MSNBC national affairs analyst John Heilemann said Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris had valid reasons to “panic” about the election.
Harris and former President Donald Trump were tied at 48% in the NBC News poll released Sunday, while a New York Times poll showed Harris drawing only 56% of Hispanic voters. Heilemann noted that Democrats had “good reason” to be concerned about Harris’ prospects.
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“I think there’s some PTSD, not just from 2016 but even 2020, where the polling miss in 2020 was bigger than the polling miss in 2016, comprehensively. Joe Biden was supposedly up by these large amounts, and we saw basically a four-point polling swing, polling miss across the battleground states,” Heilemann told “Morning Joe” co-host Willie Geist. “So there’s a lot of PTSD. I try to, in this piece, try to go through and say, hey, there are some reasons why Democrats — there is a case for panic.”
“There’s a case — there’s data out there that should alarm Democrats. You go through — you look at some of the things,” Heilemann continued. “When you hear people like Elissa Slotkin in Michigan or Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin privately telling people that the vice president is behind in those states, that’s a good reason to worry. You look at her numbers with African American voters, her numbers with Hispanic voters, that’s a good reason to worry.”
Trump has gained support among both black and Hispanic voters as the November election nears. Harris receives the support of 56% of likely Hispanic voters compared to 37% who support former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head match-up, The New York Times reported, six points lower than the 62% President Joe Biden received in 2020.
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Trump, who garnered 12% support from black voters in 2020 according to a CNN exit poll, exceeded that level of support in some general election polls, including August polls by CBS, which showed the former president getting 17% of black voters, and Fox News, which indicated 26% of black voters backed the former president. A CNN poll released in late September showed Harris leading Trump by 55% among black voters under the age of 60, compared to a 71% margin for President Joe Biden in 2020.
Heilemann also claimed that Democrats had reasons to feel good about the election.
“It is a tied race. It is uncomfortable for Democrats. It is a tied race. It’ll be a tied race all the way through to Election Day,” Heilemann said. “It’ll be maybe the closest election of our lifetimes. Everyone is going to be scared if they care about the future of the country. But don’t read polls in this kind of insane way over the course of this period of time because there’s really been nothing to learn from them for about a month and there’s not going to be for another three weeks. Race was tied, the race is tied.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.