President Donald Trump called out the Quinnipiac University Poll while criticizing polls numbers during comments Thursday night, and now QU officials are responding.
Two days after Election Day, with votes still being counted, neither Trump nor former Vice President Joe Biden yet have the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the race, though the president prematurely declared victory early Wednesday morning.
During remarks made at a press conference Thursday, Trump continued to falsely claim victory and attacked national polls, calling them "phony" and "fake."
"These really phony polls, I have to call them phony polls, fake polls were designed to keep our voters at home, create the illusion of momentum for Mr. Biden," the president said.
He went on to call out the Quinnipiac poll released before Election Day specifically.
"To highlight just a few examples, the day before election Quinnipiac which was wrong on every occasion that I know of had Joe Biden up by 5 points in Florida and they were off by 8.4 points and I won Florida easily," Trump said. "They had my losing Florida by a lot and I ended up winning Florida by a lot...other than that they were very accurate."
NBC News has projected Trump to win Florida, with 51.2% of the vote with 96% reporting as of Thursday night.
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Doug Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, responded to the comments, saying they stand by their methodology. He previously said it will take time to examine why some things went wrong.
“For more than two decades, the Quinnipiac University Poll has been a highly-trusted source of opinion surveys with a stellar track record,” Schwartz, said in one statement. “We stand behind our methodology and the polling industry provides valuable insights into changing political opinions over time. We learn with each election cycle and our experts will examine our polling methods and make any necessary adjustments in future years.”
"A full examination of what went wrong with polls this year is going to take a while. At the moment, I still need to see the final election results and final exit poll results, and without those I’m not able to make even preliminary hypotheses about what exactly the issues are," he said in an email. "After the 2016 election, it took 6 months for the American Association of Public Opinion Research to release their findings about polling errors; I would expect a full evaluation of 2020 to take at least as long, though we might have some idea of the situation before then."
The Biden campaign told NBC News Thursday that they are not going to respond to the president's comments on the race.
With six states yet to be called, the race is now down to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Arizona and Alaska. For more election coverage, click here.
