During the March 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, while discussing the electability of Sen. Hillary Clinton with a focus group of young voters at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, pollster Frank Luntz claimed that “Hillary Clinton would not be the first female president. Jimmy Carter was the first female president.”
Media Matters for America has previously highlighted comments Luntz made in front of focus groups he was conducting for Fox. During a March 2 edition of Fox News' America's Election HQ, Luntz falsely asserted to a focus group that Sen. Barack Obama “doesn't have foreign policy experience.” On the February 21 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, while discussing a debate between Obama and Clinton, he asked a focus group: "[H]ow many of you want them to make love to each other?"
Luntz also reportedly has a history of reprimand and censure by his peers. In 1997, the American Association for Public Opinion Research reprimanded Luntz for refusing to release documentation in support of comments he made to the media regarding his polling work on the Contract with America, according to a 2000 Salon.com article. Similarly, Washington Post polling director Richard Morin reported in 2000 that the National Council on Public Polls “censured pollster Frank Luntz for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention.”
From the March 5 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
LUNTZ: You guys -- how many of you saw Saturday Night Live? Did it humanize Hillary Clinton to you, or did it ridicule her?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think it ridiculed her at all. I think that, you know, she is who she is, and that's, you know, how she stands for, so --
LUNTZ: Do you think she's electable?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think she's very electable. You know, a lot of the hot stuff about Hillary is, you know, people -- since she's a woman running for the highest position in the world, she has to, you know, position herself in a place where she can be electable, and I think that she is. She has come out hard against a lot of issues, and as we just saw in this clip, you know, it's easy to see that she really is sincere in everything that she says.
LUNTZ: Andrew?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, but sound bites and tears or not, there's one person qualified to be the commander in chief, and that's John McCain. You know, the other candidates have this myth of experience, and McCain is the one with real experience.
LUNTZ: And by the way, Hillary Clinton would not be the first female president. Jimmy Carter was the first female president.
ALISYN CAMEROTA (co-host): Hey. All right, we have so much more with all the students from Ohio University. We'll be right back.
