Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a rally at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, California on June 2. | Getty Trump tweets about poll that shows him losing

Donald Trump has made it a habit to mention and tweet out favorable poll numbers throughout the course of his campaign.

But on Friday, the presumptive Republican nominee thanked his millions of followers for the results of a national survey that showed him losing to Hillary Clinton.


"THANK YOU! #AmericaFirst," Trump tweeted, in a message showing the latest One America News Network/Gravis Marketing poll, which the graphic indicates is from Thursday.

As shown in the collage, Clinton led Trump 51 percent to 49 percent.

Clinton leads Trump by nearly six points — 44.1 percent to 38.3 percent — in the Real Clear Politics average of head-to-head national polls conducted between May 24 and Wednesday. And in POLITICO's continually updated Battleground States Polling Average, Clinton leads Trump by a similar margin, 45 percent to 40 percent.

Speaking to The New York Times on Thursday night, Trump made a rare admission that he is currently running behind his Democratic opponent.

“I’m four down in one poll, three and a half in another that just came out, and I haven’t started yet,” Trump told the Times. "And I have tremendous Republican support ... Unfortunately they never talk about that, they talk about the few rebels.”

Even so, Trump has said that he does not necessarily buy into the results of polls that show him losing, suggesting to his supporters that people are less likely to tell a pollster they are supporting him than they are to privately cast their vote for him.

"When I poll, I do fine, but when I run I do much better," Trump said at a rally in Dallas on Thursday night, summarizing what polling analysts call the Bradley effect. "In other words, people say I’m not going to say who I’m voting for, don’t be embarrassed, I’m not going to say who I’m voting for and then they get it and I do much better, it’s like an amazing effect."