectrum gauge of voter sentiment in the run-up to state and federal elections.

It’s true that Rasmussen had a detectable pro-Republican “house effect,” in polling parlance — but one that was consistent enough to compensate for in published polling averages.

But something has happened to Rasmussen in recent years. Not only have its results become more sharply partisan, favoring Republican and conservative politicians, but it also has increasingly promoted right-wing conspiracy theories on topics such as race relations, election results and — perhaps most troubling — COVID vaccines and COVID origins.

By random chance alone…there will be a large number of people who die within, say, 30 days of being vaccinated even if the vaccine has absolutely nothing to do with their deaths.

— Pseudoscience debunker David Gorski, MD

Earlier this month, Rasmussen tweeted the results of polls it conducted in June 2023 and last month, claiming to find that 1 in 5 Americans believe they know someone who died from a COVID vaccine.

There are many reasons to disregard any such poll asking people what they think about a scientifically validated fact — in this case, that the record shows overwhelmingly that the COVID vaccines widely used in the U.S. are safe and effective.

But Rasmussen has doubled down on its findings. In a series of tweets on June 9, it declared, first: “If the numbers implied by our COVID polling are correct, the vaccines killed more people worldwide than Jews killed in the Holocaust.”

Then it tweeted: “China lied. Fauci lied. People died.” And followed that with: “The government take over of medicine was as deadly as always predicted.”

In other words, Rassmussen has morphed from a quantifier of public opinion into a participant in the spread of noxious propaganda. It still tries to validate its results by claiming that they’re “relevant, timely and accurate,” citing its “track record.”

But that track record has been sprouting gray hairs. The most recent election polling cited by the web page documenting its track record is from 2010.

More recently, 538, now owned by ABC News, dropped Rasmussen from its polling averages in March. ABC took that step after Rasmussen failed to respond suitably to a questionnaire 538 submitted asking Rasmussen to explicate its polling methodology. Rasmussen published ABC’s query on its website under the headline, “ABC News: ‘Answer Our Questions — Or Else!’”

I asked Rasmussen Reports by phone and email to comment on its tweet and its polling, but received no response.

Rasmussen’s veer to the far right has been noticeable for several years. Founded in 2003 by pollster Scott Rasmussen, the firm’s forecasts received high marks for accuracy in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. But it fell short in 2012, predicting victories for Mitt Romney over Barack Obama in several states that Obama won.

As my colleague James Rainey observed in the aftermath, the Rasmussen polls had been used by conservative media outlets “to prop up a narrative in the final days of the campaign that Romney had momentum and a good chance of winning the White House.”

In 2013, Scott Rasmussen left the firm due to unspecified business disagreements with its owner, the private equity firm Noson Lawen Partners.

In recent years, the firm has resembled a pollster-for-hire appealing to conservative organizations and authors. During the Trump administration, it became known for “a social media presence that embraced false claims that spread widely on the right,” Philip Bump of the Washington Post observed in March.

The firm’s treatment of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, in which Democrat Katie Hobbs defeated Republican Kari Lake, is a good example. In March 2023, Rasmussen reported the results of a poll it had conducted four months after the election, purportedly finding (according to a headline on its website) that “most Arizona voters believe election ‘irregularities’ affected outcome.”

According to Rasmussen, 51% of Arizona voters chose Lake and only 43% voted for Hobbs. The poll placed the election turnout at 92%; actually it was 62.6%.

On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen’s lead pollster, said its results showed that “people in Arizona, by and large, think that cheating happened.” That unsupported assertion, of course, is the core of the long, fruitless campaign to overturn the election by Lake — who gleefully cited the Rasmussen results.

Rasmussen polls on COVID vaccines and other such topics aren’t entirely worthless. They may not tell us anything useful about scientific research or electoral results, but they do offer a window into how propaganda and claptrap have penetrated deeply into our political discourse, at least within the right-wing fever swamp.

That brings us back to its polling on COVID and COVID vaccines. Rasmussen’s methodology seems to include wording its questions as if they are stating a fact, no matter how dubious. For its May 2024 poll of 1,250 American adults, for instance, it asked, “Do you know someone personally who died from side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine?” Rasmussen reported that 19% replied in the affirmative; the poll had a margin of error of 3%.

