Brexit architect Nigel Farage: Mainstream media using polls to suppress Trump turnout

Mainstream media polls showing Joe Biden with a wide lead are failing to accurately gauge support for President Trump and are being used to suppress Trump voter turnout, according to Brexit architect Nigel Farage.

Farage, the British politician who led an underdog movement to remove the United Kingdom from the European Union, said he believes Trump will win despite current polls — just like in 2016  — suggesting otherwise. 

"I think that polling is often used by the establishment as a way of disincentivizing the other side to go out and vote," Farage said on "Just the News AM" television show. "The morning of Brexit, there was a poll released that said Remain [in the E.U.] were 10 points ahead. And it was done, very simply, to say to potential 'Leave' voters, 'Do you know what, if it's raining, don't bother to get down to the local school and vote, because you're gonna lose anyway?'

Farage said he was "struck" with American polls because of what he called "tiny" sample sizes generating margins of error often between 3% to 4%.

"Come on, you know, oh, in Florida, Biden's half a percent ahead," Farage said. "It's ridiculous, because the margin of error is several times bigger than that."

Within the mainstream media in recent decades, voter suppression is typically cited by Democrats who say Republicans aim to keep progressive voters from turning out. He said he "absolutely" believes that polls this year are meant to suppress Republican turnout. 

"I also think that after the year we've been through and after the hysteria over Black Lives Matter, and the fear that if we even question this Marxist movement, that somehow we're going to be condemned for being racist and put on some list or treated in some way — I think the phenomenon of the 'shy Trumper,' who's just not going to tell the pollster what they think for fear that they're going to be knocked down in a book somewhere is even greater than it was four years ago," Farage said.

Farage said he agreed with the results seen by polling firm The Trafalgar Group, which specializes in tracking "hidden" Trump voters. Conforming to what the firm calls a "social-desirability bias," these conservative and independent Trump voters feel marginalized and fearful about expressing their support for the president due to social stigma in news media and social media. Trafalgar Group founder Robert Cahaly told RealClearPolitics this bias in 2020 is "worse than it was four years ago." 

"I think that's right," Farage said. "And I also think there's another factor here, which is a lot of people who feel that they're let down by the political establishment, the media establishment, see the polling establishment as being part of the same group. So if they get an email, or a telephone call for a polling company, they use 'Anglo-Saxon language' to say we're not playing the game with you. So it's actually quite difficult to track many of these people."

(Farage educated this correspondent about the use of the British slang "Anglo-Saxon language" as "a euphemism for words beginning with 'F' and others that we're not going to talk about on your show.")

"Trump beat the pollsters before, and he can do it again," Farage tweeted on Thursday while linking to his U.K. Telegraph essay laying out why he thinks Trump has momentum not showing up in many mainstream media polls.

Trump 2020 campaign pollster John McLaughlin on Tuesday told "Just the News AM" that Facebook blocking new ads in the final week of the presidential election cycle is also an attempt to discourage Republican voters waiting to vote closer to Election Day. McLaughlin said that Facebook's decision to halt new campaign ads is part of its political censorship.

"The Democrats came out early," McLaughlin said on the program. "And the Democrats have leads in a lot of these states based on party registration, party affiliation, and they're trying to stop the Republicans from coming out right now. We've been tracking the early voting, and a lot of Democrats have cast their ballots by mail or in person, and now the Republican votes are coming."

The pollster says this week is when many Republicans will vote. Comparing the election to sports, he said Democrats are ahead after the third quarter and they want to cancel the fourth quarter and go into a "prevent defense" scheme.

Farage was called onstage by Trump on Wednesday during an Arizona campaign rally — one of five different events he said he'd been to in the previous 48 hours. He said that in his extensive mingling he encountered crowds of ardent Trump supporters who said they didn't support Trump in 2016 but were planning to in 2020.

"Just because we've got mail-in ballots, just because the turnout is going to be significantly higher than it was in '16, doesn't mean it's all going the Democrats way," Farage said.