Lara Trump pushed back hard against gloomy midterm polling on Tuesday, October 20, telling Fox News that Republican voters, especially in rural America, have stopped cooperating with pollsters and that the surveys are missing the true strength of the GOP coalition.
Her comments come as President Donald Trump prepares a seven-state campaign blitz that includes a stop in Iowa on Thursday, a visit that could boost Republican turnout in the state's competitive races.
Lara Trump: Rural and GOP Voters Don't Trust the Polling Industry
The exchange, first reported by Mediaite, began when Fox News anchor John Roberts pointed to numbers showing rural voter support sliding 14 points since 2024, from 63 percent for Trump to 49 percent for the GOP now, along with a 12-point drop among Hispanic voters.
Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law and a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, said recent reports show many rural and Republican voters simply refuse to participate in surveys.
“A lot of them are not even answering pollsters anymore because they really think that the system is totally broken. So I don't know that those numbers are totally accurate,” she said.
She argued the polling establishment has never made a serious effort to understand the bond between the president and his voters, and predicted a “huge disparity” between the final polls and actual results on November 4.
Why the Polls Could Be Undercounting Republicans
The skepticism is not limited to the Trump family. House Speaker Mike Johnson made a similar argument in a recent Fox News interview, saying surveys undersample MAGA Republicans who don't trust traditional pollsters, as the Miami Herald reported. The White House and other Trump allies have brushed off the negative numbers ahead of the midterms.
Polling experts caution that subgroup findings can swing sharply from month to month. Newsweek noted that recent national surveys interviewed registered voters rather than likely voters in individual battleground districts, and that sampling error runs larger for small subgroups, such as non-MAGA Republicans, than for the full sample.
Not everyone in the president's orbit shares the confidence. A former Trump official described the latest figures as a “death sentence” for MAGA, arguing that voter concerns about corruption have merged with economic frustration in ways that make the problem harder for Republicans to dismiss.
Fox News Polling Has Drawn Trump's Wrath
The president himself has turned publicly against Fox News over its coverage, attacking the network in a post that accused it of promoting “the Dumocrats, not the Republicans and MAGA,” according to the Daily Mail. The outburst followed Fox's own polling that put his approval rating underwater.
Even polling analysts friendly to the debate have flagged the Fox survey as rough terrain for the GOP. The New Republic published a piece calling the network's latest numbers “an absolute disaster,” while a polling expert who analyzed the findings demystified the fight over whether the surveys are capturing reality.
Trump's Seven-State Sprint Includes Iowa Stop on Thursday
Roberts laid out the president's travel schedule for the final stretch: Kansas on Monday, North Carolina on Tuesday, South Carolina on Wednesday, Iowa on Thursday, Florida on Friday, Georgia on Saturday, and Michigan on Sunday.
Roberts asked why the president would spend time in states like Kansas, South Carolina, and Florida that should be safely Republican. Lara Trump said her father-in-law “leaves nothing up to chance.”
“This is a workhorse of a president. Donald Trump is a machine,” she said. “Any place that he feels like he can go make an impact, drive up turnout, he is willing to go.”
What the Iowa Visit Means for Midterm Turnout
The Thursday rally gives Iowa Republicans a direct push in the campaign's closing days. Trump carried Iowa decisively in 2024, but midterm electorates are smaller and turnout operations matter more, which is exactly the gap the president's blitz is designed to close.
Lara Trump encouraged supporters to show up in person, saying the rallies are historic and that voters will never see another campaign like his.
“You are never going to have a president like Donald Trump. There's no one who's ever campaigned like he does,” she said. “This is a president who wants to work to the bitter end and leave absolutely nothing on the table and nothing to chance.”
The president has urged supporters to “vote like he's on the ballot,” a message Iowa Republicans will hear firsthand when he arrives Thursday, with Election Day set for November 4.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is Trump coming to Iowa?
The president is scheduled to hold a rally in Iowa on Thursday as part of a seven-state campaign swing running through Sunday, ahead of the November 4 midterm election.
Why does Lara Trump think the polls are wrong?
She says many rural and Republican voters distrust the polling industry and no longer answer survey calls, so the samples understate actual GOP support, a view echoed by House Speaker Mike Johnson.
What did the Fox News numbers show?
Anchor John Roberts cited data showing rural voter support for the GOP down 14 points since 2024, from 63 percent to 49 percent, and Hispanic support down 12 points, from 43 percent to 31 percent.