CNN data expert Harry Enten dismantled one of the Biden campaign’s key claims about election polling.
For almost the entire 2024 election campaign, Donald Trump has maintained a slim lead over President Joe Biden. In the general election pollsThe president’s campaign has tried to deflect by arguing that the polls underestimate Biden’s support and cannot be trusted.
“…You have to go back to the late 20th and early 21st centuries to find an example of Republicans in the lead at this point. 24 years!”
“Polls continue to be inconsistent with how Americans vote, consistently overrating Donald Trump and underrating President Biden,” the Biden campaign said. Claimed Earlier this year.
On Monday, Enten addressed that narrative head-on, using data to show that, in fact, The opposite is true.
At this point in the 2020 election cycle, Biden held a nine-point lead over Trump, according to data cited by Enten. But once votes were counted on Election Day, Biden won the national vote by a much smaller margin than polls had predicted, suggesting that Trump’s support had been grossly underestimated.
“The idea that Joe Biden was underestimated in the last poll is, simply put, baseless,” Enten said.
The principle of polls having an insufficient sample size in favor of Trump is not a phenomenon unique to the 2020 election, Enten said.
“Last time, Donald Trump did five points better than the July polls. If you look back at 2016, you see a very similar situation, where the July polls actually underestimated Donald Trump. Trump outperformed the July polls,” he said.
“So the Trump-era idea that polls are underestimating Democrats, whether it’s run-ups against Joe Biden or run-ups against Hillary Clinton or the midterm elections, is simply not true,” he explained.
Not only are the Biden campaign’s claims untrue, Trump has also accomplished something extraordinary.
Enten said Trump’s lead over his Democratic opponents is a sign of his strength, because it marks the first time in 25 years that a Republican presidential candidate has led a Democrat in July.
“Go back a long way and see who was leading in the polls in early July? Right now, Donald Trump is leading. If you look back in 2020, it was Democrat Biden. In 2016, it was Democrat Hillary Clinton. In 2008, 2012, Democrats. Even in 2004, when George W. Bush won, John Kerry was leading in the polls at this point,” Enten explained. “You have to go all the way back to 2000, when George W. Bush was leading in the polls in early July. You have to go all the way back to the late 20th century, early 21st century for a Republican to have been leading at this point! That’s 24 years!”
Despite his sagging poll numbers and a growing number of Democrats calling for him to drop out of the presidential race, Biden vowed Monday that he would not step down.
“I want you to know that despite media and other speculation, I remain in this campaign, fight to the end, and am firmly committed to defeating Mr. Trump,” Biden said in a letter to Democratic lawmakers.
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