Could Donald Trump pull a Brexit, confounding elite opinion by winning the election with votes that the polls didn’t pick up? On today’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough and Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post agreed it could happen.
Scarborough said that people are still whispering to him as they leave the room that they’re voting for Tump, but are embarrassed to tell pollsters given the coverage of his comments about women, etc. There are limits to the phenomenon: in Cillizza and Scarborough’s view, the hidden Trump vote is unlikely to exceed 1.5%. But if Trump can continue to tighten the race in these two final weeks . . . it could be a very interesting election night.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: The Trump campaign has been saying for about a week now that this is going to be America’s Brexit. If you’ve got a 13-point lead and you are Hillary Clinton, this ain’t going to be America’s Brexit. Even five points, a little too much, probably. It’s two or three, there’s that possibility.. . .JOE: I know that in Mika and my experiences over the past year, nobody admits it publicly and then whispers as you leave the room, that yes, in fact they’re voting for Trump, and it’s still happening. Do you think there is, possibly, a one or two point hidden vote for Donald Trump out there, for people that are embarrassed to tell pollsters that the guy who’s been on TV for the past week sexually harassing women or insulting them is the guy they’re going to be voting for?CHRIS CILLIZZA: Yes. And I find it strange even that I’m saying it, because typically and Joe you know this from having run for office, typically the “we’ve got a secret 5% vote,” never works. That’s what you say when you lose.JOE: Always nonsense.CHRIS: I’ve noticed it and I am hesitant to put too much weight in anecdotal evidence but that’s all we have to go on because if you don’t tell the pollster who you’re for we don’t have scientific evidence. Anecdotal evidence suggests that here are people that don’t want to tell their friends and certainly don’t want to tell someone random calling them on the phone for a poll that they’re for him. So yes, I do think. What I think is dangerous is to assume it’s more than — you said one to 2%. I think that’s absolutely the high end.JOE: I agree.. . .CHRIS: There is even more so the possibility of a point for Trump out there because of the campaign he has run. You’re not going — Mitt Romney, say what you want, but there’s not going to be a lot of hidden vote for Mitt Romney because he ran as a very traditional Republican. The themes and the way in which Trump has run suggests that possibility exists more because there is the embarrassment factor, but you are for him at the end of the day but you don’t necessarily want to–for exactly what you guys were talking about–do you really want to say “yeah, I know he said that stuff on the hot mic, and I know 11 women have come forward, but I’m for him?” You may not want to share that information with people, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t necessarily vote for him. So I think he is a unique — as in everything in this election, he is a unique case.
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