Republican Politico: Trum Won Debate, but Already Lost Electoral ‘War’

It appears as though some Republicans may be seeing some writing on the wall that the rest of us have not.

There are still 11 days until the 2020 election, and Donald Trump appears to have a fairly uphill climb ahead of him.  Polling in some of the most important states in the race almost universally seem to favor his Democratic challenger Joe Biden, in some cases by wide margins.

But we can’t count Trump out, either.  Pollsters had it dead wrong in 2016 as well, albeit with some other anomalies cooked into 2020’s premature tabulations.

Not to mention the fact that Trump had a stellar debate performance on Thursday night, besting the critics who expected him to bully his way around the stage or again fume at the moderators.  Trump played it cool, hit Biden when and where he could, and very realistically left Nashville the winner of the debate.

But, for Frank Luntz, it’s a day late and a buck short.

President Donald Trump won the final debate against Democrat Joe Biden, but that’s not going to be enough to get him reelected, Republican pollster and strategist Frank Luntz told CNBC on Friday.

“You got to give Trump a minor victory because he’ll bring some [undecided] voters home, and it’ll close the race a little bit. But in the end, I think Joe Biden won the war,” Luntz said in a “Squawk Box” interview, predicting that Trump, with 11 days until the Nov. 3 election and more than 47 million votes already cast, does not have enough time to overcome Biden’s national and swing state polling leads.

Luntz said that even if the polls are wrong, as they were in 2016 when Trump pulled off an upset victory over Hillary Clinton, it’s “virtually impossible” for the president to win. Luntz, who predicted Clinton would win then, noted that polls four years ago were only off a few points but Biden’s lead in the 2020 race is wide enough to overcome any margin of error. Luntz also said that pollsters like himself have been much more cautious during this campaign cycle.

We’ll just have to wait and see about that.