Tom Pappert, reporter at The Pennsylvania Daily Star, said he believes pollsters are “unwilling” to release the results of new polls taken in the battleground state of Pennsylvania since the end of the Democratic National Convention and the suspension of Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign in an effort to “preserve” Vice President Kamala Harris’ “honeymoon” phase in the 2024 presidential race.
Only one poll conducted by Emerson College Polling/The Hill has been released since the end of the DNC last week and Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and threw his support behind former President Donald Trump in the race moving forward.
That poll, which surveyed 950 likely voters in Pennsylvania from August 25-28, found Harris and Trump to be tied at 48 percent.
Pappert noted, however, that Trump has consistently held a slight lead in the state leading up to the support Kennedy threw behind him on Friday.
“It seems as though they’re unwilling to release new polls in the wake of the DNC and the RFK endorsement. It seems as though they’re doing this, in my opinion, to preserve a narrative that Kamala Harris is in this wonderful honeymoon, and she’s going to be just okay,” Pappert explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“It will be very interesting to see if 66 percent of RFK’s voters really do break for Trump as both the Trump campaign and Kennedy have said. Then, we could see Pennsylvania perhaps move a little bit more into the confident column for President Trump,” Pappert added.
Trump won Pennsylvania in 2016 by 0.7 percent of the vote; however, lost the state in 2020 to President Joe Biden by 1.2 percent.
Pennsylvania has 19 electoral college votes.
In addition to the presidential race, Pappert also pointed out how Pennsylvania is also the scene of a high stakes U.S. Senate race between incumbent Democrat Bob Casey (D-PA) and Republican nominee Dave McCormick.
On Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro campaigned for Casey in Bucks County, which the governor called “the swingiest of all swing counties in the swingiest of all swing states.”
Pappert said that he believes Shapiro wouldn’t be “crisscrossing” the state if the race was “all that rosy for the Democrats.”
“I don’t think Josh Shapiro would be crisscrossing the state on a Monday to help out Bob Casey if things were all that rosy for the Democrats in the Keystone State,” Pappert said.
Watch the full interview:
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Kamala Harris” by Kamala Harris.
