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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Ignore the Polls, ‘We Are |Winning,’ Trump Says

(CN) - Despite a proliferation of polls suggesting his falling further and further behind Democrat Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump continues to insist he's going to win the presidency on Nov. 8.

In a tweet Monday morning, Trump told supporters "We are winning and the press is refusing to report it."

"Don't let them fool you," he said, citing the one poll that was favorable to him Monday the latest Rasmussen Reports poll that shows his two points ahead of Clinton nationally.

He closed by urging his supporters to "get out and vote."

He is widely expected to revisit this theme later on Monday, as he appears at rallies in St. Augustine and Tampa.

But it flies in the face of several polls that tell a far different story.

An ABC News Tracking poll released Sunday has Clinton up by 12 percent nationally, garnering the support of 50 percent of likely voters to Trump's 38 percent, Libertarian Gary Johnson's 5 percent and the Green Party Jill Stein's 2 percent.

Meanwhile, CNN's latest poll has Clinton up by nine points.

And in recent days, Trump seemed to concede that he now may be too far behind with two little time left just 15 days as of Monday to catch up.

In North Carolina last week, Trump he didn't want to think back and say to himself, "if only I had done one more North Carolina rally, maybe I would have won by 500 votes instead of losing it by 200 votes,"

"I never want to look back. I never want to say that about myself," Trump said, as rally attendees shouted their encouragement.

It's not clear what revived his hopes on Monday. Even some on his own team have conceded in public that his odds of winning have dramatically narrowed in recent days, and GOP leaders have expressed growing concern that a complete Trump collapse will jeopardize vulnerable Republicans in battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and New Hampshire, which, not so coincidentally, Clinton is visiting on Monday.

On Monday morning, a charged-up Trump told attendees at a farmers round table in Boynton Beach, Florida that the media is promoting "phony polls" to further its agenda of promoting Clinton.

On Sunday, he even suggested on a Florida television station, Miami's CBS-Four, that the First Amendment of the Constitution gives the press too much freedom.

"We're winning this race," he said. "I really believe we are winning. And we're going to win Florida."

But everywhere one turns in battleground states like Florida, the polls say otherwise.

Of the five polls focusing solely on Florida that have been released since Oct. 13, Trump trails in all of them, and in most, by 4-percent.

The same is true in North Carolina, where seven recent polls show Clinton with leads ranging from 1-point to 4-points.

In Pennsylvania, the most recent Bloomberg poll shows Clinton up by 9 points; the latest CBS News/You Gov poll has her up by 8; and the Quinnipiac University poll has her up by 6 points.

As for New Hampshire, Clinton leads by 15 points in the most recent WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll (released Oct 17), and she soundly beats him in three other polls there as well.

But Trump now appears particularly keen to try to make in-roads in Florida, where he is currently in the midst of a three-day campaign swing.

Political pundits say there is absolutely no way Trump can lose Florida and still secure the 270 electoral votes he needs to become president.

And even if he wins Florida, he still needs victories in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Nevada to have a reasonable chance of winning.

Trump does currently a slight edge in the polls in Ohio (0.6 percent, according to Real Clear Politics), but he's being decimated in Nevada, where Clinton leads by 7 points in the latest Monmouth University poll.

Florida begin early, in-person voting this week, with several counties, including Miami-Dade, Pal Beach and Broward, starting Monday.

Early voting by mail started several weeks ago in Florida, and already, nearly 1.2 million Florida voters have mailed in their ballots.

The state has a total of about 13 million registered voters, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

Clinton herself will be in Florida Tuesday and Wednesday, while her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, is making two appearances in the state on Monday.

Trump will follow his Florida swing with stops in North Carolina on Wednesday, Ohio on Thursday, Iowa and Wisconsin on Friday, and Colorado and Nevada over the weekend.

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