Polls Lie About Trump, Here’s How

By Christopher Ruddy , NEWSMAX

The pollsters are manipulating President Donald Trump’s approval numbers and I can prove it.

Let me walk you through the facts.

Just last week Reuters/Ipsos released a poll showing the President with a job approval of just 42%.

At first glance, this is not a bad number considering the media’s all-out attack on the president, a negative press barrage unprecedented in U.S. history.

But the numbers are much better than Reuters claims.

I sifted through the polls raw data and polling “methodology.”

What I found is this is a poll of “registered voters” – not likely voters.

One Trump pollster told me flatly: Donald Trump does at least 4 to 5 points better with respondents who actually show up and vote.

We certainly saw that phenomena in 2016.

So, this slight qualification of the poll – focusing on likely voters – would push the president’s current approval number from the low 40s to the high 40s.

This shift also puts the president within striking distance of reaching the magic 50% mark.

The Reuters poll data also reveals something more startling.

The survey says it sampled 961 registered voters of which 456 were Democrats, 361 Republicans, and 106 independents.

Reuters gave the Democrats 95 more survey responses than Republicans, weighting Democrats as 47% of the poll sample, compared to 38% Republicans.

This is a lopsided weighting in favor of the Democrats, giving them a 9-point advantage.

The Reuters survey would be accurate if Democrats actually voted in this same proportion.

But they don’t.

I looked at the 2018 election exit polls.

The turnout was massive, and the exit poll found 37% of voters described themselves as Democrats and 33% as Republicans, a 4-point spread.

Had the Reuters poll used the same 4-point spread in its recent survey, fairly accounting for Republican voters, Trump would have surged over 50% approval (especially when factoring in “likely” voters).

Trump’s poll numbers are good because he has powerful winds at his back.

The economy is roaring with historic, low unemployment.

He has a strong security and foreign policy record: North Korea has been contained; ISIS wiped out; and our allies put on notice they cannot take us for granted.

And the president is on the verge of ending U.S. involvement in the almost 20-year-old war in Afghanistan.

Trump has China on the ropes as he seeks to rebalance our trade deficit.

Wall Street is not particularly happy with his confrontational approach, but it is apparently resonating with Main Street and working Americans – as the polls show.

Clearly, the president is close to having a “lock” on his re-election.

One clue this is true is the relatively weak field of Democratic candidates seeking to challenge him for the presidency.

Obviously, potential Democratic challengers have read the polls and grasp the fact the president’s numbers are much stronger than the pollsters would have you believe.

Christopher Ruddy is CEO of Newsmax, one of the country’s leading conservative news outlets.