Why The Trump Vs. Harris Polls Might Be Misleading: ‘It’s Called The Keystone State For A Reason’

The following is an edited transcript of a Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire. Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley sits down with Brent Buchanan, president and founder of Cygnal Polling Group, to discuss the 2024 presidential election.

Democrats are presenting an increasingly optimistic view of the November election, pointing to the edge Kamala Harris holds on Donald Trump in national polls and some gains she’s made in battleground states. They’re even now talking up the prospect of Democrats winning back control of the House of Representatives. But is that optimism actually backed up by the data and past elections? We sat down with a polling expert who says most news outlets and pundits are failing to ask the right questions and look at the right data to see how the election is really shaping up.

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JOHN: Joining us to discuss the state of the presidential race just over two months out is Brent Buchanan, founder and president of Cygnal Polling Group. Brent thanks for coming on. Now, you’ve said there’s a polling data point that most news outlets are failing to notice – and that’s the difference between how Vice President Harris is performing against Trump versus how Biden and Clinton were doing against him at this point. Can you unpack that for us? 

BRENT: Yes. History is an important context piece when you’re thinking about political campaigns. And if we go back and look at where the presidential race stood — because this is the third time Donald Trump’s been on the ballot, 2016, 2020, and now 2024. We have to look back and see — where was [Hillary] Clinton at that time? Where was Biden at that time? And where is Harris at that time? I think we’ve just been in this euphoria as Republicans thinking, look, Donald Trump is going to destroy Joe Biden. He’s ahead by 5 points in the polls. That, however, is not taking into account the reality of history. And so once Harris shored up several of Biden’s deficiencies with certain voter groups, it still doesn’t get her anywhere near where Biden and Clinton were polling at this point in August. And I’ll also make this point too, that August is a really bad polling month for Republicans. And so if you look at pretty much any race for Congress, Senate, president — doesn’t matter — for some reason, Republicans look worse in August than they do closer to election day.

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JOHN: What kind of reversal have we seen in the past in terms of how a Republican is doing at this point versus the election?

BRENT: Well, Donald Trump was down by, I think, 7.1 points in the averages at this point in 2020 against Joe – and that’s again, a national percentage, which we know there’s not a national vote. But if we compare that to the actual national vote, Biden only won by 4.5%. So that’s a 2.6% difference between where Joe Biden was polling and where he ended up. And right now, the best case scenario for Kamala Harris, if you look at the FiveThirtyEight average, which I think is exaggerated, it has her at 3.5%. So that would put her right at one point ahead of Trump, which is nowhere near enough to win.

JOHN: Can you explain that for us? Why is that not large enough of a gap for a Democrat to win?

BRENT: Just think back to 2020. If Joe Biden’s at 4.5% nationally on the popular vote, and he only won four states by a cumulative 70,000 votes, that is a really, really narrow, thin victory. If you extrapolate being less than 4.5% ahead as the Democrat, you start to see that the margins within the state widen. And I’ll give you an example. I just went through a national survey that came out this week by YouGov, which, in my mind, has a questionable record. They had Harris up by one this week. And what’s funny is this exact same poll at Biden’s worst point in mid-July had Biden and Trump tied, and then they did a Harris-Trump ballot, and that was tied also. So even before the swap out, she’s basically only moved a point within this one poll. And if you go back and look, that’s where you’ve got this big difference with even just this one poll. And if you want, I can share some data about Arizona, about a poll that just came out that I think goes into her problems even better with independents, Hispanics, and young voters.

JOHN: Yeah, we’d love to hear that.

BRENT: So in 2020, Arizona was one of those states that flipped from Trump to Biden. And so Biden only won it by four tenths of a point (0.4%). And if you look back at the polling average for that state at this point in 2020, Biden was ahead by 3. Now in May, those averages had Trump up by 5 this year. He’s still up by 1, which as you can see is 4 points better than Biden (+3) at that point. I’ve got a friend who runs a polling shop there, and they put out a poll that had Biden up by 4, four years ago. They just released a poll yesterday that had Trump up by 3. And when you go look at what changed between their last poll, Harris is doing 15 points better with independents than Biden was doing in Arizona. She’s doing 14 points better with Hispanics. 13 points better with young voters. I mean, those are pretty noticeable percentage differences. This is why I always look at history. If you compare this to 2020 Arizona, she’s actually doing four points worse with independence than Biden did. She’s doing 12 points worse with Hispanics and 20 points worse with young voters. So it shows you how bad Biden was with some of these key Democratic voter groups. She’s helped, but she still hasn’t even gotten to the Biden 2020 point with these same voter groups.

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JOHN: Jack Smith has re-filed charges against Trump. Democrats are always charged up by the lawfare attacks on Trump – but you say there’s a miscalculation about this on the Left. How so?

