Donald Trump Says Polls Show Him at ’93 Percent’

Donald Trump has claimed some polls are showing that “like 93 percent” of people say they were better off during his presidency than during Joe Biden’s, and that there may be no need for an election.
“Are you better off with Kamala and Biden than you were under President Donald J Trump? I don’t think so. You know, they do polls on this stuff and I’m at like 93 percent,” Trump said during his Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
“I said, so why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?”
Newsweek could not find any poll on whether voters feel “better off” which recorded 93 percent of respondents saying things have gotten worse since Biden took office, although polls on this question do favor Trump.
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign via email asking for further comment and clarification on which poll he was referring to.
One national poll, conducted between July 8 and July 10 by the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business for Financial Times, found that 49 percent of respondents said they were financially worse off since Biden took office, with only 18 percent saying they were better off.
On the same question, those numbers remained steady in the same pollster’s August poll (50 percent worse-off under Biden, 19 percent better-off). In the same poll, the first since Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris and Trump were statistically tied on the question of who was more trusted with the economy (42 percent for Harris, 41 percent for Trump, with a margin of error +/- 3.1 percent).
In the July survey, Trump had led Biden 41 points to 35 on that question.
Meanwhile, a YouGov survey conducted for The Economist between July 27 and 30 found that 44 percent of American adults said they are in a worse financial position than they were a year ago, compared to only 13 percent saying they were better off.
Trump’s follow-up comment—about the alleged polls being so far in his favor that there may be no need for an election at all—is not the first time the former president has mentioned doing away with a democratic process.
Speaking at the conservative group Turning Point USA’s Believers’ Summit in July, Trump said Christians did not need to vote in future elections after July 2024.
“Christians, get out and vote just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore,” he said. “Four more years, you know what? It will be fixed. It will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”
In a Truth Social post in 2022, the former president questioned whether it was reasonable to go against the Constitution and throw out the results of the 2020 election due to what he called “MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION.”
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”
After losing the 2020 election to Biden, Trump has continued to falsely claim that it was rigged. The claim has been dismissed as baseless by a variety of judges, by the cyber security arm of the Homeland Security Department, and by his own Attorney General William Barr.
Speaking in May about the upcoming presidential election, he said at a campaign event in Wisconsin: “But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be—a lot of changes have been made over the last few years—but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results.”
When asked by Newsweek how Trump will determine if the 2024 election is honest given that he continues to claim that Biden’s 2020 election win was stolen despite there being no evidence of such a claim, Trump’s spokesperson Steven Cheung asked over email: “So is your argument that people should accept dishonest elections?”
When probed further, Cheung said: “Dishonest elections are bad.”