Trump junks ‘phony’ polls

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla.—A defiant Donald Trump blamed his campaign struggles on “phony polls” from the “disgusting” media on Monday, fighting to energize his most loyal supporters as his path to the presidency shrinks.

With just 14 days until the election, the Republican nominee campaigned in battleground Florida as his team conceded publicly, as well as privately, that crucial Pennsylvania may be slipping away to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

That would leave him only a razor-thin pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House on Nov. 8.

Despite continued difficulties with women and minorities, Trump refuses to soften his message in the campaign’s final days to broaden his coalition. Yet he offered an optimistic front in the midst of a three-day tour through Florida as thousands began voting there in person.

“I believe we’re actually winning,” Trump declared during a round table discussion with farmers gathered next to a local pumpkin patch.

A day after suggesting the First Amendment to the Constitution may give journalists too much freedom, he insisted that the media are promoting biased polls to discourage his supporters from voting.

“The media isn’t just against me. They’re against all of you,” Trump told cheering supporters later in St. Augustine. “They’re against what we represent.”

In more bad news for Trump, a new poll shows young voters turning to Clinton now that the race has settled down to two main candidates. Clinton now leads among likely voters 18 to 30 years in age by 60 percent to 19 percent, according to a new GenForward survey.

Young black voters already were solidly in her corner, and now young whites are moving her way, according to the survey by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago with the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

With Trump on the defensive, Democrat Clinton worked to slam the door on his candidacy in swing state New Hampshire while eyeing a possible Democratic majority in the Senate.