Republican pollster B.J. Martino predicted Friday on “What America’s Thinking” that some voters bothered by President Trump’s rhetoric may still vote for him in 2020.
“Let’s go back to 2016 and think about all of the sorts of norms of running a presidential campaign and being presidential that Donald Trump broke then,” Martino, a partner at the Tarrance Group, told Hill.TV’s Jamal Simmons.
“He was able to get those voters or at least enough of them to vote for him in the right states that he could win,” he continued. “Why did he do that? Because he had an opponent who has as high if not higher unfavorable than he did at that point.”
Martino was responding to language used by Trump at a rally on Thursday night in Grand Rapids, Mich., in which he called Democratic-led investigations into him “ridiculous bullsh–t.”
“So this sort of thing, yes, is it personally repugnant to some of those voters? Yes. Can some of them, enough of them, hold their nose and still vote for him in November of 2020? That’s certainly possible,” he said.
Trump came under fire a month before the 2016 presidential election when a tape of him making lewd remarks about women during a 2005 “Access Hollywood” appearance was published by The Washington Post.
The then-GOP presidential nominee faced wide backlash and criticism over the leaked tape, for which he expressed regret before going on to win the election the next month.
— Julia Manchester
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