David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris‘ failed White House campaign, suggested their internal data did not match public polls that showed Harris ahead of now-President-elect Donald Trump.
The observation was made in a post-mortem discussion with several leading Harris campaign staffers about “what went wrong” for them in the 2024 presidential election on the latest episode of the “Pod Save America” podcast.
“I think it surprised people,” Plouffe said, “because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw … it was just basically a race that in the battlegrounds was 46-47, 47-48.”
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Harris entered the race in July, shortly after President Joe Biden dropped out under pressure from allies concerned about his mental capacity, age, and electability following a fumbling debate performance against Trump.
Plouffe said that the “Biden-Trump 1.0” match-up was “obviously pretty catastrophic in terms of where the race stood,” but he contended Harris was “able to climb out” from behind and make it a “margin-of-error race.”
As shown in the RealClearPolitics national poll average chart, Harris boasted a 2-point advantage from late September until early October. During the same period, Harris built a small betting odds lead before Trump caught up and ran away with it.
The Harris team’s “internal analytics” showed “47-47” in Wisconsin and “48-47 Trump” in Pennsylvania, recalled Plouffe, who noted they hoped to win over undecided voters and “get a little benefit from turnout, which we weren’t able to do.”
Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s successful 2008 White House bid and later become a senior advisor to the president, summarized the Harris team’s stance come Election Day as: “We were hopeful. I don’t know how optimistic we were.”
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Trump ended up winning all the battleground states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, while making gains among working-class voters, minority groups, and young people. He also appears to have prevailed in the popular vote.
“I think the political atmosphere, the desire for change, all those fundamentals that you’ve spent a lot of time talking about really presented huge challenges for us.” Plouffe said. “So … we got there, but we didn’t get the breaks we needed.”
