There was some doubt expressed on MSNBC about the accuracy of polls showing President Biden trailing Donald Trump.
Andrea Mitchell speculated that enthusiasm for Biden as incumbent may be greater than polls indicate in a potential general election matchup.
This was based on Super Tuesday exit polls and a poll showing over half of Nikki Haley supporters approving of Biden’s job performance.
MSNBC hosts also criticized decisions to air Trump speeches without fact-checking in real-time, with Rachel Maddow saying it risks spreading misinformation by broadcasting speeches they know will contain lies.
Maddow argued the best remedy is fact-checking after the fact, but that does not undo the initial broadcasting.
There was debate over balancing transparency with mitigating the spread of misinformation from political figures.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell appeared to doubt the accuracy of her own network’s Super Tuesday exit polling, speculating that voters might support President Biden more than polls show.
Mitchell said “enthusiasm” for Biden could be “bigger than we think” during an on-air discussion with NBC News senior political editor Mark Murray on Wednesday, in a clip flagged by Mediaite.
Murray argued a significant number of Nikki Haley voters could be more open to voting for Biden over former President Trump given the fact that 51% of Haley voters in Virginia said they approve of Biden’s job as president.
“That result [leads] me to think that maybe that five point spread in the New York Times poll and our poll on the head-to-head matchup is not quite accurate,” Mitchell said. “Maybe the enthusiasm for Joe Biden is, as their campaign has been claiming, bigger than we think once it’s a binary choice.”
Mitchell was referring to a New York Times/Siena College poll that showed Trump leading Biden 48% to 43% as well as an NBC News poll also showing Trump with a five point lead over Biden in a head-to-head matchup.
Murray argued it will be a “competitive race,” but, because Biden is the incumbent, he has the advantage.
“President Biden is underperforming some of his benchmarks, not only with base Democratic voters, but also voters in the middle of the electorate and now is the time for him to actually start trying to bring those people back into the fold,” he said.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was also critical of her network on Super Tuesday, claiming it was “irresponsible to broadcast” Donald Trump’s victory speech.
“I will say that it is a decision that we revisit constantly in terms of the balance between allowing somebody to knowingly lie on your air about things they’ve lied about before, and you can predict they are going to lie about,” Maddow said Tuesday night. “And so, therefore, it is irresponsible to allow them to do that. It’s a balance between knowing that that’s irresponsible to broadcast and also knowing that as the de facto, soon to be de facto nominee of the Republican Party, this is not only the man who is likely to be the Republican candidate for president, but this is the way he’s running.”
Fellow host Stephanie Ruhle suggested they “fact-check the hell out of him” in an attempt to mitigate the tension, but Maddow doubled-down.
“Yes, and we do that after the fact and that is the best remedy that we’ve got. It does not fix the fact that we broadcast it, honestly,” she said.
In January, MSNBC cut away from a Trump speech following his victory in the Iowa caucuses.
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