Kamala Harris’ senior campaign adviser David Plouffe made an explosive claim that the party’s internal polling never showed that the VP was ahead of Donald Trump in September and October. In fact, the internal polling showed her way behind, Plouffe said on Pod Save America podcast. It was the external polling that kept Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump marginally.
“We were behind. I mean, I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” Plouffe said in his first interview since the election loss. The campaign said they just had short time for the campaigning indirectly putting the blame on President Joe Biden.
Plouffe said the campaign faced difficulties to find out how to distance Harris from Joe Biden since they were part of the same administration.
“Imagine if we said, ‘Well, we would have taken this approach on the border.’ Imagine the round of stories coming out after that of people saying, ‘Well, she never said that in a meeting,’ or ‘What meeting when she said this,’ or ‘I remember when she did that.’ And it was just, it wasn’t going to give us what we needed because it wouldn’t be a clean break.”
“It’s always worth reminding people: It’s really hard for Democrats to win battleground states, OK? Let’s look at Pennsylvania: 25 per cent of the electorate is liberal, roughly, 34 per cent is conservative,” Plouffe said. “So in every battleground state, there’s more conservatives than liberals.”
“In Pennsylvania, if exits are to be believed, Trump won conservatives 91-8. Harris won Liberals 93–6. Moderates, Harris won 56-43. But you kind of got to win 60 percent of them, right?” Plouffe said. “So, you know, for Democrats to win battleground states, to Quentin and Jen’s point, it is a false choice.”
“And I think as we look ahead to ’26 and ’28, particularly where you have seen drift amongst noncollege voters generally, particularly those of color, specifically, you know, we obviously have to get some of that back. We can’t afford any more erosion. The math just doesn’t f‑‑‑ing work, okay?”
“But, I don’t think this is a permanent realignment, but the point here is to win battleground states. Yes, of course you have to maximize your turnout and your vote share amongst liberal voters if you’re a Democrat,” he added. “That was a huge focus. You’ve got to win the center.”
Did David Plouffe delete his X account to avoid questions?
As the interview came, a viral post claimed that David Plouffe initially deleted his X account so that he didn’t have to answer public questions because he was peddling fake data to get funds. “David Plouffe initially deleted his 𝕏 account, likely so he didn’t have to answer public questions about the FAKE data he was peddling to media in the final week, which unsurprisingly, they didn’t even bother to confirm, but then the account reappears and now he is admitting on a podcast that not a single poll was legit and that their internal polling NEVER had Harris in the lead, ever and they were forced to lied to donors. It was all a giant scam. A $1.5 billion Ponzi scheme!” the viral post said.
