Veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz said Wednesday that as Vice-President Kamala Harris’ “intensity advantage” grows Donald Trump increasingly commits “political suicide.”
Luntz joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to discuss the latest polling showing Harris eroding Trump’s lead nationally and in the key swing states.
Luntz said Harris’ success in the polls is due to the fact that she has tapped into the portion of the electorate that would not have voted if the race was still between President Joe Biden and Trump.
“She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden. So the entire electoral pool has changed. And if it continues in this direction, you have to start to consider Democrats winning the Senate and Democrats winning the House,” Luntz said in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
“The actual people who are participating. She’s got intensity now,” he continued. “She’s got an intensity advantage. She’s got a demographic advantage. And I haven’t seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime.”
Asked how significant that margin of extra Harris voters might be, Luntz said, “One percent, maybe two. That’s it. But that’s enough.”
Luntz said he is seeing this shift play out in real time in his focus groups.
“The people who are undecided have all collapsed towards Harris,” he said. “The people who are weak Trump have all collapsed towards undecided. It’s his broad shift. I’m trying to do a focus group tonight with undecided voters under the age of 27 for a major news outlet. And I can’t recruit young women to this because they don’t exist as undecided voters.”
He added that there are three components that build a candidate’s support—attributes, issues and conditions of the country.
“You shift the demographics, and you shift the entire outcome,” he said. “The issues and conditions favored Donald Trump. He should be winning this election. But the attributes are so much in Harris’ favor that he’s not.”
Luntz added that Trump sometimes undermine his attributes. To illustrate his point, Luntz pointed to recent comments Trump made praising X owner Elon Musk for his anti-union stances, including firing union workers who went on strike to protest for better working conditions.
“It’s ridiculous,” the pollster said. “It’s as though he’s lost control. And I know that there are billionaires who watch this show who are spending a lot of money on Donald Trump, and they don’t understand why he’s committing political suicide.”
