Why Trump's 'Brexit' Claim May Not Pan Out
It's a question of the numbers.
— -- Donald Trump has been ramping up the comparisons between the current U.S. presidential election and this summer's "Brexit" referendum in the U.K. as he tries to suggest that the polling is wrong.
According to an average of the polls, remaining a part of the European Union was slightly ahead leading up to the Brexit vote in June. But when it came time for the vote, those supporting the “British exit” from the EU won 52 to 48 percent.
Trump is suggesting that he believes a similar situation will unfold in the U.S., as he is down in a number of recent national polls but is banking on a different outcome on Nov. 8. In some part, he has attributed that on the campaign trail to oversampling of Democrats.
"There's going to be a lot of Brexit happening in about two weeks," Trump said at a rally today.
He's not alone in feeling that way. Nigel Farage, the former head of the U.K.'s Independence Party who was one of the leaders of the Brexit campaign, has spoken at several Trump rallies and commented on the similarities between Trump's campaign and the one he led across the pond.
In the spin room following the second presidential debate, Farage told ABC News that "this campaign can do the same thing" as Brexit, specifically talking about the polls being off.
ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd says that such a turn of events is less likely given the existing gap in the American polls at the moment. Clinton leads Donald Trump -- 49 to 40 percent -- among likely voters, according to this morning's ABC News tracking poll.
Dowd said that Brexit "was a very dead-even race" going into the referendum vote, but that doesn't appear to be the case in the U.S. presidential race, where Clinton leads outside the margin of error in a number of polls.
"It's very hard to overcome that," Dowd said on "Good Morning America."