The purveyors of fake news at CNN are convinced, just as they were four years ago, that they have this presidential election in the bag. Donald Trump is done, and Joe Biden is headed for a landslide, just like Hillary Clinton was.
At this point, they have zero credibility left.
As before, CNN’s confidence is severely misplaced — and we’re going to prove it. The best evidence they can present are polls that suffer from exactly the same flaws as the ones that indicated a landslide victory for Clinton in 2016.
To the delight of liberals everywhere, the Atlanta-based hub of fake news recently put out a poll showing Biden with a 14-point lead in the race, with 55% of the vote to Trump’s 41%, a larger share than any presidential candidate has received in an actual election since Ronald Reagan garnered 58.8% in his 1984 shellacking of Walter Mondale.
Before they start celebrating, though, Democrats should recall the old adage about things that seem too good to be true. President Trump hired the renowned and respected polling firm John McLaughlin and Associates to analyze the methodology that produced those dubious results, and its assessment was devastating.
CNN’s latest wonder is a poll of all adult voters, with no effort made to sort out which people are likely, or even registered, to vote. This method of polling consistently undercounts Republican turnout, as more-reputable polling outfits have long understood, and as CNN should have learned from 2016.
As a result of this lazy (and cost-saving) methodology, more than 10% of the respondents in CNN’s poll are not even registered to vote in November.
There’s even a strong indication of pro-Biden skew in the numbers themselves. Only 37% of registered voters who told CNN they were more likely to vote for Biden said they were actually voting for Biden, as opposed to against Trump. That’s a dire figure. For comparison, polls consistently showed that about three-quarters of Barack Obama’s voters were “for” him rather than “against” his opponent.
People are simply not enthusiastic about Biden. Shoot, even Biden doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about Biden most of the time. They are, however, extremely enthusiastic about President Trump — even in the supposedly “devastating” CNN poll, about 70% of those who say they will vote for Trump say they’re voting for him, not against Biden.
At the Trump campaign, we don’t need CNN to tell us about that enthusiasm because we get to experience it every single day. Even amid the coronavirus pandemic that has blocked off most of the traditional fundraising methods and radically reshaped political campaigning, we are continually setting new records for fundraising. Meanwhile, the president continues to maintain equally historic and consistent support within the Republican Party, polling at 96% within the GOP. The enthusiasm is there. We can prove it, and the exact opposite is true for Sleepy Joe.
That discrepancy goes a long way toward explaining why shoddy polls such as this CNN monstrosity are so relentlessly promoted in the media. Big landslide polls of this sort are intended to become self-fulfilling prophecies by dampening enthusiasm on the “losing” side and pumping up the “winning” side’s base.
What CNN doesn’t seem to have realized, though, is that the country has caught on to that trick and is more skeptical than ever before of eye-popping poll results that seem to defy common sense. CNN’s credibility is shot, and blatantly manipulative polls only serve to make the public even more acutely aware of the outlet’s bias.
Brad Parscale is the campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.
