Could Tomorrow Deliver a Populist Surprise?
Voter turnout in battleground states could hold a clue.

Suppose tomorrowâs results are one big populist surprise. Nearly all the commentators and pollsters are calling the Trump-Harris race a toss-up thatâs too close to call.
Maybe so, but I can think of a couple of major patterns that pollsters may not have figured out.
One of them is a big GOP early voting turnout, completely unlike 2020, and actually sponsored by President Trump â who actually came around on this issue.
Plus, voter registration shifts seem to favor Republicans in more than 30 states.
Hereâs two ace pollsters who appeared on Bret Baierâs âSpecial Reportâ last night. Start with Mark Penn, the Democrat. âWhich side do you want to be this evening, looking at what youâre looking at?â Mr. Baier asked.
âWell, Iâd rather be Trump this evening for the simple reason that there are lots and lots of polls that show a dead even but the only fact we know is Republicans have gotten a lot better in the mail-in and early voting than they ever have,â Mr. Penn replied.
âI think the pollsters are getting this wrong,â Republican Alex Castellanos said. âWhat I think theyâre missing is a massive shift in voter registration underneath all of this. Thirty-one states have voter registration by party â 30 of them in the past 4 years have seen movement towards Republicans.â
Digging deeper, it just seems like Democrats are facing a hugee turnout deficit in every single battleground state. Meanwhile, Trump and Republicans are outperforming elections past, in absentee ballots and early votes cast. Thereâs a decline in urban voter turnout facing Democrats.
On one of yesterdayâs talk shows, former Obama adviser Jim Messina called the early vote numbers âa little scary.â
And, also, there are reports that early voting among Black voters is coming in much slower than 2020. Particularly at Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, and Milwaukee â to name a few.
One other point that pollsters may be missing is that Trumpâs position nationally and in each battleground state is significantly better today than it was four years ago.
Mr.Trumpâs top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, shows that nationwide Trump has improved 7.9 points â 2.5 points in Arizona, nearly 3 points in Georgia, nearly 8 points in Michigan, 4.5 points in Nevada, more than 5 points in Pennsylvania, and 6.5 points in Wisconsin.
The pay-to-play betting market, Polymarket, shows Trump as a 58-42 favorite.
And I wonder if these crackerjack pollsters understand how much Trump has widened his working-class coalition. Itâs a multi-racial coalition, itâs a populist coalition, itâs whites, Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, young people, union members.
And I think this broadened coalition is a function of just how many things have gone wrong and been broken in the last four years. As a partial list: the economy, cost of living, affordability, the border, public schools, universities â to name a few.
Trump says Vice President Harris broke it, and heâll fix it. That idea of âbrokenâ is a key factor in the populist working class Trump movement.
When he asks âare you better off today than you were four years agoâ â itâs not just campaign rhetoric, itâs deeply rooted in a broken reality.
You could add to that: the world on fire, from Afghanistan, to Ukraine, and now the Middle East.
You could add to all of that â how the Trumpian working class coalition does not like the woke culture, with its racial and gender mandates. And its hostility toward Catholics, other Christians, and religion in general.
And, by the way, folks donât want to give up their gasoline-powered cars. And they look forward to $2 gas at the pump, once again.
Finally, Trumpâs on stage in campaign stop after stop with some pretty interesting new faces: Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr., Senator Vance, and others.
Itâs not our fatherâs GOP. Itâs not the party of big business and the rich. Trumpâs new big tent will include all those traditional Republicans, but the party is no longer based on Wall Street or the Business Roundtable.
Have all the smart pollsters figured this out? I really donât think so.
Just suppose tomorrowâs results are one big populist surprise.
From Mr. Kudlowâs broadcast on Fox Business Network.

