AP-GfK poll: Most voters believe media biased against Trump

SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – Donald Trump repeatedly rages that the media is biased against him, putting claims of press prejudice at the centre of his campaign for president. Most voters — and not just those who are backing the Republican nominee — agree with him, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.

Overall, 56 per cent of likely voters say the media is biased against Trump, just 5 per cent say it’s biased in his favour and 37 per cent say coverage is mostly balanced.

Eighty-seven per cent of Trump’s supporters see the media as biased against him, and even Hillary Clinton’s supporters are more likely to see bias against Trump than bias in his favour, 30 per cent to 8 per cent. Sixty per cent of Clinton’s supporters see no bias in either direction.

“The majority of the coverage is very biased — some of the stuff Clinton has done doesn’t even get reported on,” said Julius Villarreal, a 32-year-old Trump supporter from Houston. “Where is Benghazi? She thinks she’s above the law, and the media is definitely complicit in helping her get away with it.”

By contrast, 51 per cent say the media is biased in Clinton’s favour and just 8 per cent see media bias against her, while 39 per cent say the media is mostly balanced. Sixty-seven per cent of Clinton’s supporters say media coverage of their candidate is balanced, while 87 per cent of Trump supporters say the media is biased in her favour.

“Hey, it’s record-setting bad treatment, what I’m getting,” Trump said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday. “It’s the greatest pile-on in American history. I go to rallies, and they’re starting to hate the media because they see it’s all a big lie. Not all, but a lot of it’s a big lie.”

Trump’s love-hate relationship with the media has been a major part of his campaign.

No candidate in recent history has ever utilized the media so effectively, winning coverage worth billions of dollars as he swamped opponents in the crowded Republican primary. In the early months of that campaign, the former reality TV star had a knack for both courting reporters and saying something outrageous — guaranteeing he’d receive around-the-clock coverage.

His tone shifted once he entered the general election against Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Republicans have long accused the media of possessing a liberal bias, but Trump took those attacks to a new level.

He routinely exhorts the crowds at his rallies to boo the journalists who travel with his campaign. He takes to Twitter to denounce what he sees as unfair coverage. And he attacks reporters, at times by name, when he doesn’t like their questions.

Earlier this month, Trump derisively dismissed a reporter as “a sleazebag” for asking a question about women who have accused Trump of sexual assault.

“These people are among the most dishonest people in the world, the media,” Trump said at a rally in Florida this week, pointing to the reporters at the back of the event. “They are the worst.”

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The AP-GfK Poll of 1,546 adults, including 1,212 likely voters, was conducted online Oct. 20-24, using a sample drawn from GfK’s probability-based KnowledgePanel. KnowledgePanel is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.75 percentage points, and for likely voters is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using telephone or mail survey methods and later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn’t have access to the internet were provided access for free.

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Online:

Poll results: http://ap-gfkpoll.com

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Swanson reported from Washington.

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On Twitter, follow Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/JonLemire and AP Polling Editor Emily Swanson at http://twitter.com/El_Swan.