Pollster John McLaughlin said President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election can be attributed to his character contrast from his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, and his gut instinct about the overall needs of the American people.
Trump won the November 5 general election over Kamala Harris with 312 electoral votes. Trump also won the popular vote with over 76 million votes compared to Harris’ 73 million.
McLaughlin said Trump’s victory in the race stemmed from the momentum surrounding the president-elect leading up to Election Day.
“Donald Trump’s win was even more stunning and more decisive than Reagan ever had. We led the race coming out of Super Tuesday and sealing the nomination after the wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, there were bigger wins than Reagan had ever had,” McLaughlin explained on Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“Going into the general election, we were ahead at that point against Biden, and then it just crescendoed when Biden bombed at the debate, and then Trump, it was amazing he survived an assassin’s bullet, he had a united convention and all of a sudden Biden withdraws and they pick Kamala Harris,” McLaughlin added.
In addition to Trump’s continuous momentum despite constant negative coverage from the mainstream media, McLaughlin attributed Trump’s victory to his “gut instinct” when it comes to understanding the needs of the American people.
“[Trump] is not a typical politician. He’s a businessman who built this billion-dollar business on branding, and he likes people. He’ll listen to the poll numbers and he eats up the data that we give him, but in the meantime, he’ll go by the gut. He’ll say, ‘I spoke to somebody here, and this construction worker, this waitress said this, or this person.’ He likes the average person,” McLaughlin explained.
“So he had a gut instinct about what people wanted ever since going back to 2015 when he launched the campaign and he made immigration and tariffs a big issue because he felt that most of America was being exploited by these global elites who were basically sending our jobs overseas so they could make profits. They were allowing illegal immigration so they could exploit those people and exploit Americans, and he was right. What you just saw was the majority of Americans agreed with him,” McLaughlin added.
McLaughlin also pointed to Trump’s viral moments—riding in a garbage truck, going on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and serving food at McDonald’s—as reasons why the president-elect was well-liked by voters and how those moments created a stark “character contrast” between him and Harris.
“[Trump] got elected in the most ruthless, toughest time in American politics, and only he could do it,” McLaughlin said.
Watch the full interview:
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Dan Scavino Jr.
