Evan Roth Smith on Trump’s negative strategy

Slingshot partner and Blueprint lead pollster Evan Roth Smith explained to New York Magazine’s David Freedlander the strategy behind the Trump campaign’s relentless negativity towards Harris and Walz.

“The breadth of the attacks is because the Trump campaign’s entire strategy is to circle the wagons of its own supporters while scaring enough up-for-grabs voters away from Harris that she can’t consolidate the entire anti-Trump universe. Since the number of voters who will actually cast a decisive vote in a swing state is only a few hundred thousand, any attack that moves even a couple thousand voters is worthwhile.”

Smith also cast doubt upon the variety of polls showing Trump gaining among key demographics. 

“Frankly, I have seen this mirage before in my own polling for campaigns that thought they were making gains among Black voters, only to see those voters coalesce decisively behind a Black candidate on Election Day. Harris could also stymie any improvement Trump was hoping to see among Latino voters, helped by the moronic “island of garbage” comments Tony Hinchcliffe made about Puerto Rico, which activated an entire new set of Latino voters and prominent figures against Trump in the closing week of the election. One of the craziest and least-discussed stories of what happened in 2020, nearly half of the college-educated white men in Georgia switched their vote from Trump to Biden. If she can keep moving in that direction and not lose ground elsewhere, I think she will win. Actually, I take that back. Not ‘I think.’ She will win.”

Read the full New York Magazine Intelligencer story here.