Most presidents and other politicians accept polling is a fact of life, including polling that is sometimes negative. This is not the case with Donald Trump.
The president last year sued Ann Selzer, the well-respected pollster for the Des Moines Register, after she published a poll on the eve of the 2024 election that showed Kamala Harris ahead in Iowa. Selzer got the poll wrong, but there is no evidence that she purposely blew the poll. That lawsuit was dismissed last June.
But that doesn’t mean the president is done suing pollsters. Trump said Thursday that he plans to sue the New York Times after the publication of a New York Times/Siena University poll that showed his approval rating at 40 percent.
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Trump laid out the plans in a pair of Truth Social posts. First, he declared that “Something has to be done about Fake Polls! They are truly OUT OF CONTROL.”
“The Democrats destroyed Healthcare, I’m trying to fix it, and they give me FAKE low numbers. Fake Polls on the Economy, on the Border, on just about everything, are ridiculous and dangerous. The REAL Polls have been GREAT, but they refuse to print them. This is no different than a writer who is corrupt, of which there are many. The New York Times, and so many others, print Polls that are knowingly false. They have become deranged, and sick,” he added. “I am calling them out with the lawsuit that I have filed which is making its way through the Courts.”
In the second post, Trump declared that “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense. As an example, all of the Anti Trump Media that covered me during the 2020 Election showed Polls that were knowingly wrong. They knew what they were doing, trying to influence the Election, but I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route, and 2,750 Counties to 525.”
In fact, Trump lost the 2020 election. In 2024, most polls showed him winning, so they were in fact accurate. Polls publish their methodologies, and are almost certainly First Amendment-protected speech. And the current RealClearPolling average shows Trump underwater in every poll listed, in many cases by double digits. Even some historically right-leaning polls have him in negative territory.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
