Trump campaign demands CNN apologize for poll that shows Biden leading

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tony Stark, Jun 10, 2020.

  1. Tony Stark

    Tony Stark

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/politics/trump-campaign-cnn-poll/index.html


    Trump campaign demands CNN apologize for poll that shows Biden leading

    By Veronica Stracqualursi and Harry Enten, CNN

    Updated 1:43 PM ET, Wed June 10, 2020

    Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump's campaign is demanding CNN retract and apologize for a recent poll that showed him well behind presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

    The demand, coming in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker, was immediately rejected by the network.

    "We stand by our poll," said Matt Dornic, a CNN spokesman.

    The CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released on Monday shows Trump trailing the former vice president by 14 points, 55%-41%, among registered voters. It also finds the President's approval rating at 38% -- his worst mark since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for one-term Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years -- and his disapproval rating at 57%.

    Soon after the poll was released, Trump tweeted that he had hired Republican pollster McLaughlin & Associates to "analyze" the CNN poll and others, "which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving." McLaughlin ranks as one of the least accurate pollsters in the industry, as measured by FiveThirtyEight.

    Several other polls released over the past few weeks -- including polls by ABC News/Washington Post, Monmouth University, NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist College, NBC News/Wall Street Journal, Quinnipiac University and Fox News -- also show Biden well ahead of Trump. These polls, averaged with the CNN poll, find Biden up by double digits, a result well outside any margin of error.

    In the letter to Zucker, the Trump campaign argued that the CNN poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."

    "It's a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President," read the letter, signed by the Trump campaign's senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis and chief operating officer Michael Glassner.

    The campaign formally requested that CNN retract the poll and publish a "full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions."

    The letter, which heavily cites findings by McLaughlin, makes several incorrect and misleading claims.

    "It's a poll of 1,259 adults -- not even registered voters, let alone likely voters," the letter says, citing a McLaughlin memo from earlier this week.

    While it's accurate that 1,259 adults were reached on landlines or cell phones by a live interviewer for the survey, the 14-point margin by which Trump is trailing Biden came from a question posed only to 1,125 registered voters. It's typical for polling to sample registered voters rather than likely ones at this stage of the race, as it's difficult to project whether voters will participate in an election that is five months away. CNN, as do most public pollsters, typically reports results from likely voters around Labor Day.

    It should be noted that in CNN's poll, Biden expands his lead among those who are most (i.e. extremely) enthusiastic to vote.

    McLaughlin says CNN's survey is a "skewed anti-Trump poll of only 25% Republican." That percentage of respondents, however, is consistent with several other major polls that use live telephone interviews, which provide the most reliable snapshot of the race. McLaughlin this week argued that pollsters should include a third of Republicans in surveys to reflect the 33% that they represented in the 2016 vote, but exit polls nearly always have higher shares of partisans and lower shares of independents than pre-election phone polls.

    Among the entire sample, 32% identified themselves in CNN's poll as Democrats, 25% identified themselves as Republicans, and 44% described themselves as independents or belonging to another party. Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. It is 3.6 points among registered voters.

    The letter to Zucker also includes McLaughlin's criticism that the poll, conducted between June 2 and 5, was taken "before the great economic news," an improvement in the jobless rate that was released on Friday, even though the poll was still being conducted throughout that day.

    And the survey comes amid an especially turbulent time in Trump's presidency, including the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, outrage and concern over race relations in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of police officers, and the US officially entering a recession.

    McLaughlin has also argued that the poll unfairly includes "questions on issues including race relations, not job creation, which could have biased the poll further," though CNN's survey does ask registered voters who would better handle the economy (Trump leads 51% to Biden's 46%) and was conducted at the height of the Floyd protests.

    Trump has regularly chafed at polls that do not reflect favorably on him while promoting ones that do. Last month, Trump bashed Fox News, a network he often touts and gives interviews to, for a telephone-conducted poll that showed him behind Biden by 8 points, and instead pointed to a CNN poll released earlier in the month where he was leading Biden in battleground states. That CNN poll, however, showed Biden had a 5-point lead over Trump among registered voters nationwide.

    "Why doesn't @FoxNews put up the CNBC POLL or the (believe it or not!) @CNN Poll? Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!" Trump tweeted at the time, referring to the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes.

    Trump has also credited CNN's polling when it has suited him, as he did in December 2015 when he thanked several on-air reporters for their "very professional reporting of the new CNN Poll" that showed him ahead in the Iowa caucuses.
     
  2. Tony Stark

    Tony Stark

  3. Tsing Tao

    Tsing Tao

    First, saying a pollster is ranked poorly by FiveThirtyEight (who was so wrong in the last election) means nothing.

    That being said, the fact that Trump is so concerned about a CNN poll that shows him losing is just the latest example of a megalomaniac President man-child who should be focusing on real world problems rather than treating every day as if it were an episode of his horrible "The Apprentice" TV show.

    It reads "clown" all over the place and is why I am sick to death of him.
     
  4. Cuddles

    Cuddles

    Authoritarians gonna authoritate
     
  5. Trump's attempt to win over blacks . . . . . this happens once every four years with Democrats , they keep saying.
    Stephen Miller wrote it.


    A Trump speech on race will try to get black people to stop making demands and absolve white people of guilt

    [​IMG]

    Recently it was reported that Stephen Miller would be writing an upcoming speech for President Trump on race relations. While it’s not known if the speech will actually happen, the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman speculated about how such a speech might play out.

    “What exactly would Trump have to say on the subject of race at this moment in our history? The president is often called upon to help the country make sense of crises. But could he do anything other than make things worse?” Waldman asks.

    According to Waldman, Trump sees himself as a “generous ruler bestowing his largesse upon supplicant blacks,” mostly because of the low unemployment rate he inherited from former President Barack Obama — giving Trump an excuse to say that he “has done more for the Black Community than any President since Abraham Lincoln.”

    Ultimately, Waldman writes, a major theme of a Trump speech on race would be self-praise.

    “Trump might discuss America’s history, but in doing so he’d tell a very particular story, one favored by conservatives,” Waldman writes. “In that story, racism is largely a thing of the past — a problem that has been solved save for the lingering ill will of a few reprobates.”

    “What Trump certainly would not do is ask Americans to think less about individuals and more about structures — about the fact that racism resides within systems of discrimination and oppression, systems that white people continually benefit from and that don’t depend on any particular person with power having a Klan hood hidden away in their closet,” he continues.

    Read the full op-ed over at The Washington Post.
     
    Frederick Foresight likes this.
  6. Cuddles

    Cuddles

    Will try to pit Black against "illegals"
     
  7. Go to Costco and load up on popcorn because Trump is entering whiny bitch territory and the Dems have yet to unleash their full moan attacks...

    dis gonna be gud!


    [​IMG]
     
    Frederick Foresight and userque like this.
  8. Bugenhagen

    Bugenhagen

    If Steve Miller writes is I expect Donny will be wearing black face. Miller of course famous for his use of white face.

    IMG_20200610_184138.jpg
     
    Frederick Foresight and Ricter like this.