People Are Becoming More Comfortable Publicly Supporting Trump: Top Pollster

5 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," HarrisX CEO Dritan Nesho reflected on a new HarrisX/Forbes poll after the debate, and said that voters are becoming more comfortable publicly supporting former President Trump.

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Transcript

00:00So let's now pivot. I know we've been spending a lot of time talking about President Biden.

00:04Let's talk about President Trump a little bit, because do you think the polls

00:08regarding him are accurate? Because in 2016, as we know, he was underestimated. In 2020,

00:13he overperformed the polls. And now he's winning against President Biden by a sustained margin,

00:20for a sustained period of time. So do you think the polls are accurate? What does that look like?

00:25I think that people are becoming more and more comfortable saying that they're supporting Trump.

00:31The more and more momentum he builds and the more and more resilience he shows in the polls. So I

00:38would expect the polls to be fairly close. Historically, you're right that polls have

00:45undercounted Trump's support, and especially phone polls when people are around other people

00:54and they don't necessarily want to say that they support Trump. Online polls are closer.

01:00But I feel that we are getting an accurate representation of the fact that the electorate

01:09is leaning towards Trump. It's going to be a close election, at least in terms of the popular

01:16vote. The big question is, how does it translate in the electoral college? And right now, what we're

01:22seeing in the state polling is Trump far ahead of Biden in many battleground states, which are

01:29essential to victory, sometimes by six points, by eight points, and even beyond. If that holds,

01:35then it'll be a sweep in the electoral college. And so what I would say is that we have to pay

01:41as much attention, if not more, to the state polls than we are to the national polls to really get a

01:47clear sense of the direction of the election. And I think the state polls are showing us that

01:52Trump is doing very, very well. And what about Nikki Haley voters? Does he have to be concerned

01:56about them anymore? Because as we know, a Nikki Haley Republican is very different from a Donald

02:02Trump Republican. But are those Nikki Haley Republicans watching that debate from Thursday

02:07night and saying, hey, listen, even though I said I'm a never-Trumper, I'm going to hold my nose,

02:12and I'm going to vote for Trump because he's the better option than Joe Biden?

02:16Well, I think what we're seeing, given also the sustained fundraising,

02:23is that this is not going to be a low turnout election. People seem to be very energized.

02:30It seems to be a similar election to 2020, where it's a high turnout election. In a situation like

02:36that, if you're in the Trump camp, you want to make sure that you are pulling as many Republican

02:44voters as possible and not allowing those voters to lapse. A key consideration here is who he will

02:52pick as vice president. We have done polling together with Forbes on Trump's vice presidential

02:58pick. And while on the surface, Republicans say that they prefer Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley,

03:06actually, when you ask the question, would you be more or less likely to vote for Trump if he picks

03:12fill-in-the-blank in terms of name, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott give him the most traction. Rubio

03:18with Latinos, and obviously, Scott with black voters. And I think that his vice presidential

03:27pick will go a long way in securing the soft Republican vote. But when you step back and you

03:34look at whose vote is stronger, whose support is stronger, Trump's support is significantly

03:39stronger right now than Biden's support. You see a lot more soft Biden voters than you see

03:44soft Trump voters. Thursday night's debate really seems like one of those touch points in an

03:49election that totally can change everything. A, do you agree? And B, what are you looking out for

03:56next between now and November? Well, I think, again, if the Democrats are going to stay the

04:04course and keep President Biden, their hope will be that this blows over and the narrative changes

04:10very quickly. So I would expect a flurry of activity from the Biden administration and the

04:17Biden campaign to change the narrative very quickly, focused on issues, focused on the

04:22things that voters want but didn't get during the debate because of the poor performance and the

04:28lack of focus on solutions that both of the candidates had. So I would expect sustained

04:36activity. On the other hand, you see even today Judge Meckham in New York pushing the sentencing

04:44of Donald Trump to take stock of some of the recent Supreme Court decisions on presidential

04:50immunity. So you see that the noose is loosening around Trump and it'll be very interesting to see

05:00what the Trump camp comes up with next in terms of an announcement. I think the vice president

05:08announcement is really the next big temple for them and that's an announcement that,

05:15while I don't think it can hurt President Trump either way, making a wise choice can certainly

05:22help him and it seems like that choice is somewhere between Marco Rubio and Tim Scott

05:27right now based on the polling.

People Are Becoming More Comfortable Publicly Supporting Trump: Top Pollster

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