Donald Trump has found a new conspiracy theory to explain his tanking poll numbers
Donald Trump claimed at a rally in Florida on Monday that when the polls are done "properly," he's actually in the lead. The problem, Trump explained, is that many polls are "rigged" because of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, who Trump says pushes for "oversampling Democrats." "It's called voter suppression," Trump said, "because people will say, 'Oh, gee, Trump's down.' Well, folks, we're winning."
Trump hinged his claim on an email published by WikiLeaks, in which someone in an email chain with Podesta apparently recommended "oversamples for our polling" so the campaign could "maximize what we get out of our media polling." Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall explained just how far off Trump's interpretation of the email actually is:
Moreover, Marshall pointed out there seems to be some confusion about the word "oversampling." Contrary to Trump's claim that "oversampling" skews a poll's results, the "over-sample" is actually not included in the poll's overall results; instead, over-polling a certain demographic is generally used as a way for pollsters to get "statistically significant data on that group," Marshall wrote.
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Looks like Trump might need to keep searching for evidence to explain his polling problems — or then again, he could always revisit his admission from earlier in the day that he is, in fact, "somewhat behind in the polls."
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