Trump campaign official blames Biden lead on ‘skewed’ polls

President Trump’s campaign is calling into question public opinion surveys that show Democratic nominee Joe Biden with a big lead heading into the final weeks before Election Day, accusing pollsters of hiding their methodologies in an effort to make it seem like the president is headed for a big defeat. 

Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Trump campaign senior adviser Corey Lewandowski said a campaign analysis found that nearly two-thirds of polls released in recent weeks did not provide partisan make-up or crosstabs giving insight into how the polls were conducted. 

“This is how some pollsters are skewing the results,” Lewandowski said. “They don’t want their polls to face scrutiny, so they won’t give us the crosstabs or the partisan makeup of the polls, thereby skewing the results.”

Lewandowski said the Trump campaign’s internal polls show a far different race than the one reflected in public polls.

“The enthusiasm in the states are very real,” Lewandowski said.

“Couple that with the endorsements this president is receiving from the law enforcement community, and the increase in the African American vote he’s going to receive this cycle, compared to where he was just four years ago, and it’s becoming mathematically almost impossible for Joe Biden to win this campaign.”

The Trump campaign has often called back to 2016, when few experts gave Trump a shot at winning the White House. They say this is evidence of a media blindspot when it comes to analyzing the polls.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton led in most polls of the battleground states heading into Election Day. There were hardly any polls showing Trump ahead of Clinton in Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, which he narrowly won. The FiveThirtyEight model gave Trump only about a 30 percent chance of winning, while other models gave him a far lesser chance.

But Biden’s lead, nationally and in a number of key battleground states, eclipses Clinton’s.

Biden leads Trump by 10.6 points nationally in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, more than double Clinton’s advantage at this point in the race. Clinton entered Election Day ahead by 3.2 points nationally. At the moment, the FiveThirtyEight model gives Trump about a 15 percent chance of winning, although that could change with just over three weeks to go before the election.

Biden has also been growing his lead in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania and the race looks like a toss-up in several other states that Trump won easily, including Iowa, Ohio, Georgia and Texas.

Biden is viewed far more favorably than Clinton was. In 2016, independents, seniors, suburban voters and voters who disliked both candidates all broke late for Trump. In 2020, polls show those groups breaking heavily for Biden.

The Trump campaign says it has a superior ground game than the Biden campaign and says it has been registering scores of new Republican voters in the battleground states.

“Voter registration trends are not being caught by pollsters right now,” said Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien. “Whatever poling we see existing now in states voter registration trends are simply not being reflected.”