Even with recent polls showing that Vice President Kamala Harris is leading former President Donald Trump, the Democratic nominee’s campaign isn’t taking the results at face value.
During a recent appearance on the podcast “Pod Save America,” a podcast hosted by former Obama White House staffers, senior advisor to the Harris-Walz campaign David Plouffe said that most public polls are “horses—.”
“So I really can’t speak to the public polls. I spend very little time looking at them,” Plouffe, who also served as the manager of President Obama’s 2008 campaign, said on the podcast. “I just don’t. And most of them are horses‑‑‑.”
Plouffe went on to say that while some of the results from the polls can be accurate, most aren’t worth looking at.
“Some of them may be close, but, generally, I’d say any poll that shows Kamala Harris up 4 to 5 points in one of these seven states, ignore it. Any point that shows Donald Trump up like that, ignore it,” he said.
Bottom line, Plouffe stressed that right now, the race is very close, saying it’s a “margin-of-error race.”
Still, at this point in the race, Plouffe said he would rather be Harris than Trump, pointing to her strength with some Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters.
“I think Kamala Harris may surprise at the end of the day with either straight-up Republicans or independents who are essentially Republicans. We’re seeing a continued strength there, and that matters a great deal, given how big those cohorts are,” he said.
Looking at their internal data, Plouffe says he thinks they may be “undercounting her strength amongst Republican-leaning independents.”
As for the national polls that Plouffe says aren’t reliable, an average of them from the Decision Desk HQ has Harris leading Trump 49.8% to 46.9%.