Trump Would Win if Party ‘Sent Him to an Island’ for Campaign: GOP Pollster

Former President Donald Trump, the GOP’s presidential nominee in this year’s election, has the issue of reminding people about his four years in office, pollster Greg Strimple suggested during a recent podcast.

As this year’s election draws closer, polls have shown a close race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as the race could be decided by small numbers of voters in crucial swing states.

“I think that the Trump campaign, not Donald Trump himself, is doing exactly what they need to do message-wise, which is talk about her [Harris] being too liberal on the economy, on immigration. So they’re doing that really well,” Strimple said on Politico’s Playbook Deep Dive podcast.

He continued: “The problem is their [the Republican Party] candidate, Donald Trump, is out there reminding everyone why they have PTSD from his four years as president. So if you took Donald Trump out of the picture and sent him to an island, I think you would actually win.”

Strimple joined his fellow Democratic pollster John Anzalone on the podcast to discuss how the candidates are fairing as well as which polls to keep an eye on and which to ignore.

Strimple, who worked on the campaigns of former Senator John McCain, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, suggested Harris is “doing a very good job of being the face of the campaign” but her campaign ads are “terrible.”

“Democrats are talking about issues when they should be talking about the fact that Donald Trump is irrational, erratic, out of control, January 6th, all these things—and they’re not doing it,” Strimple said. “I don’t think subtle contrasts work in American politics. Unless you’re taking a two-by-four to the other person’s head, you’re not going to be advancing.”

Harris’ success also comes from the fact she is viewed “as a Democratic nominee for president and not so much the vice president,” Anzalone said, who added that she’s “kind of won the battle up until this point.”

Newsweek has reached out to both Trump’s and Harris’ campaigns for comment via email.

Polling

On the podcast, Anzalone called Harris’ campaign the “biggest movement in modern presidential history.”

“I think that the difference that we see is that for the first time, the enthusiasm or motivation level for the Harris voter is now actually a little higher than that of the Trump voter, which again, tells me she moved young people double digits, African Americans double digits, Latinos double digits,” Anzalone said.

Polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight has Harris leading Trump nationally by 2.6 points as of Monday afternoon (48.5 to 45.9 percent). RealClear Polling has Harris up 2.1 points nationally over Trump (48.9 to 46.8 precent).

But picking the right poll to look at can be difficult. Anzalone said there are only “five or six credible polls,” listing ones like The Wall Street Journal, Pew Research, NBC, CBS and The Washington Post.

National aggregators essentially offer a general “pulse check” on the popular vote and do not weigh or consider Electoral College votes, which determine the election. The Oval Office is won by whichever candidate gets 270 Electoral College votes, not whether they win the popular vote. In 2016, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, so Trump won the election.

Specific polls can have biases as well, the pollsters suggested.

“A lot of time what the media concerns are using, aren’t the best methodology. They don’t spend the money to do it,” said Anzalone, who was the pollster for President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama.

Fox News, for example, uses “someone who clearly doesn’t know how to survey and it always makes the Democrat look better,” Strimple said.

Anzalone said the polling he and Strimple do for candidates is way different than the polls seen by third parties. Strimple noted the challenge of undecided voters as well as specific demographics like Black and Latino voters.

“I think one of the challenges that I have discovered not too long ago is that if you do online surveys of Republicans, you’re going to get more of a country club Republican than you’re going to get a hard-core Trump conservative Republican,” said Strimple.

When these people are the main demographic for Republicans in online surveys, it will look like Trump does not have a standing in the election, which Strimple said is not true.