Facing sinking poll numbers in several battleground states and allegations of sexual misconduct, Donald Trump on Monday claimed that a major “undercurrent” of closeted supporters will carry him to a victory on Nov. 8.
“Those polls were great today but, you know, they’re also showing there’s like an undercurrent that they can’t poll,” Trump told a boisterous crowd in Green Bay, Wis., where several protesters were ejected from his campaign rally.
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The Republican presidential nominee was presumably referring to the latest batch of CNN/ORC battleground polls that found him edging Hillary Clinton in Ohio, and within the margin of error against her in Nevada and North Carolina. All three of states are crucial to Trump’s path to victory and most other polls released since the beginning of the month have shown him losing ground to his Democratic opponent in key battlegrounds.
“Remember when I was in the primaries? ‘How’s he doing in such and such?’ ‘Well, it looks like he won’t win that state,'” Trump said to his Badger State fans, mocking those who underestimated his support in the Republican horse race.
“Then the next day it’s like you win in a landslide. It’s like, ‘what happened?'” he recalled. “I guess people don’t want to say they’re voting for Trump, which is OK.”
“We’ll take it any way we get it, do you agree?” he said to cheers. “But there’s a big, big undercurrent out there.”
Trump has long referred to his core supporters as the “silent majority,” but it wasn’t until recently that he began to argue that an unexpected share of the electorate could win him the presidency. Last week, he described the current election as “Brexit all over again,” referring to the thousands of British citizens who shocked pundits across the globe earlier this year when they voted to exit the European Union.
“[W]hen the Trump team draw parallels between the situations in Britain and the United States — the detachment many voters feel — and compare their effort to our recent referendum success, they are absolutely right,” Brexit campaign leader Nigel Farage wrote in an op-ed last week.
