CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten said Tuesday that former President Donald Trump will secure a large election victory in November if 2024 polls are as inaccurate for him as they were in 2020.
Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are locked in a tight race across seven key battleground states, according to the RealClearPolling average and Enten’s aggregate of polling data. The data reporter, on “CNN News Central,” noted that if Trump outperforms his polling numbers by the same margin he did against President Joe Biden in 2020, he will win enough battleground states to defeat Harris by a substantial margin.
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“If the polls are exactly right, Kamala Harris gets 276 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 262 because she carries those Great Lake battleground states despite losing North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona. But let’s say we have a polling miss like we had in 2020,” Enten said. “What happens then? Well, then Donald Trump wins the election in a blowout with 312 electoral votes because he carries all these Great Lake battleground states plus Nevada, plus the other states he was leading in — Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.”
“What happens if we have a polling miss like 2022? Well, in that particular case, now, the winner has flipped again. And Kamala Harris wins in a blowout with 319 electoral votes because she retakes those Great Lake battleground states, carries North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona,” he added. “So the bottom line here is, yes, we have those state polling averages. But the real thing they tell us is that this race is too close to call. We’re probably not going to know who’s going to win for another month and perhaps another month and change.”
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NBC News national political correspondent Steve Kornacki said in September that, despite Harris’ slim advantage over Trump at the time, the former president has a significant chance of victory in the electoral college because he has outperformed polling expectations in both of his previous presidential elections.
“Take a look here at the last two elections, 2020, 2016, the polling at this point coming out of Labor Day, beginning the fall rush,” Kornacki told host Ana Cabrera. “In 2016, Hillary Clinton led on average by five points. Of course, Donald Trump won in 2016. And Joe Biden had an even bigger lead on average, Labor Day 2020. Donald Trump didn’t win that election, but certainly in the electoral college, he came this close to doing so, Ana. So Trump has run from behind before, certainly.”
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Trump has also been gaining support from “working class voters,” such as nonwhite Americans without college degrees and union members. Enten on Monday said that Harris could offset the former president’s gains with her substantial backing among college graduates, “specifically white voters with a college degree.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.