Such questions have obvious flaws. The most important is that most respondents have no way of knowing whether an acquaintance’s death was related to the vaccine; nor does Rasmussen, which conducts its polls with robot calls, have any way of authenticating the respondent’s answer.

Blaming the COVID vaccines for a tide of undocumented injuries and deaths is a popular theme in the anti-vaccine community.

For them, it has the virtue of being suggestive and unverifiable; with nearly 700 million doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines having been administered in the U.S. alone, the law of large numbers implies that “by random chance alone … there will be a large number of people who die within, say, 30 days of being vaccinated even if the vaccine has absolutely nothing to do with their deaths,” in the words of veteran pseudoscience debunker David Gorski.

It’s not unusual for the death or illness of a prominent entertainer or athlete to provoke swarms of anti-vaxxers to assert that the victim must have been recently vaccinated. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who I earlier identified as “the most dangerous quack in America” and a “card-carrying member of the anti-vaccine mafia,” misrepresented published research to claim that the COVID vaccine presented an elevated threat of cardiac problems for young men.

The research said no such thing; on the contrary, it said that the risk of cardiac death from the vaccines was statistically nonexistent and, indeed, lower than the risk of cardiac death resulting from catching COVID-19 itself.

Despite all that, conjectures by laypersons that the illness or death of acquaintances can be traced to the vaccines are legion. One promoter of the idea, economist Mark Skidmore of Michigan State University, even concluded from an anonymous database of 2,840 respondents compiled by a third-party survey firm that the number of respondents who said they knew someone who had died from the vaccine meant that the number of deaths from the vaccine in the U.S. “may be as high as 278,000.”

Skidmore’s paper citing that statistic was retracted last year by the peer-reviewed journal that had published it.

Rasmussen’s promotion of its vaccine-related balderdash is replete with weasel words, as if the firm is opting for plausible deniability.

In its tweet stating that “If the numbers implied by our COVID polling are correct, the vaccines killed more people worldwide than Jews killed in the Holocaust,” for instance, the word “if” carries a lot of baggage — not that its invocation of the Holocaust is defensible under the circumstances.

Similarly, its tweet, “China lied. Fauci lied. People died” refers to a question on its June 23 poll about COVID, in which it asks respondents to agree or disagree with that phrase. (This is known as “JAQing,” for “just asking questions.”)

As for its tweet stating, “The government take over of medicine was as deadly as always predicted,” that’s cast as a comment on a tweet by the former CBS and Fox reporter-turned-conspiracy-monger Lara Logan. She had written, “Pointing out how [Anthony] Fauci was seen by many as one of the worst mass killers in history — is what got me taken off the air at Fox. It was true then — and it is true now.”

Leave aside that the U.S. government has not staged a “take over of medicine,” much less that government action in healthcare has been “deadly.”

Make no mistake: Rasmussen is responsible for these tweets, and deserves blame helping to foment a mass delusion about the vaccines that may have cost the lives of vaccine resisters. If it ever had a reputation for trustworthiness, it doesn’t have it any longer.

Business

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

Published

8 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

As a child, Clara Spars, who grew up in Charles M. Schulz’s adoptive hometown of Santa Rosa, assumed that every city had life-size “Peanuts” statues dotting its streets.

After all, Spars saw the sculptures everywhere she went — in the Santa Rosa Plaza, at Montgomery Village, outside downtown’s Empire Cleaners. When she and her family inevitably left town and didn’t stumble upon Charlie Brown and his motley crew, she was perplexed.

Whatever void she felt then is long gone, since the beagle has become a pop culture darling, adorning all manner of merchandise — from pimple patches to luxury handbags. Spars herself is the proud owner of a Baggu x Peanuts earbuds case and is regularly gifted Snoopy apparel and accessories.

“It’s so funny to see him everywhere because I’m like, ‘Oh, finally!’” Spars said.

The spike in Snoopy products has been especially pronounced this year with the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” a.k.a. Snoopy’s 75th birthday. But the grip Snoopy currently has on pop culture and the retail industry runs deeper than anniversary buzz. According to Sony, which last week acquired majority ownership of the “Peanuts” franchise, the IP is worth half a billion dollars.

To be clear, Snoopy has always been popular. Despite his owner being the “Peanuts” strip’s main character and the namesake for most of the franchise’s adaptations, Snoopy was inarguably its breakout star. He was the winner of a 2001 New York Times poll about readers’ favorite “Peanuts” characters, with 35% of the vote.

