Kamala Harris's poll numbers have taken a dive in recent days, and now she's down double digits in some polls. What's going on? Pollster Mark Mitchell joins us to explain what s going on, and why it's a big deal.
00:02:35.000Yeah, that's what everybody's calling Kamala momentum.
00:02:37.000And it didn't last too long in our numbers.
00:02:40.000And I think the reason this chart's important is because I'm the only one putting it out.
00:02:44.000So I think this is maximum transparency.
00:02:47.000And the narrative in the media that's being shaped about Kamala Harris's polling is that it keeps getting better and better.
00:02:54.000But if you look at the blue line, she basically shot up to 45 and it sat there between 44 and 45 the whole time in my numbers.
00:03:03.000Now, what's different about me and everybody else is that I didn't change anything.
00:03:07.000And I think what's probably happening in some of these push polls that are coming out from New York Times, Siena and ABC News and all these other folks, ABC News, the people, by the way, who own FiveThirtyEight and kicked us out of the aggregate and now have Harris up four nationally.
00:03:21.000What's happening is I think that they're selectively changing their methodology.
00:03:27.000New York Times, Siena actually came out about it this weekend and said, admitted basically that, yes, we think we're oversampling Biden supporters, but we are not using the 2020 recalled vote to correct for it.
00:03:41.000Well, I am. And I'm not oversampling Biden.
00:03:44.500I'm basically trying to match what I think an accurate picture of the electorate is.
00:03:49.420And you could say, well, maybe you're a little too right or by a point or two, or maybe I think we were left in 2020.
00:03:55.500But if you take that red line and move it up or down a point or two, the story still remains.
00:04:02.060Kamala Harris's numbers are going sideways.
00:04:51.760And regardless of what you think about him, they got rid of Nate Silver and brought in a new guy who, in our opinion, is a bit of an ideologue.
00:04:59.160But what real clear politics is, and we know the founders, they're just straight shooters.
00:05:04.340You can think of them like a menu of polling.
00:05:06.940It's a straight average, and they link you to the crosstabs, and they have standards about what polls they put on there or not.
00:05:13.280FiveThirtyEight is a black box prediction model that exists to drive narratives.
00:05:19.820And I've personally seen them do some pretty underhanded stuff.
00:05:23.020And in my opinion, they kicked us out, quite frankly, I think, reason numero uno.
00:05:28.360And the last time I called into your show without video was the weekend last year where they were threatening to drop us because we go on War Room to discuss our polling.
00:05:39.280That was the number one issue they could get with us.
00:06:23.880They're likely voter polls, which sets us apart from most other pollsters.
00:06:27.660And what you're seeing here, the two-way is just Harris or Trump.
00:06:31.500The six-way is including all the third-party characters.
00:06:34.300And I think the headline takeaway here is that Trump is roughly tied within the margin of error in every single one of these.
00:06:44.560Obviously, Harris is doing a little bit better in Michigan.
00:06:47.020Trump's doing better in Arizona and Nevada.
00:06:50.380Basically tied in Pennsylvania, but all within the margin of error.
00:06:53.520Now, I will say if people saw our July numbers, these are tighter and not as good for Trump.
00:07:02.260And what I would say to that is that we sampled – I mean, a lot of this polling was still being done during the DNC and all the positive press.
00:07:11.500I mean, a lot of these numbers were collected even before she started dropping her communist economic policies.
00:07:17.440And so my theory is I think that her support is going to wither away as she's exposed to more scrutiny.
00:07:27.200And what we may be seeing here is her top pick.
00:07:30.420Maybe not, but that's what I think might happen.
00:07:38.640So this is the 2020 change from our polling.
00:07:44.500Everybody asks me how come your polling shows Trump doing so well at a national level, but then how come the swing states are so close like this?
00:07:54.840And what I would say is our polling showed that Trump was nowhere close in the swing states.
00:07:59.620Everybody calls us a right-wing pollster, but we showed Trump down five to eight points in most of the battlegrounds four years ago.
00:08:07.600And so he's doing better six or seven points than he was in our polling.
00:08:13.940That's a massive pickup, and it matches, in my opinion, the amount that he's doing better in the RealClearPolitics national aggregate as well.
00:09:25.860And the generic ballot, the Republicans are up a little bit more than Trump's up.
00:09:32.640So walk us through what you're seeing there and any thoughts on what the issues are that are driving stuff.
