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It seems like every time you turn around, the mainstream media and liberal commentators are salivating over the latest national poll numbers or the most recent polling information coming out of key battleground states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The common refrain from the media and excitable Democrat politicos is that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris have this in the bag. They’re ahead in national polls, and in most battleground states they have what they tell you is a “comfortable” lead over President Trump and VP Mike Pence.

But as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details, as pollster Scott Rasmussen explained in an interview with Just the News:

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, who conducts the Just the News Daily Poll, also released for PoliticalIQ a series of polls in four battleground states showing a race for the White House that remains competitive. Trump was victorious in all four states in 2016, and they are crucial to his reelection hopes.

Rasmussen reported that Biden leads narrowly in all four — Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. However, with a slightly stronger-than-expected Republican turnout, Rasmussen said the president would take the lead in Florida and North Carolina.

Rasmussen told JTN that polling during a pandemic is unprecedented, meaning poll results may not be as reliable down the stretch as they have been in previous years (outside of 2016).

JTN also reported that during a recent press call, Trump senior campaign adviser Corey Lewandowski claimed that an internal analysis showed that 58% of polls released last week “failed to meet the basic media standards of transparency. And what that means is they fail to significantly disclose the partisan makeup or the cross tabs.”

Remember, too, that the metrics for the Trump campaign are much better than the media and left would have you believe. For example, a recent Gallup poll found that 56% of Americans thought they were better off now than four years ago.

The Biden campaign – perhaps remembering what happened in 2016 – is also conceding the point about this race being closer than people think it is:

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, says the race against President Trump is “far closer” than conventional wisdom suggests.

[…]

“Early voting is already underway in many states,” Dillon said. “Millions of voters have already cast their ballots. But there is still a long way to go in this campaign, and we think this race is far closer than folks on this website [Twitter] think. Like a lot closer.”

Remember all this next time you see someone in the media gush about Biden’s national lead in the polls or his lead in key states. They’re trying to discourage people, to dampen enthusiasm. But as it often is with how the mainstream media reports poll results, things are not always as they seem.