Poll expert uses only facts to disprove Biden campaign's narrative about his abysmal polling: 'Does not hold any water'

CNN data expert Harry Enten has dismantled one of the Biden campaign's top narratives about election polls.

For almost the entirety of the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump has maintained a narrow lead over President Joe Biden in general election polls. The president's campaign has tried to explain away the polls by claiming they underestimate Biden's support and thus cannot be trusted.

'... you have to go all the way back to the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, to find a Republican ahead at this point. Twenty-four years!'

"Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden," the Biden campaign claimed earlier this year.

On Monday, Enten faced that narrative head-on and used data to prove that, in fact, the opposite is true.

The data that Enten cited showed that, at this time in the 2020 election cycle, Biden had a nine-point advantage over Trump. But when the votes were counted on Election Day, Biden won the national vote by a much smaller margin than polls had predicted, indicating that Trump's support had been significantly underestimated.

"The idea that the polls underestimated Joe Biden last time around, simply put, does not hold any water," Enten said.

The principle of polls under-sampling Trump support is not a phenomenon limited to the 2020 election, according to Enten.

"Last time around, Donald Trump actually did better in the results than his July polls by five points. You go back to 2016, you see something very similar. That is the July polls actually underestimated Donald Trump. He outperformed his July polls," he said.

"So the idea in the Trump era that the polls have underestimated Democrats — whether it be in a Joe Biden matchup, whether it be a matchup against Hillary Clinton, whether it be in the midterms ... simply put, is not true," he explained.

Not only is the Biden campaign's narrative not true, but Trump is accomplishing something unusual.

The fact that Trump is leading his Democratic opponent indicates his strength, according to Enten, because it has been a quarter-century since a Republican presidential candidate led a Democrat in July.

"Go all the way back: Who led in early July polls? Well, right now, Donald Trump is ahead. Go back in 2020, a Democrat, Biden. In 2016, Hillary Clinton, a Democrat — 2008, 2012, a Democrat. Even in 2004, where George W. Bush ended up winning, John Kerry was actually ahead in the polls at this point," Enten explained. "You have to go all the way back to 2000 to George W. Bush being ahead in the early July polls — you have to go all the way back to the end of the 20th century, beginning of the 21st century, to find a Republican ahead at this point. Twenty-four years!"

Despite his bad polling and a growing number of Democrats calling on him to drop out of the presidential race, Biden vowed Monday that he will not step aside.

"I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Trump," Biden told congressional Democrats in a letter.

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