A campaign autopsy by former President Donald Trump’s chief pollster showed then-Vice President Mike Pence held an advantage over current Vice President Kamala Harris with swing-state voters, as well as over Trump and now-President Biden.
In a 27-page report, pollster Tony Fabrizio analyzed exit polls from 10 key battleground states that Trump won in 2016 and split in 2020.
Trump and Pence held only five of the 10 states they won in 2016, despite Harris and Biden each garnering favorability ratings below zero in the two groups.
Pence scored a net positive rating with both groups.
Five of the states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — flipped to Biden after going for Trump in 2016. Another five — Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas — went for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
The full memo, which was circulated among top campaign aides last month, was obtained by the Washington Examiner on Monday.
Fabrizio, who used exit poll data from the National Election Pool and Associated Press, also found that while Trump’s favorability fell below zero in the group of states that flipped for Biden, the former vice president was underwater in both the states that he won and lost. Trump scored a net positive in the states that he held on to.
Voters in both groups of states, those that flipped for Biden and which Trump held, gave Pence higher marks on favorability than Harris.
In the five states that voted for the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, Pence outscored Harris by 5 percentage points.
Among the voters surveyed, Harris scored a 49% unfavorable rating to 46% favorable, with 5% answering “don’t know,” for a minus 3 percentage point result.
Pence, despite losing these states, polled nearly the reverse of Harris, with 47% of respondents giving him an “unfavorable” rating and 49% scoring him favorably, with 4% answering “don’t know,” for a net positive 2 percentage points.
In the five states Trump held, Harris polled at a 52% unfavorable to 42% favorable among respondents, while 6% said “don’t know,” for a minus 10 percentage point overall score.
Pence, in those same states, scored 44% unfavorable to 52% favorable, with 5% “don’t know,” for a net positive 8 percentage points.
Trump and Biden also scored below Pence in this metric.
According to the report: “VPOTUS held a marked image advantage over Harris in both state groups where his image was net positive. Harris’s image was worse than Biden’s in both state groups.”
The report shows how Trump suffered a “double-digit erosion” among white college-educated voters, losing a key demographic that he needed to win, despite drawing 10.2 million more votes than he did in 2016.
This was not enough to eclipse Biden, who garnered 81 million votes, the most ever for a presidential candidate. Trump, with 74 million, drew the second most and highest-ever total for a losing candidate and sitting president.
Voters aged 18 to 29 and those 65 and older also distanced themselves from Trump, as did independents.
In 2016, Trump won independent voters by “double digits” in all 10 battlegrounds. “They shifted against him significantly in 2020,” the analysis reads.
Among Hispanic voters, he “made double-digit gains” across the states but scored virtually the same with black voters as in 2016, according to the memo.
Overall, Trump “lost ground with almost every age group in both state groupings,” with the worst numbers among white voters.
The memo was first reported by Politico.
