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Fox News host Jesse Watters has echoed Donald Trump’s claims that recent polling reporting Kamala Harris in the lead is inaccurate — even as experts say their methodology was reliable.
Watters, one of Fox News’ most-watched anchors, said on Sunday that “pollsters are dramatically oversampling Democrats and then burying the samples so you can’t see it.” This comes after he claimed earlier this month that “the media” is “juicing the polls.”
Watters then referenced a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, which showed Harris holding a four-point lead in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The Trump campaign criticized that poll earlier this month, arguing it did not include enough people who voted for Trump in 2020 and skewed the results in Harris’ favor as a result.
But, polling experts told The Independent that criticisms of the Times/Siena poll aren’t valid.
The Times/Siena survey is “one of the most accurate polls that we can rely on,” according to Dr. Andrew Crosby, professor and survey methodology expert from the University of California, Riverside.
“The Trump campaign is basically alleging that their sample is not what it should be,” Crosby told The Independent. “There’s not any truth to that.”
The poll’s trustworthiness comes from use of random selection and the high number of people who responded, Crosby said. Another strength is that they ask people to list their political party, which helps ensure the poll is representative of a state’s population, he noted.
Party identification is a more reliable survey metric than reported past voting, Crosby explained. This is because people can forget who they voted for, or don’t want to admit that they voted for a certain candidate, among other reasons, he said.
In response to the Trump campaign’s criticisms, the New York Times made a similar argument, noting that relying on reported past voting to ensure their 2020 and 2022 polls were representative would have made them less accurate.
Times/Siena polls are reputable and the pollsters are “certainly heavily invested” in using the proper methodology, according to Dr. Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University.
“What’s also interesting is that, as far as I know, the Trump organization was not contesting polls when Trump was ahead,” Panagopoulos told The Independent.
Trump was ahead in five key swing states before President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, aTimes/Siena poll from May showed.
Ultimately, polls are “a snapshot in time” and can easily change, according to Dr. Christian Grose, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California.
This doesn’t make a poll wrong or poorly conducted, he said. It just means enthusiasm levels may have changed, or key events like debates and campaign rallies changed voters’ minds.
“It doesn’t mean the poll is wrong, it just means the poll was not asking people on election day,” Grose told The Independent.
The Times/Siena poll isn’t the only survey indicating Harris is ahead of Trump. The vice president has a 2.5-point lead over Trump, according to an average of five national polls.
A new CBS/YouGov poll, which surveyed up to August 16, also indicates a growing gender divide between voters, with more men supporting Trump and more women voting for Harris.
