Biden dismisses polls showing him behind Trump – do they hold weight?

President Joe Biden is beginning to publicly rebuke polls that show him behind in the race against former President Donald Trump in what could be a worrying sign for his campaign.

Biden spent a whirlwind Wednesday touring southeast Wisconsin and Chicago. Biden’s trip to Wisconsin comes as he works to raise money and support in what’s expected to be one of his closest battleground states.

Speaking at the Chicago event, where he was raising money likely to be spent in nearby swing states, Biden cited a Quinnipiac poll showing him leading Trump by 6 points. But he followed that up by downplaying the importance of polling generally.

“The truth is, I don’t think any of the polls matter very much this early,” Biden told donors at the ritzy Palmer House Hotel. “It’s hard to get a good poll these days. To be able to call someone on a cellphone and get them to answer — most people don’t have hard lines anymore. It takes sometimes 30 or 40 calls to get one person to answer.”

The president has good reason to downplay recent polls. The Quinnipiac survey is an outlier, with all others either showing a tie or a Trump lead. Trump is ahead by half a point in the RealClearPolitics average for Wisconsin.

Trump leads by 1.2 points nationally, whereas Biden led by 4.4 points at this point in the 2020 cycle. Despite what he says, Biden is paying very close attention to every poll, argues presidential historian and Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley.

“The first thing Biden looks at every morning is the polls,” Shirley said. “That’s the very first thing he looks at, ahead of anything else. He’s a lifetime politician. He obsesses about the politics of politics. The polls, the personnel, the fundraising. Everything except the issues.”

Downplaying the polls is what losing politicians always do, Shirley added, citing examples ranging from President Jimmy Carter in 1980 to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) last year.

“All losing candidates are in denial,” Shirley said. “The next thing he’s going to say is, ‘The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day.’ That’s what rank losers always say.”

But plenty of politicos have overcome early polling deficits to emerge victorious.

The most famous example remains Harry Truman defeating Thomas Dewey in 1948 despite expectations so widespread that newspapers were printed saying Dewey had won. More recent examples include Carter holding an early lead over Reagan in 1980, Michael Dukakis leading George H.W. Bush for much of 1988, and Mitt Romney holding the polling edge over Barack Obama in October 2012.

The most recent example came when Hillary Clinton was up by 6.5 points in May 2016 and by 12 points in a CNN poll taken just two weeks before the election.

With all of those examples in mind, Rutgers University history, media studies, and journalism professor David Greenberg thinks the president has a point.

“Biden is right that polling suffers from all kinds of reliability problems, including the ridiculously low response rate,” Greenberg said. “He’s also right that it’s too early for the polls to be meaningful.”

Biden went on to win the popular vote comfortably in 2020, mirroring his polling advantage even though the votes in a handful of key swing states were close.

With Biden now trailing the same rival, he’s doubling down on attacking Trump over his abortion stance and whether he’ll accept the election results, among other topics.

“After bragging that the reason Roe v. Wade was overturned was because of him, he’s now worried the voters are going to hold him accountable for what he said,” Biden said in Chicago. “Well, we have news for Trump: The voters are going to hold him accountable.”

The president’s lone noncampaign stop on Wednesday came in Racine, Wisconsin, where he unveiled a multibillion-dollar Microsoft project on the same site as a Trump-backed venture that underdelivered. Even that stop had a sharp campaign angle, seeking to contrast Biden’s business success with Trump’s failure.

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It’s a theme that’s likely to continue as Election Day gets nearer, especially if polls continue to find Biden trailing Trump in swing states.

“The candidate who is behind always dismisses the significance of polls while the candidate who’s ahead touts them,” Greenberg said. “That’s been true since the dawn of polling. I can’t read Biden’s mind, but I suspect there is a bit more worry in his camp than they are letting on.”