CNN’s Harry Enten Dumps Cold Water On Theory Trump Will ‘Outperform His Polls’ For Third Time

CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten on Tuesday suggested that former President Donald Trump is unlikely to “outperform his polls” for a third consecutive presidential election.

Prominent Trump critics, such as James Carville and Donny Deutsch have voiced concerns that Trump could exceed his projected poll numbers again, as he did in 2016 and 2020, which would increase his chances of defeating Vice President Kamala Harris in their tight race. However, Enten argued on “CNN News Central” that it “would be historically unprecedented” for polling to “underestimate” Trump for a third time.

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“Is there any precedent that the polls will underestimate Donald Trump once again? Because that’s all we hear about, ‘Oh, Donald Trump’s going to outperform his polls.’ So I went back and checked out whether or not a party outran the polls three presidential election cycles in a row in the key battleground states,” Enten told host John Berman. “It’s never happened. It’s never happened. Zero times, zero times since 1972. So if the polls are going to underestimate Donald Trump once again, that would be historically unprecedented.”

“Now maybe you want to make the argument that Donald Trump himself is historically unprecedented. But what normally happens is the pollsters catch on. ‘Hey, we‘re underestimating, we’re not taking into account some part of the electorate,’” he added. “They make adjustments and I think that helps to explain why we have never seen that the same party has been underestimated three times in a row in presidential elections at least over the last 52 years.”