Republicans Believe Election Is ‘Effectively Over,’ Trump Will Win: Analyst

Republicans believe the 2024 race is already over and that former President Donald Trump will be elected back to the White House, according to political analyst Mark Halperin.

A significant number of Republicans have declared the presidential race “effectively over,” agreeing with Halperin that Trump will “checkmate” Vice President Kamala Harris with a combination of four to five swing states, the analyst said Tuesday on independent television platform 2Way.

“Trump is going to lock up the Sun Belt states, probably all four, but at least three. And then he’s going to win Pennsylvania, and that checkmates [Harris],” Halperin told the platform. “They may be wrong. But there’s a not insignificant number of them who are quite confident of that. And the data they’ve seen on the absentees and the early votes and the voter registration … makes them more confident.”

He added that he doesn’t know “a single Democrat” who has that same feeling about the Electoral College, saying that some believe Harris can win certain battleground states, but have not expressed confidence that she can win on a national level.

Newsweek on Tuesday reached out to the Harris campaign and Democratic National Committee via email and text for comment.

“That doesn’t mean Harris is going to lose, but it is an asymmetry in my reporting that comes from a variety of people connected to the campaigns and not connected to the campaigns,” Halperin said.

The Newsmax correspondent was the first to report that President Joe Biden would drop out of the 2024 race, days before he announced his decision.

On July 18, Halperin said that his sources had told him that Biden had agreed to step aside and that a speech had already been drafted for the president to deliver as early as that weekend. Biden would officially announce that he was no longer seeking reelection on July 21. He would also immediately endorse Harris as his replacement, a move that contradicted Halperin’s reporting.

“This decision was reached, I’m told, all of a sudden because of the high-level pressure from [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi, [former President] Barack Obama and others, as well as the decision of many of Biden’s top aides, that there was no path forward for him, that he would not be able to win this election, win the general election, and therefore he’s stepping aside again as early as this weekend,” Halperin told Newsmax in July.

Halperin’s comments Tuesday come amid new polling numbers from The New York Times/Siena College. The results of the national survey showed Harris with a slim lead over Trump, with 49 percent support to his 46 percent. The figures mark the first time that Harris has held the advantage over Trump in the survey since she became the Democratic nominee. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 2.4 percentage points. The survey was conducted from September 29 to October 6 among 3,385 likely voters.

Other analysts challenged Halperin’s reading of the data, arguing that confidence is not enough to win an election. Journalist Jonathan Alter responded to Halperin in a post on X, formerly Twitter, writing, “Mark, all intel from your reporting is welcome. The problem is that many Republican strategists have a history of working the refs, with sketchy polls, premature ‘dozens of paths to 270’ (a familiar refrain in Milwaukee) and old-fashioned spin. It ain’t worth much.”

Political commentator Russell Drew also tweeted, “Mitt Romney was so confident he was going to win that he didn’t even write a concession speech. Hillary Clinton too.”