The Trump campaign brushed off a new Fox News poll showing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of President Trump in key swing states.
The poll shows Biden with a comfortable lead over Trump in Arizona, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, all three being states that could be critical to securing a victory in the election that is just two months away.
“Listen, I love Fox,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said Thursday on Fox & Friends. “I love Fox News. I love you guys. I don’t love your polls.”
Stepien added that he believed the methodology of how the poll was conducted was misleading, especially given Biden’s upcoming travel schedule to make appearances in states he is supposedly leading.
“Twenty-eight percent of those who voted in 2016 were Democrats. The Arizona poll that you are citing includes 48% Democrats,” Stepien said. “The methodology is little askew. Look, here is the fact. If Joe Biden was actually winning by 9 points in Arizona, he wouldn’t be visiting Arizona later next week.”
Trump also tweeted on Thursday about Fox News polls calling them “fake news.”
“.@FoxNews Polls are, as in the past, Fake News,” he said. “They have been from the beginning, way off in 2016. Get a new pollster. I believe we are leading BIG!”
.@FoxNews Polls are, as in the past, Fake News. They have been from the beginning, way off in 2016. Get a new pollster. I believe we are leading BIG!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2020
The Washington Examiner reached out to Fox News for comment.
Fox News has contested criticism of its polling methods from the Trump campaign in the past, including when the president has weighed in on the credibility of the polls.
During his impeachment trial, Trump questioned the accuracy of Fox News polls after one showed the majority of respondents were in favor of his impeachment.
Dana Blanton, Fox News’s vice president of public opinion research, said in a statement at the time that Fox stood by its poll, which used randomly chosen registered voters to reach its conclusions. The same two firms helped conduct that poll.
“Our polling unit has long been held in high regard for being a nonpartisan source of research,” Blanton said. “Under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R), the latest FNC poll included interviews with randomly chosen registered voters and — as is our standard practice — we reported the partisan distribution we found among the electorate. Braun Research is solely our data collection partner. We stand by our latest poll.”
In a profile of the Fox polling unit by the Los Angeles Times, veteran pollsters backed Fox on its ability to conduct polling without a partisan slant.
“They are just honest numbers,” said Joel Benenson, a veteran Democratic pollster and the CEO of Benenson Strategy Group in New York. “Trump doesn’t like them because they are honest numbers and they are horrible for him.”
The most recent Fox poll, which Stepien criticized, was conducted between Aug. 29 and Sept. 1 under the joint direction of the Democratic-leaning Beacon Research and Republican-leaning Shaw & Company. The surveys interviewed 772 likely Arizona voters, 722 likely North Carolina voters, and 801 likely Wisconsin voters, who were randomly selected from statewide voter files and spoke with live interviewers on landlines and cellphones.
The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the total sample of likely voters in all three states. Arizona respondents were eligible to conduct the interview in English or Spanish.
The poll also found the level of interest in the election remains around the same level for Biden and Trump supporters, and most voters plan to cast ballots by mail. In each state, Democrats planned to vote by mail at a higher rate than Republicans.
The surveys for the first time also included the names of the vice presidential candidates and the Libertarian and Green Party candidates if they will be on a state’s official ballot.
