Liz Cheney predicts many Republicans will secretly vote for Kamala Harris
Former Republican Representative Liz Cheney predicted Sunday many Republicans will actually end up voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The former Wyoming representative appeared on ABC's This Week to urge her fellow Republicans to dump former President Donald Trump and endorse Harris as she has.
“Given the closeness of this election, particularly if you’re going to find yourself voting in a swing state, you’ve got to take the extra step if you really do recognize the threat that Donald Trump poses. Then it’s not enough to simply say, ‘I’m not going to vote for him,'” she said.
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But she also said that even if many Republicans don't follow her lead and denounce the former president, they'll take advantage of the privacy of the polls to secretly support the Democratic candidate.
"It’s a secret ballot," Cheney said. "At the end of the day, you just have to wrestle with your own conscience when you’re there in the voting booth. And I would expect that you will see far more Republicans and independents, you know, when the time comes, and they’ve got to make that decision, make the right decision."
This would be the opposite of what some believe happened in 2016. Polls at the time generally showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the lead over Trump. But when the election happened, though Clinton won the popular vote, it wasn't enough to tip the Electoral College in her favor.
Over 70% of Republican insiders felt the polls underestimated Trump's support, according to a Politico article from October 2016.
“I personally know many Republicans that won’t admit that they are voting for Trump. I don’t like admitting it myself. It won’t matter if Hillary is up more than 5 points, but we might be in for a surprise if Hillary’s lead is less than 5 points on Election Day,” an unnamed Virginia Republican told the outlet at the time.
In a 2016 interview conducted before the election, Trump's then-campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pointed out that Trump polled better in anonymous online polls than in more traditional polling, according to WJLA.
"It’s become socially desirable, especially if you’re a college-educated person in the United States of America, to say that you’re against Donald Trump," she said.
A 2019 study found that this was indeed the case. The study found that 54% of those polled voted for Trump but kept their preference a secret publicly. When broken out by gender, 57% of men and 50% of women polled kept their Trump vote a secret.