Former 1988 Democrat presidential candidate Michael Dukakis is warning former Vice President and presumptive 2020 Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden that he should not take polls too seriously.
The presumptive 2020 Democrat presidential nominee is currently ahead of President Donald Trump by 50-38, according to a recent Fox News poll. Biden also leads the president by 8.8 percentage points, according to the latest average of national polls put together by RealClearPolitics.
At around the same time in late July 1988, a Newsweek/Gallup poll showed Dukakis leading 55-38 over former President George H.W. Bush, the Boston Globe reported.
Dukakis was in a similar position at this time of year when he was running for president against Bush in 1988, and had warned Biden that “polls should be studied cautiously.”
“Particularly this year, [polls] should be studied cautiously,” Dukakis told the Globe. “Biden can and should win, but being at 50, no matter how weak your opponent is, is no guarantee of success.”
Dukakis’s numbers took a nosedive after a series of gaffes and public relations blunders, as well as a dispassionate debate performance in the second presidential debate with Bush.
The former 1988 Democrat presidential candidate recalled one time his poll numbers dropped eight percentage points when then-President Ronald Reagan called him an “invalid.”
“I never took those polls seriously,” he told the Globe.
The issue of mental sharpness is something that has affected both Biden and Trump, who are both in their seventies.
Dukakis ultimately lost his election to Bush, who won 426 electoral college votes while he only won 111.
Before Dukakis ran for president, he served as Massachusetts’ governor for multiple terms, once from 1975 to 1979, and for the second time from 1983 to 1991.