President Donald Trump's economic numbers are collapsing amid rising inflation, CNN data analyst Harry Enten told Kate Bolduan — and despite his insistence that the polls are fake, it could actually be even worse for him than it appears.
"Have polls always been down for Trump when it comes to inflation?" asked Bolduan earlier this week.
"No, no, not at all," said Enten. "Go back to October of 2024. Who did Americans trust more on inflation, Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? They trusted Donald Trump by nine points on average. You jump over to this side of the screen. Those same exact polls have him way, way, way underwater, 26 points underwater on his net approval on inflation.
"So it's not that the polls are fake, it's that the American people have turned against you, Mr. President, you've gone from leading by nine points on inflation to being 26 points underwater. You're doing something very wrong in the minds of the American public."
"Negative 26. That's a problem," said Bolduan. "Let's go down this path of hypotheticals, right? If the polling is off à la 2024, what would that mean for the president?"
"So you see this switcheroo, right? Going from plus 9 to -26," said Enten. "That's a move of over 30 points in the wrong direction. But let's say the polls are off. Let's take up Donald Trump on his hypothetical, right? Oh, the polls always underestimate me. Well, here's Trump's net approval rating on inflation. Currently, he's 26 points below water. If the polls are off like they were in 2024, he still got a Titanic-sized problem. He's then 24 points underwater on inflation. So yes, the polls underestimated him, but just by about a point and a half in 2024. He would still have a massive, massive, massive problem on inflation even if the polls were off like they were a year ago."
But even worse, Enten said, it's also possible the polls "could be overestimating the Republicans."
"We just saw this a week ago in both Virginia and New Jersey," he said. "They underestimated the Democrat Mikie Sherrill by eight points in New Jersey. They underestimated Abigail Spanberger's margin by five points in Virginia. The bottom line is this: the polls on inflation are absolutely awful for Donald Trump. Even if they were slightly better, he'd still be way, way below water. But the problem ... might be even worse than the polls suggest."
What this means, he said, is "Donald Trump has a massive issue on his hand, and no wishing will make it go away, because people feel it in their pocketbooks every day and they see it as the prices climb ever higher when they try and purchase their groceries."
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