As I wrote on Monday, the media has been replete with stories about Kamala Harris closing the gap on Donald Trump, and in many cases taking the lead over the former president. As I pointed out, Trump’s base has remained solid, begging the question: Who’s fueling Kamala’s rise in polls across the country?
READ MORE: Trump’s Base Remains Solid, So Who’s Driving Kamala Harris’ Rise in the Polls?
Prior to the start of the Democrat National Convention on Monday, “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream ran through the latest batch of battleground state polls from the New York Times/Siena College for her guest, Republican vice presidential nominee, Senator JD Vance of Ohio.
The polls showed Harris leading Trump by 5 points in Arizona and by 2 points in North Carolina. Bream also referenced two new, national surveys, from ABC News/Washington Post and CBS News, showing Harris ahead by 4 points and 3 points in the states, respectively.
Asked by Bream to comment, Vance replied:
Consistently, what you’ve seen in 2016 and 2020 is that the media uses fake polls to drive down Republican turnout and to create dissension and conflict with Republican voters. I’m telling you, every single person who’s watching this, the Trump campaign is in a very, very good spot. We’re going to win this race. We just have to run through the finish line.
An expected answer, for sure, but was Vance right? Not that the liberal lapdog media wouldn’t do exactly what Vance claimed — for exactly the reasons he suggested — but again, was he right? [Note: Vance’s interview begins at :31 on the video below.]
WATCH: @JDVance on recent polls as the 2024 presidential race remains tight. pic.twitter.com/nXUDEPt3w2
— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) August 18, 2024
In Vance’s favor, one word: Rasmussen.
Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen has been consistently accurate with his polling data. In this case, Rasmussen Reports released starkly different results the day before the New York Times/Siena College polls were released:
Someone apparently has an eye for consistently accurate polling pic.twitter.com/LUCkxkpb42
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 16, 2024
Rasmussen asked the same question on Friday in an article titled “Are the Media in the Tank for Harris?”
A majority of voters believe most news reporters are biased and expect the media to keep helping Kamala Harris against Donald Trump in their coverage of the presidential campaign.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 60% of Likely U.S. Voters believe most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win when covering a political campaign, up from the 51% who felt that way during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Twenty-eight percent percent (28%) disagree and say most try to offer unbiased coverage instead. Another 12% are not sure.
Count me among the 60 percent who believe most reporters try to help the candidate they want to win, and that applies to everyone from Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper covering Joe Biden, to Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters covering Donald Trump. To deny that observation is to deny reality.
As to ‘Fake Polls’…
As my dad would’ve said, there are more polling outfits that you can shake a stick at. Some are closely associated with specific news organizations, while others sell results to campaigns. Some are better than others in accurate sampling; others create lists of poll participants based on the results they seek.
A polling organization might claim it is surveying “likely voters,” but then include an over-sampling of voters from one party or the other. Such might qualify as “fake polls.” The most notorious “fake polls” are online participant-driven “snap polls,” which are basically garbage.
At the end of the proverbial day, the only poll that should matter will be on November 5. Meanwhile, pollsters will poll themselves silly, news outlets will dutifully cover their polls in great detail, and political writers will write themselves silly about polls that, in the big picture, matter not.
