The leadership of outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign said that internal polling never had her ahead of President-elect Donald Trump.
After President Joe Biden began lagging heavily behind Trump in the polls in June and July, the entrance of Harris appeared to solve Democrats’ problems. From August until right before the election, a great many accredited public polls had Harris leading Trump.
According to David Plouffe, a senior adviser on the Harris campaign, this was never reflected in internal polling, which always had Harris behind or tied with Trump.
“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said in an appearance on the Pod Save America podcast. “I think it surprised people because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”
Plouffe added that internal polling didn’t change much throughout the election, remaining mostly static since Harris joined the race in July.
He appeared on the podcast with the other leaders of the Harris campaign: Jen O’Malley Dillon, head of the campaign; Quentin Fulks, deputy campaign manager; and Stephanie Cutter, who oversaw messaging and communications. All agreed with the assessment.
“The truth is that we really thought this was a very close race; we talked about the entire time we saw it as a margin-of-error race,” Dillon said.
They disclosed other premonitions of disaster, such as anticipating Florida going further for Republicans than before and Virginia going dangerously close to the Republicans.
Overall, the Harris campaign leadership portrayed the race as doomed from the start, saying there wasn’t much Harris could’ve done to change the outcome.
The comments on the video of the podcast on YouTube were heavily against the guests.
“This interview was absolutely bananas. They admit zero fault. What a disaster,” one commenter wrote.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“The long and the short of it is that none of these people should ever run a national campaign ever again. The Obama era is over,” another said.
The internal panic from the Harris campaign was unknown publicly, helping contribute to a widespread perception that the race was a toss-up. The results were the best for Republicans since 2004, with Trump winning the popular vote and sweeping every swing state.