CNN’s data guru says President Donald Trump’s claims he would win an election in a landslide are pure fiction.
Harry Enten ridiculed the idea Friday, telling CNN anchor Sara Sidner that the claim was, literally, out of this world.
“If he ran again, the idea that he’d win by 25 percent, or 25 points, yeah, maybe on planet Krypton people, but in the reality world in which we live in here on planet Earth... it’s just not real, it’s just not real,” Enten said emphatically.
Trump, 80, first made the claim in August, when his approval was at just 33 percent. It has since sunk even lower, with a poll on Thursday finding it to be 31 percent.
“When you look at these numbers you just go, ‘No, President Trump wouldn’t win by 25 points, in fact he wouldn’t win at all,’” Enten said, citing polling that asked voters if they could have a do-over of the 2024 election how they would vote.
One poll found Kamala Harris would win by 6 points, the other said she’d win by 8. In 2024, Trump won by just one point.
“Voters, they have a regret or two, and we’ve seen this in poll after poll after poll—the regret has grown since the beginning of Trump’s presidency,” Enten said.
Trump has consistently rejected polling data that shows how deeply unpopular he is, refusing to acknowledge it as legitimate and dismissing it as “fake news.”
But the president hasn’t enjoyed a positive approval rating in any poll since March 2025, Enten pointed out, citing independent voters as the key group that has abandoned Trump.
“Independents have dragged President Trump’s approval rating down, and they are the ones saying if I have another chance I am not going to vote for President Trump again,” he said.
That unpopularity is a key reason Republicans are dreading the looming midterms, worried that their toxic-with-voters leader will drag down the whole ticket.
Polling data suggests a blue wave is coming, with voters furious about the economy and the president’s war in Iran.
“[Independent voters] really don’t like the job that President Trump is doing in the White House,” Enten said.
In response to the consistently terrible polling and a flurry of other bad news, Trump turned on the media in September, banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House and turfing CNN from Air Force One.
Furious with the press for not writing positive stories about him, he claimed he should be able to bar “fake news” from having access to him.
A judge he appointed overturned the ban, citing the First Amendment.
While CNN is a constant source of frustration for Trump, he has previously had praise for Enten, singling him out as CNN’s “best person” in August.
“The best person on CNN is Pollster Harry Enten,” Trump declared on Truth Social, adding: “Don’t fire him!”
The president was responding to polling that showed Trump’s continued popularity within the Republican party.
But today, the poll was all voters, and it told a very different story.
“There is no sign whatsoever that President Trump’s ratings are going in the positive direction,” Enten said of the data. “They’re actually going further and further into the deep red sea.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle told the Daily Beast the president remained popular with his base.
“No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the President understands how to communicate with them,” he said.
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”
He did not address questions about the president’s popularity among non-Republican voters.
