ELECTION/POLLS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump on Wednesday [6-12-19] revived his attacks on the polling industry, denying reports that his own internal polling has indicated trouble ahead for his reelection bid, even as public polls show warning signs. The president pushed back on a New York Times story detailing his response to a ‘devastating’ 17-state poll conducted by his internal pollster, and he reiterated that he believes the internal poll circulating was false but offered no evidence to back up his claim. Trump said that the leak of ‘phony polls’ that showed him lagging behind was ‘ridiculous,’ declaring in the Oval Office that to the contrary, ‘we are winning in every single state that we’ve polled.’ According to the Times, after being briefed on the poll, Trump asked aides to deny that he was trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in several key states. When the toplines of Trump’s internal polls leaked, he reportedly then asked advisers to ‘say publicly that other data showed him doing well’…Referring to his 2016 attacks on pollsters, Trump also said that a current spate of polls that have shown him losing in head-to-head matchups with any number of the top 2020 Democratic contenders ‘is worse’ than 2016.”
-Caitlin Oprysko, “Trump: ‘I’m not a huge believer in polling’,” Politico, June 12, 2019 2:17 pm