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The Twitter account of Republican pollster Rasmussen Reports just tweeted this:

Last night @donlemon called for the rioting to end, "because it's showing up in the polling."

What polling? The media polling after the DNC Convention that was never released over the weekend.

Yes, folks, it exists. You’re just not allowed to see it.

My question is, is Rasmussen Reports right that polling from after last week’s Democratic National Convention was concealed?

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    This is hard to say, really. "The media" is not monolithic. It is possible (indeed, likely) that a right-wing news organization might soft-pedal some of the poll results post-DNC, since Biden got a substantial bump, but that's not "the media", any more than MSNBC is "the media". Polls from this week are broadly available. VTC until the question can be restated in a fashion that can be more meaningfully answered.
    – jdunlop
    Aug 26, 2020 at 18:47
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    Unlikely, since different media brands support different party politics. Are you suggesting there was a media conspiracy to conceal it? Who is Don Lemon? Does rioting cease when Don Lemon speaks? If the poll was suppressed, how does Don Lemon know "it's showing up in the polling"?
    – Weather Vane
    Aug 26, 2020 at 19:43
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    Conjecturing, so not an answer: Perhaps Rasmussen Reports is alluding to polling conducted by or on behalf of the Democratic Party / the Biden campaign. Parties and campaigns do conduct their own polls. They tend to brag about their own polling results when the results are good, but they also tend to keep the results private when they're not so good.
    – David Hammen
    Aug 27, 2020 at 8:14
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    Sorry, I just don't understand the question. Or rather, I don't understand how it relates to the text in the quoted tweet. The quoted tweet does not seem to be saying the media covered up anything, though it does indicates someone covered up something "over the weekend". Or maybe it's that some particular polling done on the weekend was intentionally never released? Is "media polling" a jargon that I don't know?
    – user11643
    Aug 27, 2020 at 22:49
  • @fredsbend How political polling generally works is that a media outlet teams up with a pollster. Like the Washington Post might team up with Gallup. The Washington Post pays Gallup to conduct the poll, and then in exchange the Washington Post gets to announce the results of the poll. Rasmussen Reports is suggesting that the media got polling results unfavorable to Joe Biden, and then they chose to suppress the results rather than announcing them. It’s a conspiratorial claim about liberal media bias. In any case I removed “by the media” from my question, if that helps.
    – Keshav Srinivasan
    Aug 27, 2020 at 22:56

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Trivially false: FiveThirtyEight lists four general-election polls by three groups that were released on the 22nd or 23rd.

That said, it's uncommon for poll results to be released on a weekend. In comparison to the four on the weekend, FiveThirtyEight lists ten nationwide poll results by four groups and fifteen single-state polls by six groups that were released on either Friday the 21st or Monday the 24th.

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    I guess it's possible Rasmussen is referring to some other polling ... but then, how would we know or answer that? Apparently the context is Lemon complaining about rioting "showing up in the polling". So if any of those polls address that, noting so would bolster this answer.
    – user11643
    Aug 27, 2020 at 22:54
  • I'm thinking, after the OP better explained the question to me, this is not a good answer without showing that any of those polls are both from CNN and about Democrats and rioting. Alternatively, you could quote a reputable source saying CNN has no polls they could conceal. It's basically "link only" as it is now.
    – user11643
    Aug 28, 2020 at 16:15
  • @fredsbend - There is no way to know whether political or media organizations have conducted polls that have not been released to the public. If said polls were conducted and intentionally were not released, the non-release would be covered by non-disclosure agreements. This is not conspiracy thinking with regard to political organizations; this is SOP. Political organizations brag about their good internal polling, say nothing when their internal polling is bad. Whether supposedly biased media organizations do this (hire a pollster, hide undesired results) is a different matter.
    – David Hammen
    Aug 28, 2020 at 16:32
  • @DavidHammen Then "trivially false" in this answer is a gross simplification.
    – user11643
    Aug 28, 2020 at 16:34
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    @fredsbend - That some polls were indeed released makes the claim trivially false. Whether Don Lemon was privy to data that were intentionally hidden: How in the world could you prove or disprove this?
    – David Hammen
    Aug 28, 2020 at 16:39

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