Trump Now Thinks Bad Polls are ‘Election Fraud’ and Need to Be ‘Investigated’

Trump alleges a nonexistent conspiracy among pollsters – I think there’s one conspiracy theory that we can definitively disprove: The nation’s leading pollsters are not cooking the books to hurt U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump Is Pretty Mad About Recent Polls

Trump has become much less popular now than he was when he first returned to office, with voters across demographic categories losing faith in him, particularly regarding his handling of most major issues.

That’s very clear that Trump’s popularity has moved downward over his first 100 days in office.

According to the RealClearPolling average as of Monday, Trump is approved by an average of 45.3 percent, and disapproved by 52.4 percent. All of the recent polls included in the average have Trump underwater by double digits- and the picture gets even uglier for the president when one looks at the question of his handling of the economy.

Trump may have returned to office, in part, because voters had nostalgia for the parts of his first presidency that they missed. He appears to have gotten less popular in the ensuing months, thanks to voters being reminded of the parts of his presidency that they didn’t much miss.

The Polls Have Spoken

Those polls all make it very clear: voters don’t much like a lot of the things Trump is doing, starting with tariffs, and the lack of much resolution on the issue of inflation. There is a very real fear of a recession. And voters are placing the blame squarely at Trump’s feet for all of those things.

The president, naturally, sees things a bit differently.

“FAKE NEWS POLLS”

The president took to Truth Social on Monday morning and issued a blistering rant, attacking the integrity of the polling profession, specifically attacking “The Failing New York Times Poll, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll.”

These polls, per Trump, are “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” which he claims are under-sampling Trump voters.

“These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it,” Trump added. Trump, earlier this month, had publicly called on Fox’s chairman emeritus, Rupert Murdoch, to fire Fox’s pollster, presumably for not intervening to make sure the news outlet’s polls were more favorable to him.

The output produced by pollsters would appear to be unquestionably covered by the First Amendment and therefore not subject to charges of election fraud.

What Polling Is

Trump appears to lack an understanding of what polling is, why it exists, and what it’s for.

Polls exist to measure public opinion accurately. A Pollster’s greatest obligation is to accuracy, or at least the closest thing they can manage to it. It’s not an exact science, which is why polls have margins for error. However, pollsters’ standing and reputations rest on their accuracy.

Therefore, it wouldn’t help pollsters in any way to lie and say Trump is less popular than he is —and it is also inexplicable why all the pollsters would show Trump’s popularity declining after finding it higher months ago.

The Selzer Suit

This was demonstrated when Trump, last December, sued pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, after Selzer published a poll shortly before last November’s election that showed Kamala Harris ahead of Trump in Iowa. The poll ended up being very wrong, with Trump winning that state comfortably. Trump sued Selzer and the newspaper under the  Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.

However, the person in the world who feels the worst about that Iowa poll is almost certainly J. Ann Selzer herself, who, over the years, had earned perhaps the most sterling reputation of any pollster in the country, and suffered a hit to that reputation by getting the 2024 call wrong.

That’s virtually no chance that she would tank a poll purposely just to hurt one of the candidates, especially since Selzer has shown no penchant for doing anything like that for her entire decades-long career, and no reason to think her releasing of such a poll would help either candidate.

Similarly, there’s no reason the pollsters are doing anything like that either, with their releases of Trump’s 100th-day approval ratings.

About the Author: Stephen Silver

Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter