OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
One of the country’s most reliable pollsters is pushing back on the Democratic narrative that Vice President Kamala Harris is steamrolling her GOP rival, Donald Trump, noting that according to the most recent data, the former president is doing much better now at this point in the election cycle than his previous White House bids in 2016 and 2020.
In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday, pollster Matt Towery discussed the latest data and proclaimed that while Trump is well ahead of Harris, the left-leaning media and other pollsters will say she’s ahead.
“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,” Towery said.
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Towery, later in the interview, did say 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 it 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.
Meanwhile, one of the country’s oldest and largest unions that historically has backed Democratic presidential candidates has decided to withhold its support for Vice President Kamala Harris this cycle.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters president Sean O’Brien announced on Wednesday that, after nearly two-thirds of its members voted to support former President Donald Trump, the organization would instead choose not to endorse any candidate. The last time that happened was in 1996, The Hill reported.
“The Teamsters thank all candidates for meeting with members face-to-face during our unprecedented roundtables,” O’Brien — who became the first Teamsters leader to speak at a Republican National Convention earlier this year — said in a statement.
He added: “Unfortunately, neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business. We sought commitments from both Trump and Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries — and to honor our members’ right to strike — but were unable to secure those pledges.”
The Teamsters have supported some Republican presidential candidates in the past, including Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in the 1980s. But the decision to withhold former support for Harris is seen as a much bigger blow to her than to Trump, especially after nearly 60 percent of members who voted in an internal poll supported him over her.