Republican strategist Karl Rove says that he is “suspicious” of former President Donald Trump’s claims of favorable polling after his debate performance against Vice President Kamala Harris.
After Trump and Harris faced off during their first and possibly only presidential debate, in Philadelphia on September 10, a majority of pundits and scientific polling suggested that the vice president had outperformed her Republican opponent.
Trump claimed that “every single poll” shows him to be the winner, citing favorable but unscientific and easily manipulated polls, including surveys shared to social media and by conservative media outlets, as evidence of his victory.
An internal memo from Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio claimed that Trump, not Harris, had received a 2-point boost in support following the debate—results that were at odds with publicly released polls.
Former President Donald Trump is pictured during a campaign stop in Las Vegas on September 13. Most polling shows that Trump is trailing Vice President Kamala Harris following their first and possibly only presidential debate last week.
Rove, who served as White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush, said during a Fox News appearance on Tuesday that he did not believe the Trump campaign’s internal polling after host Paul Gigot noted that Fabrizio claimed “movement among undecided voters was towards Trump.”
“Every other poll that has been conducted since the debate shows that the movement has been towards Harris, albeit very modest,” Rove said. “I’m always suspicious of campaigns that issue their own numbers in order to correct a bad day … Right now, the evidence tends to lean the other way.”
“But again, modestly,” he added. “I mean, we’re talking about changes in these polls … I think of the four polls I’ve seen, the biggest change is two points.”
Newsweek reached out for comment to the Trump campaign via email on Tuesday.
Trump claimed in a pair of Truth Social posts on Saturday that his supposed debate win was “now reflected in the polls,” pointing to a Rasmussen Reports poll that showed him up by 6 points on September 12.
However, while a scientific poll, the Rasmussen survey was conducted with a relatively small sample size and revealed wildly different results on a day-to-day basis. The next edition of the poll, released on September 15, showed Harris up by 6 points.
Most recent national polls have shown Harris continuing to maintain a small but significant lead over Trump following the debate, with races in key battleground states remaining neck-and-neck.
An average of recent national polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight showed Harris leading Trump by 3 points as of Tuesday, while an average from RealClearPolitics showed the vice president leading by 2 points.
Polls also largely suggest that the Democratic candidate—not the former president—received a post-debate polling “bump.” While several polls showed that support for Harris only increased by around 1 percentage point, the vice president did receive a substantial boost in at least one survey.
A YouGov/Yahoo News poll conducted in the days following the debate showed Harris leading Trump by 50 percent to 45 percent among registered voters. Trump was only trailing the vice president by 1 point in the previous edition of the poll, which was conducted shortly after the Democratic National Convention.
One poll released by Atlas Insights—an outlier that shows Trump leading Harris by 3 points overall—found that support for the ex-president improved by 1 point after the debate.
