President Trump on Monday dismissed a new CNN poll showing him trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 14 points in the race for the White House, saying that the network’s polling is “as Fake as their Reporting.”
In a tweet, the president said that CNN polls conducted in 2016 showed then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton leading him by similar margins. Ultimately, Trump won the race through the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by 2 points to the former secretary of State.
“CNN Polls are as Fake as their Reporting,” Trump tweeted. “Same numbers, and worse, against Crooked Hillary. The Dems would destroy America!”
The tweet came roughly an hour after CNN released a poll showing Biden gaining the support of 55 percent of registered voters surveyed, with Trump trailing by 14 points at 41 percent.
A similar poll released by the network last month showed the former vice president with a narrower 5-point lead over Trump.
Similar polls released at this point in the 2016 presidential race showed a tighter race between Trump and Clinton. A CNN-ORC survey conducted in June of that year put Clinton ahead by 5 points. The biggest lead she ever carried over Trump in a 2016 CNN-ORC poll was 13 points in early May of that year.
Polls are not always predictive of final election results, only offering a barometer of public sentiment at a given moment in time, and the presidency is not decided by the popular vote, meaning that Trump could still win a second term even if Biden captures more votes overall, as Clinton did in 2016.
Still, a growing number of polls released in recent weeks suggest that Trump’s national support has waned as his administration grapples with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, economic turbulence and widespread protests over racial injustice and police brutality.