Trump’s In a ‘Historically Strong Position’ to Return to the White House, Concludes CNN’s Data Guru

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

CNN’s data guru, Harry Enten, broke down the numbers behind the current state of play in the GOP presidential primary and explained why he believes former President Donald Trump could very well return to the White House.

“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,” declared Enten in an electoral analysis he published over the weekend.

Enten then noted that according to historical trend lines, Trump appears all but certain to win the GOP presidential nomination.

“No one in Trump’s current polling position in the modern era has lost an open presidential primary that didn’t feature an incumbent. He’s pulling in more than 50% of support in the national primary polls, i.e., more than all his competitors combined,” Enten explained, adding:

Three prior candidates in open primaries were pulling in more than half the vote in primary surveys in the second half of the calendar year before the election: Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush in 2000 and Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Gore remains the only nonincumbent to win every single presidential nominating contest, while Bush and Clinton never lost their national polling advantage in their primaries.

Leading Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) by some 30 points in the primary, Trump’s lead, according to modern history, appears insurmountable. “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),” Enten adds, bringing in the numbers to back up his argument.

Enten does note that Obama was down some 30 points at one point in the 2008 primaries, but that he was always within striking distance in the early contests – unlike the current GOP field. Trump currently has large leads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

Enten then turned his attention to the general election and noted that given all of Trump’s legal trouble it’s “amazing” how “competitive” he remains with Biden in the polls.

“The fact that the polling between Biden and Trump is so close shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Elections are a choice between two candidates. Trump isn’t popular, but neither is Biden,” Enten qualified, before breaking down some of the recent polling that shows Trump is in a strong position to return to the White House.

“One giant warning sign for Democrats was a late June Quinnipiac University poll from Pennsylvania, a pivotal state for the past few election cycles where Trump rallied base supporters in Erie on Saturday. The state barely voted for Trump in 2016 and for Biden in 2020,” Enten writes, adding:

Trump was up on Biden by 1 point in the Quinnipiac poll – a result within the margin of error, but nevertheless a remarkable achievement for the former president.

Why? It was only the second Pennsylvania poll that met CNN standards for publication since 2015 that had Trump ahead of either Biden (for 2020 and 2024) or Clinton (for 2016).

Enten concluded by noting general election polling this far out is not very predictive of the final result, but argued that all the data currently points to Trump returning to the presidency is a “very real possibility.”

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