“When the polls are even, when they leave them alone and do them properly, I’m leading,” Donald Trump said Monday in Florida. Trump: 'We’re winning' in the real polls

Donald Trump had welcome news Monday for any supporters who are discouraged that he is trailing in the polls: The polls are rigged; we’re actually winning.

Trump seized on the WikiLeaks hack of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta at his latest rally Monday in St. Augustine, Florida, to back his claims.


“WikiLeaks also shows how John Podesta rigged the polls by oversampling Democrats, a voter suppression technique, and that’s happening to me all the time,” Trump alleged.

There is no evidence, however, that Podesta wrote anything in the polling email chain Trump referenced, which occurred in 2008. In that correspondence, Tom Matzzie wrote in January 2008 that he would like “Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February” to “maximize what we get out of our media polling.” (If Podesta replied, his response is not included in the emails published by WikiLeaks.)

According to Pew Research Center, oversampling is sometimes used to ensure that there are enough members of a particular subgroup within a population to reduce the margin of error.

“When the polls are even, when they leave them alone and do them properly, I’m leading,” Trump claimed. “But you see these polls, where they’re polling Democrats — ‘How’s Trump doing? Oh, he’s down’ — they’re polling Democrats.”

He added that the system is “corrupt,” “rigged” and “broken” and vowed to fix it before continuing his oversampling charge against Podesta.

“In an email, Podesta says that he wants oversamples for our polling in order to maximize what we get out of our media polling,” Trump stated incorrectly. “It’s called voter suppression because people will say, ‘Oh, gee, Trump’s down.’ Folks, we’re winning. We’re winning. We’re winning.”