Former President Donald Trump maintains his strength in the polls despite a major shake-up in the 2024 campaign over the past month fueling the perception that Democrats have gained an edge in the race for the White House, a pollster told The Daily Wire in a new interview.
Brent Buchanan, president and founder of Cygnal, spoke with “Morning Wire” co-host John Bickley about what is happening in the polls after Vice President Kamala Harris took the place of President Joe Biden atop the Democratic Party’s ticket.
Shrugging off the view that Harris has been surging ahead of Trump in the last few weeks, Buchanan said, “the bigger narrative that I think is being totally missed in the media right now is that Trump’s actually still holding his own and doing well. Kamala just appears to be doing better compared to Biden because his floor was so low.”
He added, “It was unrealistically, artificially low in the sense that there were going to be plenty of voters who did not like the guy showed up, held their nose and voted for Biden anyways, and it just wasn’t showing up in polling, but there’s been no degradation of Trump’s ballot share in these polls since they pulled in a swap-a-roo at the top of the ticket.”
Biden dropped out of the 2024 race last month after a fumbling debate performance spurred fellow Democrats to increasingly call on him to step aside because of concerns about his mental capacity and electability. Polls had shown Biden lagging behind Trump before he did so. Now, Harris is enjoying a spat of surveys that show her ahead.
However, a recent CNBC poll found Trump holding a 2-point lead over Harris and a significant edge when it came to the economy. Buchanan called it a “bipartisan” survey because it featured the work of a Democrat pollster and a Republican pollster.
They “both have a profit motive to be correct ’cause they don’t make their money or they’re not being funded to do a bunch of public polls,” Buchanan said. “They do mostly private work for campaigns and, and businesses. So, you know, I tend to put a lot more stock in those types of polls. And what we really pay attention to in polling is not where is it now, but where has it come from and, and why did it get there?”
Buchanan said the overall polling picture is likely to look different by mid-September, after the so-called “honeymoon” period for Harris, because she will be more of a defined candidate in the eyes of voters.
As it stands, Harris has taken few questions from reporters since replacing Biden and is only just beginning to reveal her positions on policy. With at least one debate between the candidates coming up in the next couple months, Harris in particular faces a risk if voters see her “babbling on about nonsense” without the help of a teleprompter, whereas Trump has already grown into expectations that he “says something that is perceived as kind of off the wall,” Buchanan said.
With Harris picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate, setting up a VP clash against Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), Buchanan argued the Democrats have chosen to run with “the most progressive, leftist ticket that has ever existed in American history” out of line with most voters. Buchanan, who said he was involved in Dr. Scott Jenson’s unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign against Walz in 2022, also noted that the “stolen valor” accusations may not have the same impact as policy because it “takes a bit of nuance to explain the issue.”
Pressed on what his prediction is for the election in November, Buchanan demurred, saying, “There’s just, there’s too many twists and turns between now and then.” He suggested there could be “black swan events” that can disrupt the race, but ultimately contended, “I think if Trump stays on his trajectory and really holds to message on policy and contrast this of, you know, ‘Here’s the America that you’ll get to live in if she is in charge, and here’s the America you’ll get to live in and you already got to experience under me before COVID’ … that choice becomes very easy for the American public.”
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