‘It’s Very Real’: Trump Pollster Tells CNN Campaign Is In ‘Totally New Territory’ As Lead Puts Blue States In Play

CNN anchor Dana Bash spoke to former President Donald Trump’s pollster John McLaughlin this week about whether or not the campaign really believes they can flip traditionally blue states as GOP confidence in November skyrockets.

“Political parties always project confidence during conventions, but this time feels a bit different for Republicans,” Bash began before showing a highlight reel from the RNC of states’ delegates boasting that Trump will win their blue states.

“So where is that confidence coming from? Is it talking points? Is it more? Is there data to back it up? Well, former President Donald Trump’s pollster John McLaughlin is here with me to talk about it. Nice to see you in person. I’m going to talk about the map in a second, but I just want to start with where we are, particularly given the horrible, horrible events of Saturday. It was already a margin-of-error race. Before that, nationally, obviously, that’s not how presidents are elected. But when it comes to the data that you’re seeing, has anything changed dramatically since the weekend?” Bash asked McLaughlin.

“Since the weekend? It’s too early to tell. But, you know, with the convention, the convention is going very well for me as a Republican and working for President Trump. It’s a totally new territory because we’re going into this election with like 111 days left and we’re leading,” replied McLaughlin, adding:

We’re leading in the battleground states. We’re leading in the national polls. We never saw that in 2016. It was always an electoral state win that we were playing for. And we were going to we were going to lose the national popular vote. But we’ve been ahead in the national popular vote going back to September 21st, when inflation kicked in and, President Biden withdrew or surrendered Afghanistan.

Bash followed up, “Is there such a thing as peaking too early?”

“No. And we always run behind in the Trump campaign. We run like ten points behind. So we try to work harder, and we know that we’ve got a lot of work to do, particularly where we, you have states that start voting in September, the states that a lot of states are voting in October. So the whole Republican Party basically changed their outlook. Or we have to we have to get, you know, Trump voters this time instead of waiting for Election Day. First day, we have early voting. You got to get online,” McLaughlin said as the two then discussed mail-in voting for a bit.

Bash later asked, “Okay. So let’s talk about the states. And you just heard coming in, the, people who are putting their votes into the roll call earlier this week here, from states that are not on the core battleground map, Minnesota, Virginia, New Jersey. Right. My home state? Yes. How real do you think that is?”

“It’s very real ,” McLaughlin replied.

“Let me just say, for our viewers who aren’t intimately involved with the history of these states. Minnesota has been blue. But people like our Jeff Zeleny call it the reddest blue state of Virginia was red, but it has been blue the past few cycles and New Jersey has been blue for a generation,” Bash said, adding some context.

McLaughlin continued, “Right. And when you look at those states, Minnesota, the Trump campaign rarely releases our polls. But they released a poll we did in mid-June where we were up four points in Minnesota. That’s with Kennedy in it. Now in New Jersey. You know, you’ve seen polls. There’s been published polls that we are up a point. And, you saw the turnout in Wildwood. I mean, people have and, and then when you look at, you look at Virginia and I’ve polled there over the years for Senator Allen and Governor Gilmore, etc., we’re back to where we’re getting like a fifth, a fifth of the, African-American vote. We’re winning where the military is in Norfolk because they’re tired of a weak America. So so President Trump, there was a VCU poll came out and had us ahead in Virginia. So and there’s other states coming into play. So, the map is getting much larger.”

Watch the full clip above via CNN.