President Trump, who famously sued the last public opinion pollster whose results he didn’t like, is calling for an investigation into other major pollsters — who he calls “negative criminals” — after a number of outlets reported the results of recent surveys suggesting significant declines in his approval ratings.
Mr. Trump singled out polls conducted by The New York Times, ABC News/The Washington Post, and Fox News, which placed his current approval ratings at 42 percent, 39 percent, and 44 percent, respectively.
Taking to his Truth Social platform Monday, Mr. Trump lashed out at the pollsters. “They are negative criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I win elections big, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, lose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump’s allegations represent an escalation of his longstanding effort to discredit pollsters he finds disagreeable. While he routinely dismisses unfavorable polls as “rigged,” his latest call for an investigation elevates the criticism to a new level.
The president has gone there before. In December 2024, he filed suit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its former pollster, J. Ann Selzer, for what he called “brazen election interference” over a poll published days before the presidential election.
The poll suggested Vice President Harris would win Iowa, a predominantly Republican state, by three or four points. In his lawsuit, Mr. Trump accused Ms. Selzer of “brazen election interference.” In the election less than a week later, Mr. Trump carried Iowa by 13 points.
“The Harris poll was no ‘miss’ but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election,” his lawsuit said. Two weeks after the poll was released, Ms. Selzer — who earned the moniker the “Queen of Polling” after decades of reliable work in her field — announced that she was leaving the paper.
It’s unclear if Mr. Trump has legal action in mind against the pollsters who conducted the most recent surveys. Still, he appears furious over the polls, all of which declare that Americans are dissatisfied with his performance so far.
“We don’t have a Free and Fair ‘Press’ in this Country anymore. We have a Press that writes BAD STORIES, and CHEATS, BIG, ON POLLS. IT IS COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT. SAD!” he wrote Monday.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll reported that his approval rating has dropped to the lowest level of any American president at a comparable point in their administrations over the past 80 years. The New York Times/Siena poll revealed further specifics, with only 31 percent of respondents approving of Mr. Trump’s management of the American economy.
Responding to the new figures, Mr. Trump fiercely critiqued the methodology and credibility of the pollsters. The ABC/Washington Post poll, for instance, said in its methodology report that it surveyed 2,464 adults, whose political affiliations were 30 percent Republican, 30 percent Democrat and 29 percent independents.
Longtime pollster John McLaughlin, who worked for the 2024 Trump campaign, disclosed more data on the methodology, telling Newsweek, “when President Trump received 50 percent of the popular vote, but The New York Times includes only 37 percent of his voters in their poll and ABC/Washington Post has only 34 percent Trump supporters, it seems that they deliberately biased their polls against President Trump.”
Mr. Trump jumped on the pollster’s statement in another post. “Great pollster John McLaughlin, one of the most highly respected in the industry, has just stated that The Failing New York Times poll, and the ABC/Washington Post poll, about a person named DONALD J. TRUMP, ME, are FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump decried the numbers cited by Mr. McLaughlin as “unheard of numbers unless looking for a negative result, which they are. These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it.”
