A pollster formerly aligned with the Republican Party said the angry reaction from a senior Trump strategist to reports of deteriorating GOP polling showed the issue had struck a nerve within President Donald Trump's political team.
Mark Mitchell, who founded The Honest Poll and previously served as director of polling at Rasmussen Reports, cited the public criticism Chris LaCivita launched against political journalist Mark Halperin after Halperin reported that Republican private polling was more negative than public surveys indicated.
“The fact that LaCivita called Halperin out and attacked him when he doesn’t even really tweet that much tells you this one drew blood,” Mitchell said during a 2WAY appearance. He added that the episode “got to the White House” and “p—— a lot of people off.”
Mitchell added that several Republicans, including friends of LaCivita, told him, “‘no, you’re actually right, things are pretty dire.’”
The conflict arose when Halperin released a column in the Daily Mail in which he quoted private warnings from Republican operatives regarding the party's position in the lead-up to the November midterms. Republican polling expert Frank Luntz pointed out one sentence from the column on X: "While public polls are horrendous for Republicans, the private ones are worse."
LaCivita, who acted as a senior adviser and co-campaign manager for Trump's 2024 campaign, replied by referring to Luntz and Halperin as "losers" and dismissing their comments.
Halperin then stated that he had received confirmation of his report from 17 other Republican strategists and that none of them had contacted him to challenge it. LaCivita responded once more by saying that he had got 18 calls from people who claimed that Halperin's version of events was incorrect and accused him of using clickbait.
The confrontation came after conservative Iowa radio personality Steve Deace had given another warning, stating that the Republicans on the Iowa House had been given information about internal polling which indicated problems in districts that Trump had carried comfortably in 2024.
Deace stated that the GOP candidates in those districts where Trump had won by 15 percentage points were now within the margin of error, whereas those Republicans in districts that Trump had carried by 10 points were "underwater." He also cautioned that the situation could be worse than in 2006, when the Republicans lost control of both chambers during George W. Bush's presidency.
“If the environment is this bad in my home state, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can’t imagine where it is everywhere else,” Deace said.
The Washington Post stated that it had independently verified Deace's version of the warning being given to the Republicans in Iowa. Since the original internal polling has not been made public, it is impossible for anyone to independently examine its methodology, sample sizes and margins of error.
Mitchell pointed out that LaCivita's response was important since it demonstrated the seriousness with which Trump's allies were viewing the discussion about the private polling studies at a time when five weeks remained before the 2026 midterm elections.