This year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated the 75th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip’s debut.

(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)

But the veritable Snoopymania possessing today’s consumers really exploded with the social media boom of the early 2010s, said Melissa Menta, senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide.

That’s also when the company saw the first signs of uncharacteristically high brand engagement, Menta said. She largely attributed the success of “Peanuts” on social media to the comic strip’s suitability to visual platforms like Instagram.

“No one reads the comic strips in newspapers anymore,” Menta said, “but if you think about it, a four-panel comic strip, it’s actually an Instagram carousel.”

Then, in 2023, Peanuts Worldwide launched the campaign that made Snoopy truly viral.

That year, the brand partnered with the American Red Cross to create a graphic tee as a gift for blood donors. The shirt, which featured Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool and the message “Be Cool. Give Blood,” unexpectedly became internet-famous. In the first week of the collaboration, the Red Cross saw a 40% increase in donation appointments, with 75% of donors under the age of 34.

“People went crazy over it,” Menta said, and journalists started asking her, “Why?”

Her answer? “Snoopy is cute and cool. He’s everything you want to be.”

Art of the Peanuts characters hangs at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

The Red Cross collaboration was so popular that Peanuts Worldwide brought it back this year, releasing four new shirt designs. Again, the Snoopy fandom — plus some Woodstock enthusiasts — responded, with 250,000 blood donation appointments made nationwide in the month after the collection’s launch.

In addition to the Red Cross partnership, Peanuts Worldwide this year has rolled out collaborations with all kinds of retailers, from luxury brands like Coach and Kith to mass-market powerhouses like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. Menta said licensed product volume is greater than ever, estimating that the brand currently has more than 1,200 licensees in “almost every territory around the world,” which is approximately four times the number it had 40 years ago.

Then again, at that time, Schulz enjoyed and regularly executed veto power when it came to product proposals, and licensing rules were laid out in what former Times staff writer Carla Lazzareschi called the “Bible.”

“The five-pound, 12-inch-by-18-inch binder given every new licensee establishes accepted poses for each character and painstakingly details their personalities,” Lazzareschi wrote in a 1987 Times story. “Snoopy, for example, is said to be an ‘extrovert beagle with a Walter Mitty complex.’ The guidelines cover even such matters as Snoopy’s grip on a tennis racquet.”

Although licensing has expanded greatly since then, Menta said she and her retail development associates “try hard not to just slap a character onto a T-shirt.” Their goal is to honor Schulz’s storytelling, she added, and with 18,000 “Peanuts” strips in the archive, licensees have plenty of material to pull from.

Rick Vargas, the senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at specialty retailer BoxLunch, said his team regularly returns to the Schulz archives to mine material that could resonate with customers.

“As long as you have a fresh look at what that IP has to offer, there’s always something to find. There’s always a new product to build,” Vargas said.

Indeed, this has been one of BoxLunch’s strongest years in terms of sales of “Peanuts” products, and Snoopy merchandise specifically, the executive said.

Bejeweled keychains of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Daniella Yacobovsky, co-founder of the celebrity-favorite accessory retailer BaubleBar, reported similar high sales for the brand’s recent “Peanuts” collection.

“Especially for people who are consistent BaubleBar fans, every time we introduce new character IP, there is this huge excitement from that fandom that we are bringing their favorite characters to life,” Yacobovsky said.

The bestselling item in the collection, the Peanuts Friends Forever Charm Bracelet, sold out in one day. Plus, customers have reached out with new ideas for products linked to specific “Peanuts” storylines.

More recently, Peanuts Worldwide has focused on marketing to younger costumers in response to unprecedented brand engagement from Gen Z. In November, it launched a collaboration with Starface, whose cult-favorite pimple patches are a staple for teens and young adults. The Snoopy stickers have already sold out on Ulta.com, Starface founder Julie Schott said in an emailed statement, adding that the brand is fielding requests for restocks.

“We know it’s a certified hit when resale on Depop and EBay starts to spike,” Schott said.

The same thing happened in 2023, when a CVS plush of Snoopy in a puffer jacket (possibly the dog’s most internet-famous iteration to date) sold out in-store and started cropping up on EBay — for more than triple the original price.

