Donald Trump's "scorched-earth" approach to winning the Republican primaries will need to give way to a broader more positive strategy if he wants to win the general election in November, an Emerson College pollster said Saturday.
"He's pretty aggressive against former Republican leadership, current Republican leadership — and that's helped him build a strong base of support," Spencer Kimball, adviser to the
Emerson College Polling Society in Boston, told MSNBC host Alex Witt.
"But in order to build a general election, he's going to have to expand beyond that," he added. "He's going to have to change, basically, his communication and try to come up with a more positive message to bring people into his group."
Witt pointed to Thursday's poll by
The Washington Post and ABC News showing the Republican front-runner with the highest unfavorable rating — 67 percent — of any major-party presidential candidate ever.
Scores like these give rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich ample opportunity to lure voters from Trump, Kimball said.
"Trump's problem is that he's just focusing on the primaries — and the primary strategy has worked out well," the pollster told Witt. "He's winning the delegate vote right now.
"But in order to win the general election, he's going to have to expand beyond just this base of support.
"When you have negatives in the high 60s and 70s, typically we don't vote for the people we don't like."
On Monday, Emerson College will release its final poll in Wisconsin before Tuesday's primary.
In a "sneak peek" to Witt, Kimball said that Cruz should beat Trump by double digits, while Democrat Bernie Sanders was expected to top Hillary Clinton by at least 5 points.
"Cruz definitely has expanded his lead," he said. "We had him up a point about a week and a half ago."
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