(Photo Credit: @2WayTVApp on X)
Mark Halperin said the polls are looking good for Republicans — just not the ones you’ve probably seen.
The veteran political journalist said MAGA voters have reason to be optimistic during the Tuesday episode of 2WAY’s The Morning Meeting podcast, because the internal polls — and not the polls most news junkies read about — indicate Republicans are performing better than expected.
“I’m going to start with what’s great for Republicans: the private polling that I site all the time is within the margin of error in almost every one of these races,” Halperin said. “So if you think a single Senate race that’s currently Red is going to flip to Blue is a sure thing, besides North Carolina, I would tell you you are wrong.”
He continued, “I wouldn’t say there’s a single one that would surprise me if it stayed red, not one. Not Ohio, not Kansas, not Texas, not Iowa, not Alaska, not one of ’em. Not one of ’em would surprise me, they’re all pretty close in the private polling. They’ve closed up.”
Halperin added this all means Republicans can “overcome” an early-vote deficit to the Democrats.
His co-host, Townhall.com editor Larry O’Connor, chimed in that he heard from several sources that Republicans are “walking on clouds right now” in Michigan, where Mike Rogers (R) is looking to beat Abdul El-Sayed (D) in the Senate race.
They shared their thoughts right around the same time NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki cast doubt on a looming Blue wave. Kornacki said there is a “wild card possibility” the polls are bogus because they have once again failed to accurately account for President Donald Trump’s supporters.
And two days earlier, The New York Times acknowledged it had a hard time getting Republicans to respond to its poll.
“This cycle, Democrats are once again responding to Times/Siena polls at a much higher rate than Republicans,” NYT’s Nate Cohn wrote. “Across these final battleground polls, registered white Democrats were about 30 percent likelier to take the poll than registered white Republicans. That’s actually a bit higher than in the final polls in 2020.”
On the other hand, Halperin said pollsters with a “good track record” like Atlas Intel still show the Dems winning all seven swing states.
“You can’t ignore that,” he said.
Watch above.
Jason Cohen contributed to this story.
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