A pollster has said it could be “too late” for Kamala Harris to save her campaign, with only eight days left until the polls close for the 2024 election cycle.
Frank Luntz said to CNN news anchor Jim Sciutto in an interview on October 28 that Harris still hasn’t told the American public what she will do “in the first hour of her presidency, in the first day of her presidency, and in the first week of her presidency. And she’s only got seven days to go. I’m wondering if she’s too late.”
When asked by Sciutto if Luntz thought it was too late for Harris to outline her plan for her first 100 days in office, Luntz said, “you have to try.”
Luntz, who has written, supervised and conducted more than 2,500 surveys, was a debate night and Election Day commentator on Bloomberg, CNBC and the BBC in 2020, CBS in 2016, Fox News in 2008 and 2012, and MSNBC in 2000.
With November 5 nearing ever closer, Harris’ lead on Trump has dropped down to 0.9, within the margin of error, according to averages of national polls by 270toWin.
According to the polling outlet, at the end of August and going into the start of September, Harris was ahead of Trump across the board, with different polls showing her lead in the range of two to six points ahead.
Earlier in the interview, Luntz explained how the Harris campaign appeared to be focusing more on Trump than on what Harris would do when she first got into office and on specific policies, which Luntz thought was “the most important attribute right now and I don’t see it happening.”
I spoke with @JimSciutto about why Kamala Harris has failed to pull ahead of Donald Trump in polls, and whether her campaign can successfully change course in the final 7 days of the election. pic.twitter.com/wZIizK8fMy
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 29, 2024
Newsweek has contacted Luntz and the Trump and Harris campaigns via email for comment.
As Sciutto and Luntz discussed the latest polls in the election, Luntz commented on Trump’s impeachment and the January 6 Capitol attacks, and said, “and yet he’s dead even with her.”
Luntz said Harris had “one of the most successful launches of any presidential candidate in modern history. She went from five points behind to three points up in a matter of weeks, and then she turns on Trump and her campaign stops being about what she’s going to do and starts being about what he’s done and will do.”
He added that he thought Harris had “probably retrenched a point or two since she hit her peak.”
Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign rally on October 28, 2024, in Michigan. A pollster has said he wonders if it’s “too late” for the VP to save her campaign.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
On September 18, Harris had a lead of 3.3 over Trump but her lead has since decreased to 1.4, according to the FiveThirtyEight election polls.
Luntz had previously said Trump was a “clear loser” in the presidential debate, thinking the former president had lost the election because of his performance, but that the race between Trump and Harris was still too close to call.
Luntz said, “If debates don’t matter, and rallies don’t matter, and interviews don’t matter and facts don’t matter, then what exactly matters in American politics? It’s a frightening thought but we have to entertain it.”
This election has been called an incredibly close election by a number of commentators and Luntz himself called it a “dead heat.”
He added, “We’re not going to know who won for days after this election.”
A recent poll in North Carolina showed it was too close to call whether Harris or Trump would take the lead in the swing state, but some forecasters have said Trump has a slight edge.
Fox News also recently predicted Trump will win the swing state of Arizona after the broadcaster’s forecasts previously had the outcome being a toss-up.
RealClearPolitics’ No Toss Up map, which gives a definitive Republican or Democrat prediction on each state, previously forecasted Trump to win Michigan, but Harris has now taken the lead in their predictions as of Tuesday.
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