00:09:40.000So this is a pretty big likely voter poll.
00:09:44.800And I think you're going to start to see the same kind of pattern here, is that regardless of where Trump and Harris are at, in all these battleground states, the Republican challenger is losing quite a bit.
00:09:56.040Now, some of them are a little bit better, and I was surprised at how they shook out.
00:10:00.360But this is the worst Kerry Lake's done in our polling.
00:10:02.900And, again, I don't know if it's this one particular sample, last time we had Kerry Lake down three points.
00:10:09.060And then the generic ballot, the Republicans seem to be doing pretty well.
00:10:13.880If that number holds up, it will spell the same kind of pickup maybe a little bit better than in 2022.
00:10:20.600The other thing I want to call out on this slide is the Sponsored by Numbers USA, which is a really great nonpartisan immigration organization.
00:10:31.260They're going to be the reasons people will be able to go read all the crosstabs.
00:10:35.180And it's a very rich issue-based poll that focused on why people are voting, but it also gets into specifically the issue of illegal immigration.
00:10:42.760Lots of really great questions in there, but I think for me the biggest takeaway is despite all that, despite the fact that by a two-to-one margin, voters think the issue at the southern border is a crisis, strong majority, roughly 60 percent of people, depending on the state, think that Biden purposely is ushering people across.
00:11:01.640Despite all that, economy is by far still the biggest issue in voters' minds, even more so than in July.
00:11:09.220And, Mark, do you distinguish when you do the economy from inflation?
00:11:15.140I mean, is it inflation-driven or is it deeper than that?
00:11:21.080Well, we have two different sets, which is in this one, which is something we don't always do because we don't have the room.
00:11:27.900And I'm looking here specifically at just Nevada because I pulled it up.
00:12:39.080Everybody doesn't like the illegal immigration, but it's just not – it's not getting the share of wallet right now, if you know what I mean.
00:13:39.940But I think, again, it's just the same trend we've seen in the other ones, which is that it's about two points left of where it was for us in July.
00:13:48.380I think we had Trump up one in the two-way and down one in the six-way.
00:13:54.460And, again, maybe this is Kamala Harris' top tick, but I think the economic message is probably going to play pretty well there.
00:14:02.220And, again, it's within the margin of error.
00:14:08.180Rodgers is doing a lot better than the other senators, and he's doing better than Republicans, which is pretty crazy.
00:14:14.700That's kind of unique in this particular state.
00:14:19.060But, again, we're looking at numbers that are six points better, seven points better than where we had Trump four years ago.
00:17:08.140There's a specific reason we deep-dived illegal immigration.
00:17:12.960And I think there are probably single-line hot-button issues like fracking in Pennsylvania that would evoke people's ire.
00:17:21.900But I think, in my opinion, it all basically comes back to economy.
00:17:25.400And believe it or not, like on the border, the people in Michigan weren't that much different than the people in Arizona and Nevada.
00:17:32.040I was just saying before the break, the biggest takeaway to me, though, is that Michigan's two points left of where it was in our July polling.
00:17:39.320But in between these two polls, Trump was shot.
00:18:07.040I want to—Montana is—the only thing I want to point out in Montana is the fact that, Mark, the Senate's tied now, right?
00:18:19.280It's 50-50, is that—and there's, like, how many seats—this one actually looks like we can pick up this seat.
00:18:31.800Sheehee's beaten Tester, who's a truly vile individual, by a full seven points.
00:18:38.580How many seats—can we lose any that we have now, and how many might we pick up?
00:18:50.200What's your sense of your polling at this point?
00:18:53.140I don't think—this is a tough one for me to answer, because I think what we're seeing here is probably the result of very targeted negative advertising in each of these battleground states in a way that's probably not playing out nationally.
00:23:21.100We've asked questions about, specifically in Pennsylvania, would you support a law to massively increase, you know, drilling for oil?
00:23:30.540Well, and the numbers, like 63 percent, I think it was, at least some would support that.
00:23:35.060So I think when the narratives break through after the convention period sort of wears off, now I don't know what's going to happen with the debates, but ostensibly some debate should happen.
00:23:52.020And ostensibly, Harris is going to release more policy positions that are going to get picked apart.
00:23:58.080Even some of the people in the left-wing media were doing that.
00:24:02.980I think it's like with Pennsylvania, this close.
