Literally minutes after Fox News highlighted a recent CNN poll showing GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz trailing six points on Tuesday, anchor Harris Faulkner chastised Fox News commentator Leslie Marshall for daring to cite it during an on-air discussion.
At the top of Tuesday’s broadcast of Fox News midday chatfest Outnumbered, co-host (and former Trump press secretary) Kayleigh McEnany noted that the “Pennsylvania Senate matchup is in the spotlight” as Oz and Democratic Senate hopeful John Fetterman are set to face off in their only scheduled debate.
“It is a race that could determine which party controls the Senate. Polls show only single digits separating John Fetterman and Dr. Oz,” McEnany stated as the control room aired a large graphic of CNN’s latest survey showing Fetterman polling at 51 percent and Oz at 45 percent.
ADVERTISEMENT
Later in the roundtable discussion, Marshall was asked to give her take on the state of the pivotal race, and the longtime Democratic strategist quickly pointed to the latest poll to note that Fetterman is now leading outside the margin of error.
Additionally, she said, the CNN poll results—which show a wider lead for Fetterman than other recent surveys—may spell trouble for Oz’s favorability.
“His approval rating is not good,” Marshall said. “This is a problem for him. It’s not just being an outsider, as many view him in the state of Pennsylvania. It’s the personal attacks as a doctor on Fetterman’s health.”
The liberal Fox News pundit further claimed that the top political issues and Tuesday night’s debate won’t “matter as much” as voters’ personal views of the two candidates, adding that “people are pretty much set on who they will vote for” at this point.
Faulkner, though, immediately pushed back on Marshall’s citation of the CNN poll her show had just cited on-air—even going so far as to claim that she was unable to find any survey that showed a six-point lead for Fetterman.
“But wait, with your percentages, I want people to really understand. Last hour we looked at several polls. We do the [RealClear] Politics average on that. Fetterman is up by one percentage point.”
She continued, reading from her smartphone: “And CBS News battleground tracker poll—Pennsylvania Senate contest narrows, this was just a few hours ago—the most recent polling has them at barely two, just under two. Fetterman was up by five points last month. So, yeah, I don’t see six anywhere. I know you can find an outlier but that gets averaged in and it’s two percent or under. It is squeaky tight, Leslie.”
Of course, the poll Marshall referenced throughout the segment had just been plastered across the Fox News screen only nine minutes prior to Faulkner scolding her for citing it.
Perhaps one point of confusion for Faulkner, however, is that in the RealClear Politics polling data, the site is currently not counting the latest CNN poll in its average. While the poll was just released on Monday, the survey was conducted Oct. 13-17, and RCP is only averaging polls conducted after Oct. 19.
Furthermore, for some reason, RealClear Politics erroneously has the CNN poll showing Fetterman with just a five-point lead over Oz among likely voters.
