Fox News host echoes Trump’s claim that polls showing Harris taking lead must be inaccurate

Fox News host Jesse Watters has echoed Donald Trump’s claims thatrecent polling reporting Kamala Harris in the lead is inaccurate — even as experts say their methodology was reliable.

Watters, one of Fox News’ most-watched anchors, said on Sunday that “pollsters are dramatically oversampling Democrats and then burying the samples so you can’t see it.” This comes after he claimed earlier this month that “the media” is “juicing the polls.”

Watters then referenced a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, which showed Harris holding a four-point lead in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The Trump campaign criticized that poll earlier this month, arguing it did not include enough people who voted for Trump in 2020 and skewed the results in Harris’ favor as a result.

But, polling experts told The Independent that criticisms of the Times/Siena poll aren’t valid.

The Times/Siena survey is “one of the most accurate polls that we can rely on,” according to Dr. Andrew Crosby, professor and survey methodology expert from the University of California, Riverside.

“The Trump campaign is basically alleging that their sample is not what it should be,” Crosby told The Independent. “There’s not any truth to that.”

The poll’s trustworthiness comes from use of random selection and the high number of people who responded, Crosby said. Another strength is that they ask people to list their political party, which helps ensure the poll is representative of a state’s population, he noted.

Party identification is a more reliable survey metric than reported past voting, Crosby explained. This is because people can forget who they voted for, or don’t want to admit that they voted for a certain candidate, among