The culprits were Gen-Zers fawning over how cute cozy Snoopy was, often on social media.

Yellow and white pouches with Snoopy pimple patches.

Hannah Guy Casey, senior director of brand and marketing at Peanuts Worldwide, said in 2024, the official Snoopy TikTok account gained 1.1 million followers, and attracted 85.4 million video views and 17.6 million engagements. This year, the account has gained another 1.2 million followers, and racked up 106.5 million video views and 23.2 million engagements.

Guy Casey noted that TikTok is where the brand experiences much of its engagement among Gen Z fans.

Indeed, the platform is a hot spot for fan-created Snoopy content, from memes featuring the puffer jacket to compilations of his most relatable moments. Several Snoopy fan accounts, including one dedicated to a music-loving Snoopy plushie, boast well over half a million followers.

Caryn Iwakiri, a speech and language pathologist at Sunnyvale’s Lakewood Tech EQ Elementary School whose classroom is Snoopy-themed, recently took an impromptu trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa after seeing its welcome center decked out with Snoopy decor on TikTok. Once she arrived, she realized the museum was celebrating the “Peanuts” 75th anniversary.

Two red construction-paper doghouses with Snoopy on each roof.

It’s a familiar story for Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger.

“Last December, we were packed, and I was at the front talking to people, and I just randomly asked this group, ‘Why are you here?’”

It turned out that the friends had traveled from Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas to meet in Santa Rosa and visit the museum after seeing it on TikTok.

According to Stephanie King, marketing director at the Schulz Museum, the establishment is experiencing its highest-ever admissions since opening in 2002. In the 2024–2025 season, the museum increased its attendance by nearly 45% from the previous year.

Huntsinger said she’s enjoyed watching young visitors experience the museum in new ways.

In the museum’s education room, where visitors typically trace characters from the original Schulz comics or fill out “Peanuts” coloring pages, Gen Z museumgoers are sketching pop culture renditions of Snoopy — Snoopy as rock band Pierce the Veil, Snoopy as pop star Charli XCX.

“When our social media team puts them up [online], there’s these comments among this generation that gets this, and they’re having conversations about it,” Huntsinger said. “It’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s creative. It makes me feel like there’s hope in the world.”

A white wall with "Passport to Peanuts" art.

Laurel Roxas felt similarly when they first discovered “Peanuts” as a kid while playing the “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” video game on their PlayStation Portable. For Roxas, who is Filipino, it was Snoopy and not the “Peanuts” children who resonated most.

“Nobody was Asian. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not even in the story,’” they said.

Because Snoopy was so simply drawn, Roxas added, he was easy to project onto. They felt similarly about Hello Kitty; with little identifying features or dialogue of their own, the characters were blank canvases for their own personification.

Roxas visited Snoopy Museum Tokyo with their brother last year. They purchased so much Snoopy merchandise — “everything I could get my hands on” — that they had to buy additional luggage to bring it home.

For some Snoopy enthusiasts, the high volume of Snoopy products borders on oversaturation, threatening to cheapen the spirit of the character.

Growing up, Bella Shingledecker loved the holiday season because it meant that the “Peanuts” animated specials would be back on the air. It was that sense of impermanence, she believes, that made the films special.

Now, when she sees stacks of Snoopy cookie jars or other trend-driven products at big-box stores like T.J. Maxx, it strikes her as a bit sad.

“It just feels very unwanted,” she said. For those who buy such objects, she said she can’t help but wonder, “Will this pass your aesthetic test next year?”

Lina Jeong, for one, isn’t worried that Snoopy’s star will fade.

Jeong’s affinity for the whimsical beagle was passed down to her from her parents, who furnished their home with commemorative “Peanuts” coffee table books. But she fell in love with Snoopy the first time she saw “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” which she rewatches every Valentine’s Day.

This past year, she was fresh out of a relationship when the holiday rolled around and she found herself tearing up during scenes of Snoopy making Valentine’s crafts for his friends.

“Maybe I was hyper-emotional from everything that had happened, but I remember being so struck,” that the special celebrated platonic love over romantic love, Jeong said.

It was a great comfort to her at the time, she said, and she knows many others have felt that same solace from “Peanuts” media — especially from its dear dog.

“Snoopy is such a cultural pillar that I feel like fads can’t just wash it off,” she said.

