Alex Castellanos, who has worked on campaigns for Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, said pollsters overlooking a „massive shift“ in voter registration since the last election — which could tip the scales in favor of former President Donald Trump.<\/b>
\nPollsters have been getting it \u201cwrong\u201d in the final days of the 2024 presidential race by overlooking a \u201cmassive shift\u201d in voter registration since the last election \u2014 which could tip the scales in favor of former President Donald Trump on Tuesday, a veteran GOP strategist says.
Alex Castellanos, who has worked on campaigns for Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, told Fox News\u2019 \u201cSpecial Report\u201d that the polls \u2014 which show a razor-thin margin between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris \u2014 are disregarding a \u201cwavelet out there of Republican enthusiasm.\u201d
\u201cWhat I think they\u2019re missing is a massive shift in voter registration underneath all of this. Thirty-one states have voter registration by party. Thirty of them in the past four years have seen movement toward Republicans,\u201d the longtime strategist said late Sunday.
\u201cI think there\u2019s, I\u2019m not going to call it a wave, but I think there\u2019s a wavelet out there of Republican enthusiasm and registration. If I register to vote Republican, whether I\u2019m switching or new, what am I going to do?\u201d
Castellanos suggested the failure to recognize that boost was to blame for the lack of statistical variation in the polls coming out in the final stretch before Election Day.
\u201cI think the pollsters are getting this wrong. We\u2019re all missing something, because they\u2019re giving us the same poll over and over again. There isn\u2019t even statistical variation,\u201d Castellanos said.
\u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019re telling us we\u2019re watching a basketball game where every play\u2019s a jump ball.\u201d
It comes as a handful of fresh polling over the weekend showed six of the seven battleground states so close that they are within the margin of error \u2014 with the only one showing a clear leader being Arizona, where former Trump is up by four points.
Trump captured a 49% to 45% advantage in the Grand Canyon State, while two others show him tied with Harris \u2014 with each getting 48% in Pennsylvania and 47% in Michigan, according to the final batch of swing state polling from the New York Times and Siena College.
Harris eked out narrow leads within the margin of error among likely voters in Nevada (49% to 46%), North Carolina (48% to 46%), Wisconsin (49% to 47%) and Georgia (48% to 47%).
Meanwhile, other prominent analysts \u2014 including polling data guru Nate Silver \u2014 have also begun raising questions about polls in recent days, alleging that some pollsters could be \u201cherding\u201d results with decisions aimed at showing a close race to avoid being an outlier.<\/p>\n