Former President Donald Trump is in a “very good position” in battleground states, James Blair, who is running the political operations for the Trump campaign, explained during an interview on Breitbart News Saturday, walking through each one.
“At the top line, President Trump is obviously in a very good position. You have seen in the public polls over the last couple of weeks, really, everything really pointing in the same direction — both nationally and on a state-by-state basis, he’s ahead of where he was four years ago or even eight years ago, from a polling perspective, by very significant amounts,” Blair began, adding greater perspective by noting that they have never been “polling in this good of a position before — in the lead in virtually every battleground state on the averages.”
Blair said the Trump campaign is playing offense, “and I think that you’re seeing that they [Kamala Harris’s campaign] are very defensive and probably don’t like their odds right now.”
Blair walked through each battleground state, beginning with North Carolina, explaining that the poll averages “historically underrepresent President Trump’s support.” That begin said, the averages currently show him “fully three points ahead of where we were at the same day four years ago.” Further, Blair said the North Carolina electorate has shifted to the right since 2020.
“A lot of people assume it’s a majority Republican state. It’s not. It’s a majority Democrat state, but it has moved, just on a registration basis, three points to the right since the 2020 election. And so that’s about a net improvement of 270,000 raw voters between Republicans and Democrats, just because of the voter registration gains we’ve made, and really cut into their deficit,” he said, adding that they have “closed the mail ballot request from this time versus 2020 by like 15 points.” He said one challenge in that state will be voter displacement due to the storm.
Blair said Trump is “polling ahead of where we were in Georgia by a little bit smaller margin on the averages — about half a point to a point ahead of where we were.” Ultimately, he said the Peach State looks good.
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“Since 2020 like 62 percent of the new net voter registrations came from counties that Trump won in 2020 according to the final tally. … Again, absentee mail ballot requests are down 80 percent in Georgia — the difference of a little over a million ballots. But even on the returns that are in we’ve closed the gap by a few points, according to our internal tracking data,” he said.
Arizona, he continued, looks “really strong” for Trump. He said they work alongside Turning Point USA in that state and touted “structural gains,” explaining that they have moved the electorate to the right there, as well — three points, specifically.
“Since 2020 we’ve increased what was about, you know, 140,000 voter registration advantage in the 2020 election. It’s about 270,000 now,” he said, noting that Republicans also “have more mail voters than they do on a partisan basis.”
In Pennsylvania, Blair continued, Democrats are clearly nervous, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris brought in a new senior adviser in the Keystone State.
“The polling looks strong there, way ahead of where we were. And, you know, a canary in the coal mine, I think again, is voter registration, that electorate has moved four points to the right. I mean, it was about … 685,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans four years ago. That’s been cut down to, like, 320,000 and actually, if you look at the active voters, that the gap is even narrower,” he pointed out, explaining that the eligible electorate has “shifted fully four points to the right in Pennsylvania.”
Further, he said mail ballots are down “by about 30 percent compared to four years ago in terms of raw number of requests.”
The discussion then turned to Wisconsin, and Blair said it has been “trending” in Trump’s direction.
“I mean, Wisconsin, super close state, as we know, very, very high turnout state. Lowest number of raw vote changes according to the final tallies between ’16 and ’20. But again, mail ballots there down 68 percent,” he said, translating that. “That’s a difference of like 440,000 ballots that went out four years ago that aren’t going out this time.”
Blair added that Wisconsin is difficult to poll historically, but he said the Trump campaign has “lots of reason for optimism” about that state.
As for Michigan, Blair said the trend now shows Trump closing in on Harris, if not pulling ahead.
“I think we might have flipped the average yesterday there in the state of Michigan. Yes, I think we did, but that is, you know, like, seven points ahead of where we were on the averages four years ago. I mean, huge gains,” he said, adding greater perspective.
Blair also pointed to the uncommitted voters and abandon Harris movement.
“So Michigan is ripe for the taking, potentially, again, more than half of the net new voter registrations in Michigan came in Trump counties. Since 2020, absentee mail ballot requests are down 24 percent. That’s a difference of 670,000 ballots. We’ve closed the gap by double digits compared to four years ago in terms of ballot requests, and we’ve closed the gap by double digit returns, and we’re also ahead of where we were in 2022 so, you know, Michigan has persistently, you know, been sort of perceived as the toughest state for us, and that’s got to hit Kamala pretty hard, because virtually every poll has us up there for the last two weeks, and all of the trajectory is clear in the same direction,” he continued.
Blair also touched on Nevada, explaining that they have closed the partisan voter registration gap by four points.
“That was like a D plus five state four years ago. Now it’s a D plus one, or a little under a D plus one. That’s, you know, net 67,000 voters, which is twice as many as the final reported margin for Biden out there,” he said, noting that the state has also cleaned its voter rolls — another great sign for Trump.
“And because it’s an automatic mail ballot state, it’s a universal mail ballot state, those ballots would have been on the street to these voters that shouldn’t be on the rolls … and now they’re not going to be. So that’s a huge win for us on the election integrity front,” he added.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern.