Frank Luntz Stunned By Kamala Harris’s Growing ‘Intensity Advantage’ As Trump Is ‘Committing Political Suicide’
Pollster and former GOP strategist Frank Luntz joined CNBC’s Squawk Box on Wednesday morning to discuss the latest polling in the presidential race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Host Andrew Ross Sorkin kicked off the segment by noting, “Polls in the presidential race showing Vice President Kamala Harris gaining ground in some swing states and even eroding some of the former President Trump’s lead in Florida. Our next guest says if the election were held today, she would win. Joining us right now is pollster and political strategist Frank Luntz. That’s a turn.”
“It’s more than that,” replied Luntz.
“That’s a plot twist,” Ross Sorkin joked.
“She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden. So the entire electoral pool has changed. And if it continues in this direction, you have to start to consider Democrats winning the Senate and Democrats winning the House. The actual people who are participating. She’s got intensity now. She’s got an intensity advantage. She’s got a demographic advantage. And I haven’t seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime,’ Luntz declared.
“How big is that? That marginal extra voter that she’s bringing in? I mean, how much does that change the pool?” followed up Melissa Lee.
“One percent, maybe two. That’s it. But that’s enough,” Luntz replied.
Ross Sorkin jumped in, asking, “Can I just ask you, though, about the, veracity, frankly, of the polls right now because you go back and look, there was an interesting report yesterday showing that if you look at where Donald Trump was in terms of what the what the polling showed this back in 2016 undercounted, you know, even in 2020 — undercounted. And so, you know, you start to think about the, you know, margin of error or situation where maybe she’s up, you know, 1 or 2%. But, you know, is the Trump vote fully counted?”
“But that’s why my process is not just to do the numbers. It’s also to do the focus groups to listen, to understand why people feel this way. And now my groups are broken up by young women saying I’m not voting for him anymore. Make no mistake, there are three attributes – three components,” Luntz replied as Ross Sorkin interjected:
Think it’s a switch? It’s not because you just said I’m not voting for them anymore. So you think they were voting for Donald Trump? And now they’re voting for Harris.
Luntz replied, “The people who are undecided have all collapsed towards Harris. The people who are weak Trump have all collapsed towards undecided. It’s his broad shift. I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this because they don’t exist as undecided voters.”
“And… you shift the demographics and you shift the entire outcome? There are issues, attributes, and the conditions of the country. The issues and conditions favored Donald Trump. He should be winning this election. But the attributes are so much in Harris’s favor that he’s not. The very attributes that Trump office in the best example, you did the story on the UAW. Why is Donald Trump saying publicly, I want to fire the same people that he’s getting now, still getting union members? It’s ridiculous. It’s as though he’s lost control. And I know that there are billionaires who watch this show who are spending a lot of money on Donald Trump, and they don’t understand why he’s committing political suicide,” Luntz concluded.
Watch the clip above via CNBC.
