Harris' Advisor: I'd rather be us, public polls are junk.
Recently I listened to a podcast episode with David Plouffe, a senior advisor to Barack Obama's campaigns and now advisor to the Harris campaign talking about the state of the race. It was pretty similar to his appearance on Pod Save America which someone did a write-up for a week ago, but he had some interesting insights:
Plouffe says public polls are junk, campaigns have far far more data. From what he has seen, the race hasn't changed since mid-September: neck and neck in every swing state. They haven't seen Kamala drop or Trump gain momentum. He says that aggregators aren't much better than public polls. Says to ignore any poll that has Trump or Harris up 4 points in a swing state.
He especially says national polls are useless, and also that people should not project national-level demographic data onto specific swing states. Using the Latino vote as an example, he says that Trump making gains with Cubans in Florida may move the national demographic data, but that's an entirely different community than Puerto Ricans in Philadelphia, with whom they have good numbers.
He says campaign internals tend to be much better, notes that despite calls for Biden to campaign in Florida or Texas in 2020 because public polls showed him and Trump basically tied, he said the Biden campaign's data wasn't reflecting that.
They aren't underestimating Trump, they said they've learned their lessons from 2016/2020 and noted "if Trump is going to get 100 votes in a precinct, we just assume he's going to get 110, that way we can still win a close race."
He'd still rather be Harris than Trump because he perceives Harris as having a higher ceiling, says that Trump's strategy seems to be revolving around targeting low propensity voters but the early voting data they've seen doesn't reflect that his strategy is working.
He says don't fret over the polls, but says it will be a razor thin race and says that anything people (who want to elect Harris) can do in these last two weeks can help the campaign finish strong. A donation, a phone banking session, door-knocking in a swing state. Notes that one of the struggles of the Clinton campaign was a weak finish, not just the Comey investigation but also the health scare and other things.
Hope that helps people relax if you're dooming. We aren't in worse (or better) shape than mid-September. It'll be a toss-up till the end, and try to pitch in for the campaign these last two weeks if you find yourself dooming. He even encourages people to share content on their social media as a way of reaching more people that might not otherwise see it. Whether it's a Harris ad or a clip of something bad that Trump said that people might not be aware of yet (like the "enemy within" or etc).