BRENT: Well, I look at the Republican primary last summer and Ron DeSantis was climbing. Trump was under 50% with Republican primary voters. And then the first and second indictments against Donald Trump drop and Donald Trump takes off. I kind of look at Donald Trump as Superman and kryptonite, where everybody thinks that if you put this rock from his planet Krypton on Superman it takes away his powers, but somehow he actually gains powers when he’s around this kryptonite. And this is what I think Democrats just haven’t figured out is that there’s a segment of voters, especially disaffected voters, that say — there’s gotta be a reason they’re going after this guy, and it probably means I should be for this guy and not for the man, the establishment.

LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Brent Buchanan on the Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.

JOHN: There’s been a lot of back and forth between the Trump and Harris campaigns over the presidential debates. Trump agreed to at least three – but Harris is sticking to just the one, hosted by ABC on September 10. Who do you think could benefit more from the debate?

BRENT: Debates are zero sum games. They are high risk plays where the best case scenario for you is that you walk out unscathed. Nobody walks out of a debate looking better than they walked in, they just avoid looking worse walking out. And I think Joe Biden kind of proved that in the debate, where he just fell apart. There’s a reason that Kamala Harris only wants one debate and she wants it as far away from the election date as possible because she’s gonna have to play cleanup afterwards. Again, I hate to sound like a historian, but go look at what she did in the 2020 Democratic primary debates. I mean, she was cringe. She said things that I wish Trump would just play the policy position she took. And in her 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates — she’s not a good debater. She’s not good off script or off teleprompter. So, I would say it’s a higher risk issue for Kamala compared to Trump because Trump can go in there and say something that would be off the wall and people would say, “Well, that’s just Donald Trump.”

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JOHN: Now, the economy and immigration continue to be the biggest priorities for voters. We’ve seen recent polling finding that about 90% of Americans think owning a home is essential to their vision of the future, but only about 10% think that’s actually even achievable at this point. How will the economy impact this election?

BRENT: Well, there’s a lot of people that are struggling out there. I think you’re referencing the Wall Street Journal article and it’s a really great story. I think the Trump campaign should just tell the story of the family in this article, which is that they bought a home that was a stretch, but it was within reach. And then food prices started going up, energy costs went up, insurance costs doubled, and they’re deciding if they’d have to sell the house or not. But if they sold it, they don’t know where they would go, what they would afford otherwise. I think that’s the choice many Americans are forced into right now. And we’re only talking about the stock market or jobs numbers, all these facts and figures that don’t have a story or a person behind them. And that’s what these campaigns, especially Republican, are going to need to capitalize on — stop saying the economy is bad and inflation sucks and tell a story. Then tell what you’re going to do to create an optimistic future to address that. I think it should be the number one issue being talked about. I just don’t think it’s being talked about properly right now. 

JOHN: One of the biggest developments in the last week is RFK Jr. endorsing Trump. How does that change the race, particularly in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin? 

BRENT: Last fall, we had RFK Jr. at like 12% nationally in our polls, and even back then we said, “Watch him fall.” Because it’s a trend that happens in every election where a somewhat legitimate independent candidate gets in, and then our two party mindset eventually forces people to say, “I don’t want to throw away my vote.” So when Joe Biden was still the nominee, RFK dropped down to say 8% or so, but if you looked at that sample of voters, there were a lot of young voters, progressives, people that you knew for a fact would never vote for Donald Trump, but they were just so disaffected by Joe Biden that they were picking RFK Jr. on a survey. And when Harris became the nominee, it dropped RFK even further and what I think it actually did was clarify who is actually an RFK Jr. voter and could be winnable. Then, when you looked at that segment of voters — which is only 4 or 5% of the electorate — that by two-to-one they would prefer Trump over Harris if forced into the option. So I think, based on just that data, that RFK Jr. endorsing Donald Trump — not just getting out, but endorsing Donald Trump — was a seismic change in this race. We’re going to start to see, post Labor Day, these polls where RFK is coming off the ballot. On Tuesday, he was just officially taken off the ballot in Pennsylvania. And I think you’re going to start to see Donald Trump benefit from that significantly more than Kamala Harris – and in a state like Pennsylvania that somebody’s going to win by a point, if RFK was at 4 and Trump’s getting those voters two-to-one, and let’s say a quarter of them stay home, that’s an extra point to the margin for Donald Trump. That’s huge.

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JOHN: Officials in Michigan and Wisconsin say they will not remove RFK from the ballot. What impact could that have? 

BRENT: Well, I am in the field right now, on a survey in a district in Michigan, not the whole state. And he’s actually not running as an independent there. He’s running under the natural law party. I just looked at the partials this morning and he’s getting less than 1% within this district. So I think voters are smart enough to know that he has come off the ballot and is not running, because that number was definitely not 1% in the last survey.

