In an electoral analysis published on Sunday, CNN’s senior political analyst Harry Enten wrote about the likelihood of former President Donald Trump returning to the White House.
Entin declared in his article published on CNN‘s website, “Trump is not only in a historically strong position for a nonincumbent to win the Republican nomination, but he is in a better position to win the general election than at any point during the 2020 cycle and almost at any point during the 2016 cycle.”
“No one in Trump’s current polling position in the modern era has lost an open presidential primary that didn’t feature an incumbent,” Entin declared. “He’s pulling in more than 50% of support in the national primary polls, i.e., more than all his competitors combined.”
Entin pointed to the fact that Trump’s closest primary competitor, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has dipped below 20 percent support nationally, and no other candidate has reached double digits.
“This makes the margin between Trump and the rest of the field north of 30 points on average,” Entin noted. “A look back at past polls does show candidates coming back from deficits greater than 10 points to win the nomination, but none greater than 30 points at this point. In fact, the biggest comebacks when you average all the polls in the second half of the year before the election top out at about 20 points (Democrats George McGovern in 1972, Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Barack Obama in 2008).”
Trump isn’t just far ahead of the pack nationally, he is also leading by double digits in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — which would have been battlegrounds for a challenger to attempt a comeback.
Entin acknowledged that the DeSantis campaign and some of his supporters have been pointing to a comeback made by John McCain, but noted, the Arizona politician “was always considerably closer to the national and state front-runners than anyone is to Trump at this moment.”
“The good news for Democrats is that general election polling, unlike primary polling, is not predictive at this point,” Entin concluded. “Things can most certainly change. But for now, the chance that Trump is president in less than two years time is a very real possibility.”
