A LEADING pollster who correctly called the 2016 election result has now predicted another Donald Trump win.

Robert Cahaly believes the president's "shy" supporters are the secret weapon to him winning the race to the White House this time around.

⚠️ Follow our US election 2020 live blog for the latest news & updates

And the expert – a senior strategist with the polling company Trafalgar Group – says he is "more confident every day" Trump will be re-elected.

He said key to a Trump win will be those who don't tell the pollsters the truth about who they will vote for because of mounting pressures within society.

"There are more [shy Trump voters] than last time and it's not even a contest," Cahaly told The Hill. 

The pollster made national headlines four years ago when he said Trump would come out on top despite most polls predicting a landslide Hillary Clinton victory.

The Trafalgar Group was one of the only nonpartisan outlets that predicted a Republican win after finding Trump was leading in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

This year its analysis has once more found a small lead for Trump in both of those states-contradicting nearly every other major poll. 

Cahaly also believes fears over the economy amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis will be a decisive factor at the ballot box.

He told Newsweek: "Even [voters] that don't like Trump, they're like, 'I don't like Trump, but we can't have another shutdown.'"

Cahaly is not alone in thinking that Trump's army of "hidden fans" will be crucial when it comes to determining the winner.

"There are a lot of voters out there that don't want to admit they are voting for a guy that has been called a racist," Susquehanna Polling and Research analyst Jim Lee told WFMZ. 

"That submerged Trump factor is very real. We have been able to capture it and I'm really disappointed others have not.'"

Susquehanna's most recent tally puts Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in Wisconsin and gave the president a four-point lead in Florida.   

But some pollsters have poured scorn on the idea Trump voters are hiding and want more info on the research which backs up the claims.

"[Trafalgar] doesn't disclose their 'proprietary digital methods' so I can't really evaluate what they're doing," Jon McHenry, a Republican pollster with North Star Opinion Research, told The Hill.

"They're far enough out on a limb that a year from now, we'll all remember if they were very right or very wrong." 

And he added he thinks its unlikely that many Trump voters would lie about their voting plans when approached by pollsters.

However, he acknowledged that data could be "skewed" if Trump voters are less likely to participate in surveys in general.

McHenry also pointed to Pennsylvania as a state where Democrats have been found to be less likely to speak to pollsters than Republicans.

“I can't definitively say there is no response bias, but I'm skeptical of it, and it certainly wouldn't be enough to explain the national deficits we're seeing,” he said.

Earlier we reported how Joe Biden had won a traditional midnight vote in a tiny New Hampshire town, taking all five votes in a landslide.

However, the last time a candidate took all of the votes in Dixville Notch was to Richard Nixon in 1960 – where he went on to lose the election.

Source: Read Full Article