Trump Supporters' Excuses For His Poll Numbers Are Getting Increasingly Weird

Donald Trump , at the moment, is unambiguously losing in the polls. HuffPost Pollsters model has him running nearly 8 points behind Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. Of the most recent 20 surveys of the race, not a single one shows him ahead.

Trailing in the polls often prompts candidates to spout truisms about Election Day being the only poll that matters. Trumps Republican opponents certainly tried that tack during the GOP primaries, despite the fact that Trump had a commanding, unbroken lead throughout nearly all of the process.

But the depth of Trumps polling deficit seems to have driven some of his surrogates and backers to increasingly more imaginative lengths. Heres a quick primer on some of them:

Claiming Polls Are Skewed

\"Polling can be skewed:\" some Trump supporters have doubts about the polls showing Clinton ahead of Trump nationally https://t.co/xIHKY9LUeT

Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) August 8, 2016","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Reliable Sources","author_url":"https://twitter.com/ReliableSources","cache_age":86400,"description":""Polling can be skewed:" some Trump supporters have doubts about the polls showing Clinton ahead of Trump nationally https://t.co/xIHKY9LUeT— Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) August 8, 2016\n","provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Reliable Sources on 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"Polling can be skewed:" some Trump supporters have doubts about the polls showing Clinton ahead of Trump nationally https://t.co/xIHKY9LUeT
Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) August 8, 2016

This ones a classic. All the way back in 2012, proponents of Mitt Romney repeatedly argued that polls were including too many Democrats , culminating in an entire website dedicated to taking actual survey results showing Barack Obama ahead and re-weighting them to put Romney in the lead.

The fact that this argument proved to hold exactly zero water hasnt deterred Trumps partisans from trying it again. A new website, LongRoom, is attempting to unskew the polls in Trumps favor , based on the nebulous notion that he should somehow be winning, save for the machinations of biased pollsters.

Think about what that means: The website is saying that a large number of professional pollsters who make their living trying to provide accurate information and have a good record of doing so are all deliberately biasing the polls and arent correcting for it, FiveThirtyEights Harry Enten wrote earlier this week . Like many conspiracy theories, that seems implausible.

Claiming Trumps Supporters Arent Talking To Pollsters

.@realDonaldTrump jokes that he wins because people publicly say they won't vote for him, then get in the booth and say \"anyone looking?\"

John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) August 2, 2016","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"John Roberts","author_url":"https://twitter.com/johnrobertsFox","cache_age":60,"description":".@realDonaldTrump jokes that he wins because people publicly say they won't vote for him, then get in the booth and say "anyone looking?"— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) August 2, 2016\n","provider_name":"Twitter","title":"John Roberts on 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.@realDonaldTrump jokes that he wins because people publicly say they won't vote for him, then get in the booth and say "anyone looking?"
John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) August 2, 2016

Donald Trump has repeatedly argued that some of his backers are too embarrassed to admit their support to pollsters maybe not the most uplifting messaging, but a reference to a real phenomenon, called social desirability bias, in which respondents are loath to admit an unpopular position.

The only problem? Theres no evidence thats actually the case this time around . If it were, Trump would theoretically be faring better in online and automated phone polls, which dont require talking to another person, rather than those conducted by live interviewers. So far, however, hes performed about equally well in both types.

Reminding Everyone That The Polls Got It Wrong 68 Years Ago

Republicans who are sure Trump can't win should read history of Truman's 1948 campaign. Pollsters were off by 9 to 19 percent.

Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) August 11, 2016","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Newt Gingrich","author_url":"https://twitter.com/newtgingrich","cache_age":86400,"description":"Republicans who are sure Trump can't win should read history of Truman's 1948 campaign. 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Republicans who are sure Trump can't win should read history of Truman's 1948 campaign. Pollsters were off by 9 to 19 percent.
Newt Gingrich (@newtgingrich) August 11, 2016

Pollsters like Gallup famously missed Harry S. Trumans narrow win in 1948 in large part because theyd stopped polling the race weeks before Americans went to the polls, a mistake todays survey houses seem unlikely to repeat. (Survey methodology has also changed just a little bit over the past few decades.)

Just Pretending Trump Is Ahead

\"I hear we're doing really well now,\" Trump says of polls

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"I hear we're doing really well now," Trump says of polls
Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) August 9, 2016

Trump says the polls \"are tightening.\"

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Trump says the polls "are tightening."
Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 11, 2016

This is not actually true.

Pretending Polls Dont Even Exist

Imagine polls don't exist. Show me evidence Hillary is winning?

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Imagine polls don't exist. Show me evidence Hillary is winning?
Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) August 8, 2016

Well, that just got existential.

(Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, in response : Without polls wed assume the candidate with the united party, running a real campaign, and not insulting key groups was winning big.)

Oddly, Mitchell, a pro-Trump radio host, didnt seem to have any concerns about polling accuracy when it came to surveys showing Trump ahead.

One of these things is not like the others. @NateSilver538 @WillMcAvoyACN pic.twitter.com/eVPiup65m3

Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 8, 2016","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Frank Luntz","author_url":"https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz","cache_age":86400,"description":" One of these things is not like the others. @NateSilver538 @WillMcAvoyACN pic.twitter.com/eVPiup65m3— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 8, 2016\n","provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Frank Luntz on 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One of these things is not like the others. @NateSilver538 @WillMcAvoyACN pic.twitter.com/eVPiup65m3
Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 8, 2016

Polls, of course, dont always get it right. Individual surveys can be outliers or flukes, the polling industry is struggling through some dramatic changes , and there are plenty of systemic misses more recent than 1948 take this years Iowa Republican primary and Michigan Democratic primary , not to mention a number of international miscalls .

Theres also still plenty of time for the race to tighten, although the winners of the last 16 presidential elections were all ahead by this point in the campaign.

But theres no reason to believe that practically every national survey is getting the current state of the race dramatically wrong.

If anyone really wants to believe Donald Trumps in the lead right now, though, heres a free idea for a fresh argument:

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Poll unskewers: if you turn our chart upside down, Donald Trump's maintaining a healthy lead! pic.twitter.com/KdS0q4WBMj

Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) August 11, 2016","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"Ariel Edwards-Levy","author_url":"https://twitter.com/aedwardslevy","cache_age":86400,"description":"Poll unskewers: if you turn our chart upside down, Donald Trump's maintaining a healthy lead! pic.twitter.com/KdS0q4WBMj— Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) August 11, 2016\n","provider_name":"Twitter","title":"Ariel Edwards-Levy on 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Poll unskewers: if you turn our chart upside down, Donald Trump's maintaining a healthy lead! pic.twitter.com/KdS0q4WBMj
Ariel Edwards-Levy (@aedwardslevy) August 11, 2016