Vice President Kamala Harris may have enjoyed a so-called “honeymoon” period shortly after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and essentially anointed her his successor, but it appears clear that period is now over. According to several of the most recent surveys, Harris is falling farther behind the juggernaut campaign of former President Donald Trump, including in many of the all-important swing states that will decide the outcome. And now, CNN’s data guru, Harry Enten, has given the VP something else to be concerned about.
During a network segment on Thursday, Enten warned that young voters who are largely backing Harris may not actually turn up to the polls. According to a CNN/SSRS poll released on Wednesday, Harris is currently leading the Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, by 17 points among likely voters aged 18 to 29. Additionally, Harris holds a 12-point lead among voters aged 18 to 34. However, analyst Enten cautioned that less than half of the young demographic is “extremely motivated” to vote, suggesting that a significant percentage may not turn up to the polls on Election Day.
“We’ve got Kamala Harris up by 12 points, now if we thin ourselves down a little bit, let’s go under the age of 30, what do we have? We have an even larger lead for Kamala Harris, she’s up by 17 points … But, of course, are these voters actually going to turn out and vote? Extremely motivated to vote in the 2024 election, look at this, overall voters [is at] 64%,” Enten said.
“For voters under the age of 40, it’s just 49%. I think the key question isn’t just who they’re going to vote for, it’s whether they’ll turn out and vote. Oftentimes, younger voters are less likely to turn out and vote, and I think this year is going to be quite similar to that,” he said. Enten further pointed out that Harris leads the former president among young voters by an average of 18 points in national polls, a 10-point decrease from Biden’s 28-point lead among this demographic in September 2020.
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One of the nation’s most trusted pollsters is challenging the Democratic narrative that Vice President Kamala Harris is dominating her GOP rival, Donald Trump. Recent data reveals that Trump is performing significantly better at this stage of the election cycle compared to his previous White House campaigns in 2016 and 2020. In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, pollster Matt Towery highlighted the latest figures, asserting that Trump is currently leading Harris. He criticized the left-leaning media and other pollsters for portraying Harris as the frontrunner despite the data showing Trump’s stronger position.
“Explain how these candidates could be tied nationally, but Kamala is up in Pennsylvania? What does that mean?” Ingraham asked to begin the segment.
“Well, you know, let me just say this. The polling gurus and predictors are going to start telling you over the next month and a half that Harris is gaining speed in these various battleground states,” Towery responded. “They’re somehow going to say that she’s gaining speed in the national polls. I’m just going to predict it. They’re going to say that she’s going to win and Trump will lose. It makes no sense.
“People have to understand. Trump is running way ahead of where he has in the last two cycles that he ran in the national average. I mean, she is much closer than either Biden or, before that, Hillary Clinton. And in these various states, now, you know, everybody has their different way of sampling things. I think all of these states are very tight,” he continued. “But I don’t think there’s any state where anyone has a four or five-point lead right now that’s a battleground state. I just don’t see it, and I don’t believe it.”
Later in the interview, Towery did say that Trump was trailing with the senior citizen vote. “He’s got to concentrate on senior voters, though. He’s down in the polls with senior voters, and that’s what will get him high enough so that he can get above any question about voter turnout, which Democrats are very good at,” he said. “Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, if he carries — Trump carries those three, he wins. Alternatively, if Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Michigan go his way, he loses some of these other states, he wins,” he added.
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