JOHN: In all of our analysis of the electoral map, everything keeps coming back to Pennsylvania. Whoever wins it almost certainly wins the race. Is that how you see it?

BRENT: It’s called the Keystone State for a reason. I don’t think they meant it that way when they coined it but it’s hard to imagine the math for Kamala if she cannot win Pennsylvania. It’s a little bit easier for Trump to figure out the math to 270, not winning Pennsylvania. I was diving into the Arizona data showing how Harris is noticeably behind even Biden 2020 with key voter groups, it’s actually worse in Pennsylvania. I think one of the reasons, and this was a theory that we had when they were talking about swapping her out at the top of the ticket was — Pennsylvania is a very white and working class state. It’s kind of an old school union mindset. That’s not a progressive state. Arizona might be, since it’s been flooded by Californians. So I think that’s a really big challenge for her in Pennsylvania and there are not enough votes outside of Philadelphia to help her make up the gap.

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JOHN: Now some recent polling out of North Carolina spells potential trouble for Republicans. How do you see the state of play in North Carolina for Trump versus Harris?

BRENT: Yeah, North Carolina is a fascinating state. It’s a lot more rural than people give it credit for. The Raleigh area, the research triangle, is highly educated and doesn’t do well for Republicans. But once you really get outside of that Raleigh media market, it’s a significantly more competitive state. And for some reason — I’ve done work there for a long time — Republicans don’t come home to the Republican candidate until the very end. And so if you’re within striking distance as a Republican candidate in North Carolina, you usually end up winning on election day, because for some reason, those Republican voters aren’t answering polls or saying they’re undecided. I don’t know, it’s a very unique state in that aspect to where Democrats are consolidated the whole time and Republicans come home at the last minute. So I think if Trump’s polling within 3 there, he’ll still win. But I don’t see him polling that poorly in anything in the last few weeks,

JOHN: What about Georgia? How are things shaping up in Georgia?

BRENT: With them having two Democratic state senators, and Biden barely winning, I think by like 15 votes in 2020, that it looks really competitive. But let’s go back to history. What nobody is talking about is that in 2020 the secretary of state mailed absentee ballot applications to everybody in the state and that’s not happened since then. And in 2022, Governor Brian Kemp won by 7.5 points, being outspent by superstar Stacey Abrams as the Democratic nominee. So while I believe Georgia went from 100% Trump win to “could be competitive,” I would not put it in the toss-up category.

JOHN: Turning to Congress here. Democrats are increasingly hopeful that Harris could give them a chance to win a House majority. Are they right to be optimistic about that?

BRENT: It’s better than having Biden at the top of the ticket. When you look at these individual districts, it’s hard to beat an incumbent and Democrats are going to have to beat Republican incumbents in order to win a majority. If you look at where the Democrats are having to spend money, they’re spending 80% of their money defending their existing seats and Republicans are spending 80% of their money going after Democratic incumbents. So, it probably feels better to be a Democrat running for Congress right now, not having to be on the ticket with Biden. But I also don’t think they should be so euphoric to think that Harris is going to walk in scot free with no questioning of her, her character, her positions, her policies. So, they may feel that way today, but I bet if we have this conversation on October 28, they wouldn’t feel that way.

JOHN: On the flip side, the Republicans have been very optimistic about the Senate and gaining a majority there. How are those races lining up?

BRENT: With Joe Manchin’s retirement in West Virginia, it automatically becomes a 50-50 Senate. So therefore, whoever is the vice president is the tiebreaker in deciding who runs the chamber. If you go look at Montana, Democrat incumbent John Tester is just falling apart. I don’t think there’s any way for Democrats to save him, so that puts Republicans at 51. A very reputable poll came out on Tuesday that showed the Senate race in Maryland tied at 46-46 and that’s a state where they also showed Kamala Harris winning by 32 points. So when you look at the opportunities, I think Montana gets it to 51, I think Maryland is the wild card. And then you have Ohio, which the Democrats have spent $60 million in Ohio, the Republican up until last week had spent $1 million. And so I think you’re going to start to see that race move to a point where the Republican wins. I think at this point, Republicans are highly likely at 52, probably 53. And then when you start talking about the other four states in play, it could get up higher than that. I think the other races are a little bit more challenging though.

JOHN: Well, I’m sure Republicans would love to hear that. Brent, thanks so much for joining us.

BRENT: Hey, great to be with you.

JOHN: That was Cygnal Polling Group president Brent Buchanan and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.

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LISTEN: Catch the full interview with Brent Buchanan on the Sunday Extra edition of Morning Wire.