Trump Hires Pollster to Denounce Poll

After a new CNN poll came out showing Donald Trump trailing Joe Biden by 14 percentage points, the president announced he has retained Republican pollster John McLaughlin to write a memo denouncing the poll.

However, Jonathan Chait points out McLaughlin is “a laughingstock within the profession.”

“McLaughlin is notorious for producing rosy polling data on behalf of his clients. (Or, at least, purportedly on behalf of his clients, who often find themselves unpleasantly surprised on election night.) A lengthy stream of overly optimistic polls culminated in McLaughlin convincing his client, Eric Cantor, that he was leading primary challenger David Brat by 34 points in 2014. Cantor lost by 11, at which point leading Republicans began begging their party not to hire him.”

McLaughlin has a FiveThirtyEight pollster rating of C/D and is one of the lowest-rated polls in their database.