Taking their lead from president Donald Trump, election deniers have dismissed the GOP’s terrible polling numbers by claiming the polls themselves are fake, a psyop, or a ploy to stop Republicans from turning out to vote in November.
Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, told Fox News that midterm election polling is a “psyop…to depress conservative turnout.”
“The midterms are near,” Phillip Buchanan, the election denier and MAGA troll known online as Catturd, wrote to his four million followers on X. “The laughable fake polls are rolling out.”
For over a decade, Trump has claimed without evidence that American elections have been impacted by fraud. In the wake of his loss in 2020, an entire online community and ecosystem of election denial groups sprung up to push the baseless allegation that former president Joe Biden stole the election from Trump. These claims have become central to the Republican Party’s belief system, to the point where hundreds of GOP candidates for federal and statewide elections in November have expressed doubts about the integrity of US elections.
And now, multiple polls have shown Trump’s approval rating at historic lows with Democrats leading in Senate races across the country in states Trump won easily in 2024. Reuters reported this week that Republicans are now pouring money into dozens of races they considered safe.
Trump has called polls fake 39 times since returning to the White House last year, according to analysis from media watchdog Media Matters for America, including nine times in August alone. In one post on Truth Social last month, he claimed the polls were “demoralization operations” designed by Democrats to stop Republicans from voting. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump again dismissed negative polling out of Iowa and stated: “The polls are fake.”
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment, but as WIRED reported this week, Trump’s own aides are extremely concerned about the polling and the potential loss of both the House and Senate. “Oh, yeah, we’re going to get creamed,” one longtime Trumpworld operative told WIRED.
While the White House may be worried, figures in the election denial community have repeated Trump’s claims about fake polls.