Former President Donald Trump may be a "slight favorite" to win on Election Day, according to some polls, but his supporters are "just wrong" if they think the race is already a wrap, as most of the states in the country remain too close to call, political analyst Mark Halperin told Newsmax Sunday.
"If you look at the public and private polling, everything is margin of error stuff," Halperin said on Newsmax's "Sunday Agenda." "Nobody's got a 6- or 7-point lead in any of the seven [battleground] states."
Trump does have momentum on his side, as his "campaign is projecting confidence," said Halperin.
"They're not saying they're the underdogs," he said. "They're saying they're going to win. That's contrary to what the [Kamala] Harris campaign is doing."
Further, polls have historically underestimated Trump's support, Halperin added.
"On the Democratic side, what do they have?" he said. "They have without a doubt more money and without a doubt a larger and maybe superior effort to turn out the vote, whether that's early voters or an Election Day vote."
Meanwhile, Democrats will likely have the edge on the early vote, but questions remain how big that edge will be, said Halperin.
The early vote made the difference for President Joe Biden in the 2020 race, but this year, that lead will be smaller because Republicans are doing better this time about getting out the early vote, he said.
"In every state of all seven states where there is data, they're doing better than they were doing in 2020, so Republicans have at least somewhat, at least somewhat addressed the challenge from 2020, where the early vote just made it impossible for Donald Trump to catch up on Election Day," said Halperin.
Meanwhile, he said he doesn't expect the results to be returned quickly once votes start being processed on Election Day.
"We probably won't know for at least a day or two, and maybe much longer," he said. "We know that unfortunately, with these seven states that are going to decide the election, they're not the best counter. And if it's a close election, they're all going to go for accuracy over speed."
It's also insufficient to try to determine a winner based on where the early voting is happening because it must be determined which parties are turning out more of the early votes, he added.
"So much of what drove the record turnout in the early vote from 2020 was COVID," said Halperin. "I think you're going to see, as I said, Republicans will do better in the early vote than they did four years ago."
He added that the numbers are being closely watched by both campaigns, "And they're trying to figure out how can they do better because every early vote that's banked is an advantage, both practically and psychologically."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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