Soon, she added, she plans to move those “Peanuts” coffee table books into her own apartment in L.A.

Business

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Published

20 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Waymo is taking the city of Santa Monica to court after the city ordered the company to cease charging its autonomous vehicles at two facilities overnight, claiming the lights and beeping at the lots were a nuisance to residents.

The two charging stations at the intersection of Euclid Street and Broadway have been a sour point for neighbors since they began operating roughly a year ago. Some residents have told The Times they’ve been unable to sleep because of the incessant beeping from Waymos maneuvering in and out of charging spots on the lot 24 hours a day.

Last month, the city ordered Waymo and the company that operates the charging stations, Voltera, to stop overnight operations at the sites, arguing that the light, noise and activity there constitute a public nuisance. Instead of complying, Waymo has turned around and filed a suit against the city, asking the court to intervene.

“Waymo’s activities at the Broadway Facilities do not constitute a public nuisance,” the company argued in its complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Waymo faces imminent and irreparable harm to its operations, employees, and customers.”

A spokesperson for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the suit, the city was aware that the Voltera charging facilities were to operate and maintain a commercial electric vehicle fleet 24 hours a day, and the city approved its use when it approved the permits for the stations.

The rift between the company and some Santa Monica residents began as soon as the vehicles began utilizing the 24-hour charging stations, which have overnight staffing, lights and cars beeping as they reverse in and out of parking spots. Tensions got so bad that some residents took to blocking the path of the driverless vehicles, blocking the driveways into the charging stations, and placing orange cones in the area to hinder their routes and create backups, a practice several have called “stacking the Waymos.”

Meanwhile, employees at the charging stations have called police several times as a result, although no arrests have been made. Waymo also unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a temporary restraining order against one resident who had allegedly repeatedly blocked the vehicles.

On Nov. 19, the city ordered Waymo to stop charging its autonomous cars at the two lots overnight or face the possibility of legal action. Waymo declined and instead sued the city last week after negotiations with the city on mitigation measures to the lots fell apart.

According to the lawsuit, Waymo and Voltera representatives reached out to the city after the Nov. 19 order, looking for ways to mitigate the noise and lights from the lots, including initiating a software update that would change the vehicles’ path to the charging stations. But after a meeting on Dec. 15 with the city, no agreement was reached, the company said in its complaint.

“We are disappointed that the City has chosen an adversarial path over a collaborative one,” a spokesperson for Waymo said in a statement.

“The City’s position has been to insist that no actions taken or proposed by Waymo would satisfy the complaining neighbors and therefore must be deemed insufficient.”

The company also blasted the city’s handling of the dispute, arguing that despite facing a budget crisis, city officials have adopted a contentious strategy against business.

“The City of Santa Monica’s recent actions are inconsistent with its stated goal of attracting investment,” the company said in a statement. “At a time when the City faces a serious fiscal crisis, officials are choosing to obstruct properly permitted investment rather than fostering a ‘ready for business’ environment.”

The lawsuit is just the latest legal battle for the Alphabet-owned company, which has been rapidly expanding across California, making the white, driverless vehicles more commonplace.

Two years ago, the company was sued by the city of San Francisco, which argued that the California Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t have handed Waymo permits to expand and operate in the city, and that the regulatory agency had abdicated its responsibilities.

The California 1st District Court of Appeal disagreed, and ruled against the city.

This past June, Waymo announced it would expand its service area to 120 square miles in Los Angeles County, with Waymos operating in Playa del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Hollywood.

In November the company launched its ride-hailing service to now operate across Los Angeles County freeways, as well as in the San Francisco Bay and Phoenix.

Since it launched in Santa Monica, the company argues it has done more than a million trips in the city and in November alone, recorded more than 50,000 rides starting or ending there.

“The [charging] site has enabled Waymo to provide a safe, sustainable and accessible transportation option to city residents,” Waymo said in the statement.

Business

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Published

1 day ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

new video loaded: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Our reporter, Emily Steel, found that in many states, Uber’s guidelines allow people with serious criminal convictions to drive, as long as those convictions are more than seven years old. Some of those drivers have gone on to sexually assault or harass passengers.

By Emily Steel, Christina Shaman, Zach Caldwell, David Jouppi and Thomas Trudeau

December 22, 2025