CNN's infamous poll showing Joe Biden up 14 points on President Donald Trump oversampled adults who might not vote and likely are opposed to Trump, while undersampling Republicans, according to Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin on Newsmax TV.
McLaughlin noted among the 220 million eligible voters in the U.S., only around 139 million voted in 2016, which is considered the most all-time.
"Even if it goes up to 140-150 million, the polls of adults are going to be skewed against Republicans," McLaughlin told Monday's "Greg Kelly Reports," especially "since President Trump gets over 90% support from Republicans."
McLaughlin noted CNN's poll among adults featured just 25% registered Republicans, where as around one-third of the electorate that voted in 2016 were Republicans.
He added to host Greg Kelly, it costs more to run focused polls of likely voters from actual voter registration lists.
"It's cheaper for them to do," in addition to being advantageous to the Democratic candidate, McLaughlin told Kelly. "They don't have to buy a sample of voters, that campaign pollsters – whether Republican or Democrat – are going to have to do."
Also, per McLaughlin, reporting a blowout lead ultimately can cause voter suppression, a frequent rally cry of Democrats against Republicans in election.
"The second thing is, it suppresses the vote, because what you're doing is you're saying – just like they did in 2016, remember the Hillary Clinton electoral lock? – 'there's no way Trump was going to win,'" McLaughlin told Kelly. "And we're telling the president you need to go to five or six cities a day, because we're in a dead even close race, and get your supporters out.
"We were going to win on election day, because all the polls had us losing. You had to look at the polls and say, 'among likely voters, it's really close; if we win these states, we can win.'"
"So the president, to his credit, was going to five or six cities, 6 a.m. to midnight to try to win, while Hillary Clinton was doing one or two cities those days."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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