Now that he's lost his lead, Donald Trump is questioning the accuracy of polls
Donald Trump seems to be a fair-weather fan of presidential polls. When the polls had him leading the GOP pack, he pointed to them as evidence of his credibility. But now that he's lost his lead to Ben Carson in Iowa and is also falling behind the retired neurosurgeon nationally, Trump is beginning to question the polls' legitimacy.
While Trump says that he "generally believe[s] in polls" — adding that he took a class in polling back in college — he says that he just doesn't "quite get" these new polls.
"Well, I think you have to understand polls," Trump said on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday. "The thing with these polls, they're all so different. They are coming from all over the lot where one guy is up here, somebody else is up there, you see swings of 10 and 12 points and immediately even the same day. So right now it's not very scientific."
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Just last week, Trump was singing the polls' praises — scientific or not:
On the same day Trump changed his assessment of the polls, a New York Times/CBS News poll was released that put Carson at 26 percent and Trump at 22 percent.
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