Kamala Harris’ team sees only reasons for optimism in early voting data and election-related legal battles, senior campaign officials told reporters Thursday afternoon.
Democrats have been gripped by anxiety in recent weeks, as polling shows the two candidates running neck-and-neck in all seven battleground states. Though Harris’ entry into the race sparked enormous enthusiasm among her base, and she has continued to draw large crowds, there are plenty of signs she could lose.
But her team says the momentum is in her favor.
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According to the campaign’s numbers, women make up 55 percent of the battleground state residents who have already voted. That’s a good sign for the Democrat, who regularly outperforms Donald Trump among female voters. That tracks with public reports about the disproportionate share of women voting, which has already begun to worry Trump’s allies.
The campaign officials said they’re not worried about the significant uptick in Republicans who voted early. Compared to 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp partisan divide in early voting, more Republicans in battleground states are casting their ballots ahead of Election Day. Political prognosticators have said that may be a bad sign for Harris.
But her team rejected that narrative, pointing out that many of the Republicans voting early this year cast their ballots on Election Day four years ago. Instead of attracting new supporters, Trump is simply turning out the same voters he did last time, the Harris campaign officials said.
If Trump does lose again, the threat of Republican legal challenges looms. The former president has continued to cry fraud when referring to the 2020 election and has not committed to accepting the 2024 results if he loses.
On that front, too, Harris’ staffers are confident. They pointed to the concerns Republicans are already raising—for instance, about voters turned away in Pennsylvania—as a sign he’s running scared. And when they fight back to any potential challenges in the court system, they’re confident the evidence will be on their side.
On Thursday, Harris’ team stuck with the message campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon shared on Sunday: “We are very confident we’re going to win this thing.”
