Henry Olsen: Polling analyst gives his thoughts on the US Election odds, the latest polling numbers

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris remain neck-and-neck on the eve of polling day, but one top polling expert is picking the election for Trump. 

Trump is spending the day in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Michigan. 

Harris is focusing on Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state with 19 Electoral College votes. 

Polling analyst Henry Olsen told Mike Hosking he believes Trump will narrowly win more Electoral College votes. 

He says the country has shifted to the right, and Harris isn't winning enough independent voters to offset that. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, they keep saying it's the titles race. They've seen
so far, over seventy five million of the one hundred
and thirty ish million who will vote have cast their bellet.
So what are we know and what are we guessing?
Polling analyst Henry Elsen's back with us morning.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Oh thank you for having me back and not at all?

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Is it too tight to call? Or can you do
it confidently?

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I do have a prediction. I think Trump will win narrowly.
I don't have like an eighty percent confidence level with that,
but I think it's more likely than not that Trump
will have a narrow electoral college victory.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Will break that down on the moment. Having read a
lot of polls myself, not as many as you, what
do you base it on? What will unfold? Do you think?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well? I wrote a piece explaining this in the New
York Post and a data piece accompanying that. What I
think is that the country is shifted to the right.
You see that in all the polls, you see it
in partisan registration data, and that Harris is not winning
independence by enough to offset that. So Harris can win
the popular vote, but under narrowly, but under our system,

(00:58):
the electoral College elect and it looks like to me
Trump is going to win enough of those states to
win a majority in the electoral College.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
You not only call the electoral college, but you do
I think call the popular vote as well. That would
be quite the victory if he pulls that off, wouldn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
It would call Harris winning the popular vote by a
shade over one percent, which would be three percent less
than Biden one buy and it would be the closest
margin that Trump has lost the popular vote by during
his three presidential elections. You know, the poll show he's
doing better with non whites, and I think people are
willing to give him a chance.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Is it the economy? The economy, the economy and immigration?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Immigration? Immigration, The two things are mixed, you know that.
You know, put it in context. We had something like
eight million people try and cross the border illegally in
the last three years. You know, that's a huge number,
twice the population of New Zealand, but you know it's
almost three percent of our population. Imagine if you had
one hundred and fifty thousand people storm Auckland and trying

(02:01):
to get in. That's what we've had here. And the
combination of inflation and immigration is what's pueling Trump's lead.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
So if you take those two issues, that's where Harris
fell apart. Because she's been in office for three and
a half years, could have done something about it, didn't.
People are giving up on that. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Yeah? I think that's exactly fair. The fact is Biden
is arguably the lowest rated first term president in the
history of polling, basically up there with Jimmy Carter who
lost a landslide victory to Ronald Reagan, and less popular
than Donald Trump was at this time four years ago,
and it's very hard for Harris to overcome that legacy.

(02:39):
Had she been had they chosen somebody who wasn't the
vice president, I think the Democrats would be looking at
a victory.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
This is getting into the slightly esoteric, but when you
go back to the previous election, Biden was allegedly the
only person who could stop Trump getting a second term.
So did they not think beyond that, did they not
think that Biden would look too old, that it would
be a problem. And if it was a problem, what
do they do if they did something like Harris that
was going to buy them the trouble They've now got.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah, well, I think you've got two decision points. First
of the decision point of last year, when an ambitious
person could have taken Biden on in the Democratic primary
and forced him to campaign. I think what we would
have seen is what we saw in July, which was
a man who was too old to do the job.
But nobody's willing to take the risk because if you lose,
if you don't kill the king, the king kills you,

(03:24):
and that's the end of your career. And so that
let Biden slide to the summertime. And once they let
it slide to the summertime, it was either Harris or
a messy fight, and they chose to have Harris rather
than the messy fight.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
All right, Henry, nice to have you back on the program.
Henry Elson, famed Polster, I hate him tomorrow. For more
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