00:24:06.540What freaks me out about Pennsylvania is that early voting starts on September 16th.
00:24:12.020I mean, what is going on in this country?
00:24:15.760We're supposed to have an election in November, and you've got like this two-month rolling time where people are voting, and by the time of the second debate, half the people in Pennsylvania may have voted.
00:24:30.840I mean, how do you account for that in polling?
00:24:35.160Well, the one thing I will say, that's three weeks from now, and that's a million years in this election cycle.
00:24:40.060We could have another assassination attempt.
00:24:42.440We could have stuff happen with Trump's criminal convictions.
00:24:47.200Let's suppose you come up with a poll on October 10th, right, for Pennsylvania, and you look at this, and it turns out that there's been a significant increase for Trump support, hypothetically.
00:25:03.880But half the people have already voted, so it doesn't—
00:25:07.060Does that—I mean, that's—from a pollster's point of view, I'm asking you, how big a problem does that present for you when you're doing your polls and you come out and you have your, like, day before game day in November and you get your ass kicked because everybody already voted and your poll was wrong?
00:25:28.220I mean, talk to me about how you think about that.
00:25:30.880I care less and less about that because what I've noticed is that when we released, like, a weekly poll, we were doing it with generic ballot, we're doing it here.
00:25:41.060The numbers do swing, and I think before, you know, 10, 20 years ago, we'd be worried about things like a sudden release of information about swift boats, right, and military service, or Hillary Clinton emails.
00:25:56.140And if you look at our polling back then, there really was this sort of neck-and-neck swing back and forth as new information came to light.
00:26:03.400But they were both, like—there was no incumbency there.
00:26:06.740And basically, the two candidates here are incumbents, and everybody knows them.
00:26:11.980And not only that, they've rallied behind their candidate pick almost like some kind of political Armageddon.
00:26:18.460And so, again, with just in the last month and a half, with everything that's happened, it barely moved our numbers.
00:26:26.340And I think it's just going to be a grind-out to Election Day, and I don't think there's going to be much in the way of any swings unless some black swan happens.
00:26:34.620I mean, like, what could possibly happen?
00:26:52.400But it's like, what else is really going to move the numbers outside of, like, two or three points maximum?
00:26:57.260And you come back to the fact that not just in our numbers but in the RealClearPolitics aggregate, Trump is doing seven points better than he was doing four years ago because the polling industry overstates Democrat support, period.
00:28:12.560Another day, another breaking news story buried.
00:28:14.920They'd rather talk about anything else than what's really going on.
00:28:18.000It's not because they don't know what's happening.
00:28:20.140The media pundits and talking heads just don't want to pay any attention to it, and they particularly don't want you paying any attention to it.
00:28:27.460The real stories, you have to look beyond the headlines for them.
00:28:31.360You know the truth is being covered up.
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00:34:07.240So I want to put out a little urgent 911 call right here from the war room to one of my absolute favorite senators, and that's Rick Scott of Florida.
00:34:26.940If you want to be the Senate majority leader, which I would strongly support, you can't do that unless we win the Senate.
00:34:40.380And I'm looking at these numbers, and except in Montana, we're getting our ass kicked by incomprehensible double digits in the Senate races.
00:34:56.420I mean, it's like, what's going on, Rick?
00:34:59.520So please, and MSNBC, CNN, Fox, whoever, say, give me a headline on this.
00:35:11.080Navarro blasts the Senate Republicans for laying down on the job.
00:35:18.280You know, maybe they're trying to sandbag Trump because they don't actually want power.
00:35:26.820And is it because Mitch McConnell is on life support and it's his last, like, screw job of Donald Trump, even though he says he supports him now?
00:36:11.640I haven't seen any major headlines out of here, and I think probably most of the people watching there, Democrats, are preaching to the choir on this.
00:36:18.920I think it's still a millennium until the election, and a lot of stuff could happen.
00:36:24.620I think at some point people are going to want to see substance.
00:36:28.840I think at some point there's probably going to be mistakes she makes that they don't have the media unity to paper over, let's just say.
00:36:38.440I think, again, I don't know what the debate picture is going to look like after the September 4th decision, so we'll just have to wait and see.
00:36:47.380But she's going to have to get up and talk at some point, and this is, you know, Trump is basically tied in the battlegrounds.
00:36:55.820Here's the cross tab I want to see from you, Mark.