The number of voters who said they believe most political polls reached 41 percent in a new Hill-HarrisX survey, a record for the poll.
Roughly four in 10 voters said they “believe most political polls but not certain sources,” up from 34 percent who held that view in an October 2019 survey and 37 percent in 2018.
The share of voters who said they almost always believe political polls also went up, from 12 percent in 2018 and 11 percent in 2019 to 14 percent this year.
Voters in the latest survey were also less likely to say they almost never believe polls, at 20 percent, down slightly from 22 percent last year and comparable to the 19 percent who held that view in 2018.
A quarter of registered voters said they trust certain news sources but not most political polling results.
Among partisans, Republican voters were more than twice as likely than Democratic voters to say they almost never believe political polls reported in the media, at 27 percent and 12 percent, respectively.
The survey comes as President Trump continues to cast doubt on the validity of recent polling numbers that show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by double digits.
Earlier this month, Trump demanded a retraction of a CNN poll that showed him trailing Biden by 14 points – 55 to 41 percent – in a general election matchup.
However, a later Fox News poll showed Biden with a 12-point lead, with a Hill-HarrisX survey finding the same double-digit margin.
The Hill-HarrisX poll about voters’ views of political surveys was conducted online among 946 registered voters June 16-17. It has a margin of error of 3.16 percentage points.
—Gabriela Schulte
hilltv copyright
