Last night I happily tore apart the Fox News Alabama poll which risibly placed Democrat candidate Doug Jones at level pegging with conservative Judge Roy Moore.

From the random digit dialling, the tiny sample size, as well as the partisan nature of the pollsters, it should be clear to anyone with half a brain how poor this data is. It’s actually an insult to the Fox News audience that the network would continue to hold this up as reliable.

But wait, there’s more.

As advisor to the Great America Alliance Andy Surabian pointed out late last night, to believe this poll would be to believe that President Trump only has a +1 favorability rating in Alabama.

If you believe the Fox News #ALSEN poll, then you have to buy that Trump is only at a +1 fav in ALABAMA. #FakeNewshttps://t.co/oP0T4OG4MP pic.twitter.com/qFyuiHSaJS — Andrew Surabian (@Surabees) October 18, 2017

Do you see what’s wrong with that, and what it says about the data behind the poll?

According to the pollsters, Shaw & Company (R) and Anderson Robbins (D), the Democratic Party is as popular as President Trump in the solidly red state. I know no better response to such nonsense than: LOL.

I said yesterday how these pollsters were just establishment shills, servicing the Bush administration, working with Lindsay Graham supporters, and even assisting John Kerry.

But wait, there’s more.

Daron Shaw — behind the Shaw & Company organisation that Fox News almost exclusively uses in partnership with Anderson Robbins — is actually an old pal of Karl Rove.

That’s the same Karl Rove who declared “Good Riddance to Steve Bannon” back in August, and who more recently declared Bannon’s plans to primary pseudo-conservative Republicans “insane“.

Rove describes his relationship with Shaw in his book Courage and Consequence, and numerous other tomes from the 2000s have reflected upon Shaw’s use for the Republican establishment.

In other words, Shaw has a vested interest in proving Rove right and Bannon wrong. If the GOP establishment fails to scupper the hopes of the MAGA base, it effectively leaves them penniless, as donors to groups like the Senate Leadership Fund start questioning where their money goes, and why they should give in the first instance. That, since Alabama’s primary, has already been happening.

As my friend Ned Ryun writes in his piece in The Hill today:

To step back from all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, the fact is that Steve Bannon’s work is protecting the GOP majorities and — dare I say — holding the Republican party true to the values it has proclaimed in the past. To continue down this path of intentional inability, failing utterly and completely to govern by the principles espoused on the campaign trail, is to virtually guarantee failure and losses in 2018. It cannot continue: you can either save the majorities in Congress or inept leadership. You cannot save both. Donald Trump’s election was a near miss that spared us a Clinton presidency, which would have edified and advanced everything done in the Obama era. So perhaps, spurred by fear and desire for self-preservation, maybe, just maybe, the Republicans in D.C. might just muster up the two ounces of courage needed to pass items that many Americans agree with.

Raheem Kassam is the editor in chief of Breitbart London