For months political prognosticators have predicted Donald Trump’s political demise — but is it possible that polls are actually understating the Republican frontrunner’s support?
The theory was first propounded by John Phillips, a California-based conservative columnist and radio host.
“This means that nontraditional news consumers and nontraditional voters made a point to tune in and see what Trump had to say, yet many of these Trump supporters won’t be considered in the polls,” Phillips recently wrote in a column, pointing to the fact a jaw dropping 24-million people turned into the first Republican debate on Fox News, most likely because of Trump’s presence.
“Take the PPP poll, for example,” he went on, speaking of a recent Public Policy Polling survey which showed Trump with a sevem percentage point lead over his nearest Republican rival in Iowa. “It reflects only the opinion of ‘likely’ Republican primary voters. They define ‘likely’ voters as those who are self-described ‘regular’ primary voters. Therefore, any new person brought into the process by Trump wouldn’t be counted, underestimating his actual support.”
Phillips suggested that the Trump phenomenon might be similar to the elections of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, both non-conventional celebrity gubernatorial candidates in California and Minnesota, respectively.
“In the 1998 election for Minnesota governor, an Oct. 20 poll conducted by the Star Tribune had Democrat Hubert Humphrey III in the lead with 35 percent, Republican Norm Coleman just behind him with 34 percent and wrestler Jesse Ventura in third,” Phillips pointed out. “On Election Day, Ventura won with 37 percent of the vote.”
There are obviously differences between Trump, Ventura and Schwarzenegger. Ventura, for instance, got elected as an independent in 1998 and though Schwarzenegger was elected as a Republican in 2003, he ran in a recall election that boasted 135 candidates.
Still, could Phillips’ theory have legs — could Trump really have a more commanding lead than surveys currently show? Some pollsters and political analysts tell The Daily Caller it’s not unthinkable.
“I don’t know if polls are underestimating or overestimating Trump’s support. Either is possible,” Princeton professor Sam Wang, who runs the Princeton Election Consortium, told TheDC in an email. “It
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