Pollster Frank Luntz expressed his astonishment on CNN Wednesday regarding former President Donald Trump’s rise in support among Latino voters, according to exit polls released after Election Day. Following the announcement of Trump as the 47th president-elect, exit poll data highlighted significant gains for Trump among key voting blocs that have traditionally supported the Democratic Party. On “Election Day in America,” Luntz shared his surprise with CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer about Trump’s strong performance among Latino men, also pointing out that Vice President Kamala Harris had underperformed with women under 30.
“Most important is the Latino — the Hispanic vote. I was shocked to find out that Trump actually won a majority of male Latinos. There is a huge gender gap, as there is in every single break, but Trump [was] able to win the majority. I think that’s the first time that I know a Republican has been able to do something like that in more than 30 years. So that was number one,” Luntz told the network.
“Number two, Women under age 30 only represented 7% of the sample for Harris to be successful,” Luntz continued. “They needed to draw a major turnout because the spread there was almost 2-to-1 in favor of Harris. So you have to make that something bigger. And third was the fact that, in the end, abortion was a relatively low-priority issue. She was dominating there, but if it doesn’t matter to voters, then it doesn’t matter if one candidate has a tremendous lead. Those would be my three great takeaways.”
Luntz went on to call out Harris’ misstep of being more clear about her policies, noting how she could have clarified her plans during her town hall event with CNN in October. “It’s to tell people where you stand. Tell them what you’re going to do. She had a wonderful town hall meeting with CNN. She should have stopped Anderson Cooper at the beginning and said to the audience, ‘I want to tell you exactly what I’m going to do in the first hour, the first day, first week, month, hundred days, year, all of that,’” Luntz added.
“Then when she runs out of time and [when] Anderson wants to move on. She says to the crowd, ‘Do you wanna hear what I’m going to do? Or do you want me to answer questions?’ They would have cheered for her and that would have put aside all this doubt about where she stands or what she wants to do,” Luntz said.
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