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Trump polls show he is in better shape now than he was in 2020 and 2016

Posted on by Kennedy
Trump polls show he is in better shape now than he was in 2020 and 2016

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WASHINGTON — If polls are any guide — and there are many questions about that — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is in better shape now than he was at this point in 2020 and in his victorious White House campaign in 2016.

Yes, Trump is trailing Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in most polls. But the crucial caveat is that he lost to the incumbent vice president by a narrower margin than in his first two general elections – in which he did better with actual voters than with those who responded to pollsters.

To be sure, Republicans are counting on what some pollsters are calling the “hidden Trump vote,” although pollsters also say there is no certainty the group still exists. During a rally Wednesday in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed a poll showed him up 3 percentage points in the Keystone State, “which probably means 10.”

The Trump campaign, which lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just over two percentage points but won enough states to prevail in the Electoral College, also follows the theory that the closer the national ones, the better his chances Polls in 2024 are to win more votes.

This is not a given, said the pollsters.

This cycle, pollsters have changed their methods, in part to account for “hidden” Trump voters; That includes people who want to vote for him but don't want to say so publicly, or other supporters who are difficult to find through traditional voting methods such as phone calls. Additionally, various groups of voters are increasingly showing signs of increased turnout due to new issues, from anti-abortion laws to rising costs of living.

“There are fundamental questions that no one can answer until election day,” said pollster Frank Luntz.

Additionally, the national polls are less important than the individual state polls, and they are pretty much on par. Most polls are well within the margin of error in the seven key battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina.

“The only thing you can say with certainty is that the seven swing states are all very close to each other,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “They’re all practically undecided.”

Harris leads Trump by 1.8% as of Friday, according to the Real Clear Politics average of recent national polls.

At this point four years ago, Democratic nominee Joe Biden had a national RCP average lead of 10.3 percentage points over then-President Trump; Biden won the popular and electoral votes by a significantly smaller margin. In 2016, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton topped the national RCP average at 6%.

Both elections were much closer.

In 2016, Clinton won the popular vote over Trump 48.2% to 46.1% (the rest of the vote was split among third-party candidates, notably Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein). However, Trump won the Electoral College by a margin of 304 to 227 (plus seven “faithless electors” who voted for other candidates).

Four years later, Biden won the popular vote by a larger margin over Trump, 51.3% to 46.9%. He also took the Electoral College 306 to 232.

Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who studies data, said pollsters had corrected previous methodological errors. He also noted that Republican candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate were underperforming in the polls in the 2022 midterm elections, and that Trump himself was underperforming in the polls in this year's Republican presidential primary.

Harris and the Democrats are just as likely to have the hidden vote this time, he said.

“The election is really close,” Rosenberg said. “Everything is within the margin of error… But because we have significant financial and land advantages, we are still more likely to succeed.”

Ultimately, no one really knows whether this election will be more like 2016 or more like 2020 — or even something completely different.

“I think it’s somewhere in between,” Luntz said. “And that’s why it’s too close to call.”

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