Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump complained about "phony" polls that show his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton extending her lead in his latest attack on a "rigged" election.
Mr Trump, who trails Mrs Clinton by six points based on an average of polls, tweeted on Monday morning that the Democrats were making up polls in an effort to suppress votes for him.
"We are winning and the press is refusing to report it. Don't let them fool you – get out and vote!" he proclaimed on Twitter, contradicting his campaign manager Kellyanne Conway who acknowledged on a Sunday talkshow on NBC that he was trailing. "We are behind," she said.
A new election tracking poll by ABC News on Sunday showed Mr Trump lagging Mrs Clinton by 12 percentage points among expected voters, by 50 per cent to 38 per cent.
The New York businessman, speaking at an event with farmers in Florida, declared the ABC News poll “phony” and announced to his supporters: “I actually think we’re winning.”
“We’re up in Ohio. We’re up in Iowa. We’re doing great in North Carolina. I think we’re doing great in Florida. I think we’re going to win Florida big,” he said.
At a rally in St Augustine, Florida, on Monday afternoon, Mr Trump continued his line of attack, citing one of the leaked emails that surfaced on Wikileaks belonging to Mrs Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta. He claimed that the polls were biased towards Democratic voters. "The system is corrupt and it's rigged, and it's broken, and we're going to change it," he said.
Trailing Hillary Clinton
But even the businessman conceded at one point on Monday that he was trailing Mrs Clinton, telling a North Carolina radio station that he was “somewhat behind in the polls but not by much”.
Mr Trump insisted that he still had a chance, referring to the UK’s Brexit vote in which the Remain side was leading in polls before the referendum in June. “I think we’re gonna have – whether it’s Brexit or beyond Brexit – I think we’re gonna have a Brexit situation,” he said.
The Trump campaign released a memo claiming that the Republican was still running a close race in Wisconsin, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Colorado, when most polls show Mrs Clinton in a strong lead in each of those states, pushing them from swing states to likely Democratic wins.
At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, Mrs Clinton continued her attacks on Mr Trump, criticising the Iraqi-led military assault in Mosul intended to remove Islamic State militants from the city. The Republican nominee called the operation “a total disaster”. “He’s basically declaring defeat before the battle has even started,” said Mrs Clinton.
Appearing with the Democratic nominee at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, Massachusetts, senator Elizabeth Warren used Mr Trump's own words from the last presidential debate against him.
“Get this, Donald: nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart and nasty women vote,” Mrs Warren told a crowd of about 4,000 people at the liberal arts college. “On November 8th, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever.”
