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.”
Several pollsters recently told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they are unconvinced that 2024’s surveys will end up accurate. They said that although pollsters are working to avoid under-counting hard-to-reach Trump supporters, forecasting the breakdown of the electorate remains difficult due to the limitations of polling techniques in reaching groups like young men and non-college educated Americans.
“Donald Trump’s best polls in 2020 were eight points better than the poll averages in those states. So there was this idea, this universe, ‘Hey, maybe the averages are really underestimating Donald Trump,” Enten said. “This time around the question that I had was, are there still these polls that may indicate that the averages are really underestimating Donald Trump? This time around there’s really not the evidence for it.”
“The best polls for Trump actually only have him running about three points ahead of the polling average in the key Great Lake battleground states versus the eight last time around,” he added. “So last time around there was this group of pollsters that said, ‘Hey, wait a minute, the polling average may be underestimating Donald Trump.’ This time around, John, they simply put, do not exist.”
The data reporter also noted that the average 2022 midterm election poll in the Great Lake battleground states “underestimated Democrats by four points,” which could indicate pollsters have “been making adjustments” since 2020.
“The bottom line is this, dear audience and Mr. Berman: I think a lot of folks are sort of counting in that Donald Trump will in fact be underestimated by the polls. But when I’m looking at the evidence, I think you got to hold on a second,” Enten said. “Maybe that’ll happen. Maybe it’ll happen. But I think that there are folks who are underestimating the idea that maybe Kamala Harris will be underestimated by the polls at least a week out.”
Trump currently holds small leads over Harris in all of the top seven swing states, according to the RealClear Polling average.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Rumble/CNN)
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