Voters Have Been Fleeing Donald Trump & Republican Party Since Black Lives Matter Protests Began, Analyst Says

In a Sunday analysis for CNN, polling analyst Harry Enten claimed that voters across the U.S. have been fleeing Donald Trump and the Republican Party since the Black Lives Matter protests began in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Enten pointed to an Iowa Poll released on Saturday that showed Democratic Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield gaining momentum over Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. According to Enten, this poll is one of many for the White House and Senate that shows a “clear shift” toward the Democratic Party since the BLM protests began.

“These state polls in aggregate suggest that the movement toward former Vice President Joe Biden seen in the national polls is funneling down to the state level,” Enten wrote.

Enten claims that the latest polls from battleground states across the country don’t bode well for the GOP. In particular, he noted that regions like Ohio and Texas, both demographically distinct and representing different regions of the country, show Trump losing ground. Notably, Texas Republicans are reportedly worried that the state could turn blue in November.

According to Enten, the current data suggests that Trump won’t be able to rely on the Electoral College to net him a win in November, as he did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.

“The leads that Biden is earning right now are well outside any potential polling miscue like the one that occurred on the state level in 2016. The former vice president, simply put, is well ahead of Trump at this time.”

Although Trump’s “law and order” approach to the protests has been viewed as out of touch by some critics, CNN‘s Maeve Reston argues that such criticism doesn’t mean the president’s electoral prospects are doomed. Reston notes that both Republican and Democratic strategists are aligned in their belief that it’s impossible to know how an issue like racial injustice will affect the November election.

In addition to this uncertainty, Reston noted that the U.S. is currently in the midst of a pandemic that has fueled a “frightening economic collapse.”

Outside the issue of racial injustice, Trump’s handling of the pandemic may be hurting him as well. ABC News reported that a new ABC News/Washington Post poll showed that women over the age of 45 are turning away from the president.

According to the source, follow-up interviews with some women from this demographic suggested that some are turned off by the president’s “abrasive demeanor,” “divisive rhetoric,” and his tweeting habits.