Poll Shows Joe Biden And Donald Trump Tied, Pollster Says There Are Many ‘Shy’ Trump Voters
A poll released this week showed Donald Trump and Joe Biden tied in the upcoming presidential race, and the pollster behind it believes there are a significant number of “shy” Trump voters who aren’t showing up in other traditional polling.
The Democracy Institute/Sunday Express poll released on Tuesday showed that Trump and Biden were tied at 47 percent apiece. On Friday, Patrick Basham, Democracy Institute founder and executive director, told Breitbart News that he believes there are many voters who aren’t willing to admit to pollsters that they’re planning to vote for Trump. He believes these voters aren’t being properly counted in other polls that have shown Biden ahead.
Basham said there may be a significant undercurrent of support for Trump that isn’t showing up in other polling because these voters don’t want to make their support of the president public.
“It’s exactly a bigger deal now than it was last time,” he said. “We’ve identified a ‘low burn’ reaction among Trump supporters who’ve seen public shaming of those who support the president. Ever since the May protest riots many Trump supporters are simply unwilling to face the risk and public ridicule of telling even an anonymous person on the phone they plan on voting for the president.”
Basham added that his firm pressed down on the initially undecided voters, asking additional questions that led many to break for Trump.
Basham also noted that his firm released a poll in 2016 showing Trump winning in the Electoral College and tied with Hillary Clinton in the popular vote. Though Clinton ultimately took the popular vote by close to 3 million votes, few pollsters predicted Trump’s Electoral College win.
The poll comes as Biden’s support in other national polling had reached its widest point. As the polling analysis site, FiveThirtyEight noted, Biden’s lead had grown so large that it was “verging on a landslide.”
“That’s not a word we use lightly,” the report noted.
The report added that Trump’s poor marks for his reaction to the protests that followed George Floyd’s killing and his handling of coronavirus helped lead to a surge for Biden. The report noted that the former vice president’s lead has between 8.9 and 9.6 percentage points and has remained there since mid-June after spending months with a lead generally no larger than 6 points.
Some individual polls have reported Biden’s lead as even larger, including some that show him with a double-digit advantage over Trump.
