Pollster Frank Luntz reverses course, bets on Trump to win in November

Though once considered a solidly Republican pollster, Frank Luntz has long been extremely critical of Donald Trump and his prospects for a political comeback, but last week, he was forced to reverse course and predict that the former president will succeed in his quest to reclaim the White House, as Breitbart reports.

Luntz, who once distanced himself from any affiliation with the Republican Party due to his disdain for Trump, made the startling prognostication last week following a debate between GOP hopefuls Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

After the faceoff between DeSantis and Haley concluded, a reporter from CBS asked Luntz which of the current Republican candidates he would choose if he had $150,000 to wager on the outcome of the November election.

Luntz replied, “I never dreamed that I would say this, but I would bet on Trump. I never -- I thought it was done. I thought it was over,” he said of the former president's time on the political stage.

Referencing the many obstacles raised in Trump's path to a second term in the Oval Office, Luntz mused, “You don't come back from an impeachment, you don't come back from January 6, you don't come back from any of this, but he's come back.”

“The guy's a survivor, and his opponent is having so much trouble that I would, at this point, give the edge to Trump,” Luntz added in a presumed reference to President Joe Biden.

Perhaps embarrassed by such a noteworthy course correction, Luntz seemed keen to backtrack at least somewhat on his statement when asked by Breitbart News whether it was his true opinion.

“I wouldn't put much stock in it,” Luntz said in a text message.

Referencing the upcoming Iowa caucuses, he added, “All that could change on Monday if Trump has a bad showing.”

In addition to his post-debate comments, Luntz has weighed in elsewhere in recent weeks about the astounding manner in which Trump keeps proving the naysayers wrong, regardless of the hurdles erected along the way.

Speaking to CNN late last month, he observed, “the more that he is prosecuted, the more that he is condemned, the higher his numbers go as people rally around him.”

“Trump is now even more likely to beat Biden,” Luntz declared.

That realization must be a rather bitter pill to swallow for Luntz, who once told the Sydney Morning Herald that Trump's tenure in office and its aftermath made him feel like “an outsider” in his own country and that he no longer identified as a member of the GOP.

It seems that Luntz is just the latest – but perhaps one of the most prominent – figures to join the list of those who wrongly underestimated Trump and the depth of the enduring support he enjoys among large swaths of the American electorate.