A leading pollster whom some consider to be the country’s leader recently made a startling prediction about the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, namely that former President Donald Trump is on pace for an electoral blowout of President Joe Biden.
In an interview with radio host Michael Patrick Leahy for The Tennessee Star, pollster John McLaughlin discussed what current state and national polling means, what polls to keep an eye on, and how to analyze new polling as it comes out in the months ahead.
McLaughlin began by pointing out that the more legal trouble Trump faces, the more his polling numbers rise.
“We see, apparently, every time the Department of Justice or a state left-wing district attorney indicts Donald Trump, his poll numbers go up,” Leahy began. “I’m looking at the Morning Consult poll today. Just came out: Trump 61; DeSantis 13; Haley 7; Ramaswamy 7; Pence 5; Christie 3; Scott 1; Burgum 1. Trump by 48 points.
“Morning Consult has Trump and Biden tied, but I’ve seen Trump up 9 in the Washington Post poll; and Trump up 3 in another. The polls say it’s looking good for Donald J. Trump,” he added, swinging it over to McLaughlin, who made his remarkable prediction:
Yes, because it would be an electoral landslide because when you look at it, due to the census, there’s a little more electoral vote our way.
But if you look at the toss-up states from last time and you say, ‘This means he’s going to win Wisconsin, Michigan’ – that’s why I went to Detroit last week to stand up for union workers, going to lose their jobs in China.
Arizona has 11 electoral votes.
Nevada 6 – we could win that. That was close last time.
We’ll win Georgia because they changed the election law to require a voter ID, not just for in-person but also for absentees—there are 16 electoral votes there.
We got a shot at Pennsylvania in spite of their attempts to manipulate the mail-in votes. There are 19 electoral votes there.
And Ohio has 7 – Ohio, we’re gonna win.
But there are 77 electoral votes that would switch.
So we would go from last time, 232 electoral votes – we’d be at 304 already.
He added:
I wish the election was tomorrow – and probably so do a lot of Americans, because when you refer to that Morning Consult poll as a tie? It’s a poll of 5,000 registered voters, not likely voters.
And the Trump voters are the most intense to come out. So we’re leading in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls.
We never saw this, by the way, in 2020 or 2016. We were, we were never ahead in the national popular vote, and we just got a national poll back last Wednesday of our own of 1,000 likely voters – people who tell us that they’re going to vote, that’s modeled after the 2020 turnout that has 46 percent telling us they voted for Biden in 2020 and only 42 percent saying they voted for Trump.
And Trump is winning that poll, 47 to 43 over Joe Biden, which means there’s a 2020 Biden voter, who’s now a 2024 Trump voter, and Trump is winning in the national popular vote.
