What are these other polls? Because looking into it, they all seem to have the same issues.
Like, for example,trying to look into it, this article cites a lot of these other polls:
http://observer.com/2017/07/bernie-sanders-most-popular-politician/
I'm going with this Observer piece as a launch-point because most of the other results when googling "Sanders most popular politician" just ends up citing one or a few of these and that seems to be the most complete compilation of these polls. So it seems like a good place to dig into these polls.
However, upon doing so, they all have some flaw or another:
The cited Morning Consult poll:
https://morningconsult.com/july-2017-senator-rankings/
Problem? Only about current Senators. Unlike the title of the article, it has nothing to do with being the most popular politician period. And they even mention this when they cite it!
So surely the other stuff they cite actually does prove that he's the most popular politician in the country?
Well, the next thing they cite is a Fox News Poll:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2017/03/15/fox-news-poll-315.html
On Page 4, you can see that the options for politicians in the poll were:
Bernie Sanders
Mike Pence
Donald Trump
Elizabeth Warren
Paul Ryan
Nancy Pelosi
Chuck Schumer
Mitch McConnell
Again, just like the poll in the OP, just a random handful of names with big ones like Obama, Biden, Bill Clinton, and the like left off.
The next one they cite? This:
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaig...nders-countrys-most-popular-active-politician
However, as the
PolitiFact article they cite next explains, this too has the same problem and only asked about particular candidates, in this case asking about:
Sanders
Pence
Trump
Clinton
Warren
Ryan
Pelosi
Schumer
McConnell
Among a few other members of the Trump administration/appointees like Kellyanne Conway, Kushner, and Gorsuch. Speaking on that, PolitiFact also includes this tidbit about the Harvard-Harris Poll:
Speaking of the PolitiFact article, that's the last thing the Observer piece cites in regards to this:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin...e-losing-nomination-hillary-clinton-bernie-s/
However, it just cites the exact same polls. There is only one additional thing the PolitiFact article mentions, which is this, and it's
quite interesting:
Of course, that's just from Huffington Post. That's only one source, but it's the only one that includes both Obama and Sanders so it's all the info I have on that. And as they note:
However, being the "most popular politician" and the "most popular
active politician" are two entirely different things and saying one when you mean the other is incredibly misleading, especially when most of these polls articles are asking about the
latter but then going on to claim the
former.
So unless there are other polls I've missed saying he's the most popular politician in the country seems to need a huge asterisk around it. Unless there is other info I've missed that says otherwise? I'd love to see it in that case as the vast bulk seems to have very similar flaws and it would be great to see more that don't.