Donald Trump’s ‘Favorite’ Pollster Now Shows Him Trailing Joe Biden By 12 Points
Donald Trump isn’t getting much help from the pollster long identified as his “favorite” for friendly numbers.
A new poll from pollster Scott Rasmussen, identified by The Independent as a “favorite” for Trump for how often the president has touted the poll’s Republican-leaning findings, shows that he is trailing presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden by 12 points nationally. A recent poll conducted by Rasmussen for the website Just the News found that Biden has the support of 48 percent of voters nationwide, while just 36 percent backed the president.
As The Independent noted, it was considered a worrying sign for a sitting president to register below 40 percent support, especially as Biden neared the 50-percent mark that Hillary Clinton was not able to reach in the majority of polling against Trump in 2016, even as she led in polling for most of the race.
Other polls have shown Biden widening his lead against Trump as the president faces mounting criticism for his handling of the coronavirus and reaction to the nationwide protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
As The Inquisitr reported, Trump has pushed back against some unfavorable polls in recent weeks. Earlier this month, his campaign sent a letter to CNN demanding the network to retract a poll it had conducted showing him 14 points behind Biden, claiming that the poll had no merit.
“It’s a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President,” a cease-and-desist letter from the Trump campaign read.
CNN responded to the poll, claiming that the Trump campaign had made a number of misleading and false claims in its letter and that the demand to retract the poll was “immediately rejected by the network.”
“To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media,” the response read.
Trump has been in trouble in a series of state-specific polls as well, showing Biden growing his lead in a series of key states including Michigan and Florida. It is not clear how the effect of the coronavirus could have on polling, as it has forced both Biden and Trump to shut down their in-person campaigning, but Trump is set to resume this week. His campaign has scheduled a rally for Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 20, the first event the president has held since early March.
