Voters are angry, "really angry," GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Wednesday, while explaining Donald Trump's lead in the national polls, and he doesn't blame them for being mad.
"I'm angry, too," the former Arkansas governor told CNN's "New Day" program. "I think we're all frustrated. Government is completely out of touch with us. They have ruined our economy. They haven't protected us."
Further, he said that people are "disgusted" with insider dealing, "what I call the 'Washington to Wall Street axis of power,' where the politicians do the dance of the donor class. Usually it's at the expense of the working class, and people are sick of it."
The former minister also downplayed Trump's comments concerning Hillary Clinton's defeat to then-Sen. Barack Obama, calling them "earthy, let's just be blunt" and noting that he wouldn't talk like that.
But real leaders aren't just "thermometers reflecting the mood of voters," said Huckabee, commenting that it may be to his detriment that he won't speak like Trump.
"If we want a leadership election, that will be a different kind of vote that we will have if we have what I call a thermostat election rather than a thermometer election where all we do is simply reflect the mood of voters, sometimes very angrily," Huckabee said.
Also on Wednesday, Huckabee said he knows that the polls are making the big news, and often they are "incredibly wrong."
"It was wrong in the Kentucky governor's race, it was wrong in the Eric Cantor/[Dave] Brat race," he said. "Polls can be off key and I think we might be surprised at what happens Feb. 1 when the Iowa caucuses actually happen and people are voting and not just answering a phone."
Huckabee is polling at about 3 percent, but he said his campaign did a survey in Iowa last week of 5,000 voters, and found that 75 percent said they have not made up their minds, and 58 percent said they hadn't come to any conclusions.
"Iowa voters typically love to date, but they don't put a ring on it until just before the wedding," said Huckabee, pointing out that Rick Santorum won the caucuses, even though he was running low, and eight years ago, he himself was the surprise winner, so he's not basing his chances on polls based on a few hundred people.
But if he doesn't finish well in Iowa, Huckabee said, "it's probably not going to happen for us in the states that are coming later."
"If it does, I'll see them in South Carolina," he said. "If it doesn't, then I've made a good stab at it."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.