GOP political strategist Margaret Hoover said she’s heard from Republicans that there is “concern” among Trump campaign operatives that turnout and enthusiasm numbers are lagging.
Former President Donald Trump and his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, are in what polls indicate is a historically close race for the White House, as they battle it out in seven swing states.
On “The Source” Wednesday, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked Hoover, a veteran of two presidential campaigns who served in George W. Bush’s White House, what figures campaign operatives would be paying the closest attention to right now.
“I think if you’re the Trump campaign, you’re not looking at CNN’s numbers. You’re looking at your own internals,” said Hoover, who is the great-granddaughter of former President Herbert Hoover.
“And I honestly think — I think their internals are actually giving them pause,” she went on. “They do have a lot of resources for polling, more than ... media companies have, and they’re probably seeing the same things that you guys are talking about, which is that there is real groundswell in the early vote.”
“There is real enthusiasm, which is hard to measure,” Hoover continued. “I have heard from Republicans that there is concern at the Trump campaign — amongst the operatives that actually really do know the political wherewithal — that the turnout and enthusiasm numbers aren’t where they need to be.”
Earlier, her fellow panelist Jamal Simmons, the vice president’s former communications director, said he was in Michigan over the weekend.
People on the ground in the swing state expressed optimism about turnout, early voting and canvassing efforts for Harris, Simmons said, noting that the campaign has substantially more volunteers since Harris took over from Joe Biden.
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Nearly 60 million people have already voted early, either in person or by mail, according to an NBC News tracker.
Another CNN panelist, David Axelrod, former adviser to President Barack Obama, said, “Nobody knows what the hell’s gonna happen.”
“This is a really, really close election,” he added, noting that aggregates of polls show a dead heat in swing states.
“I think there’s some imponderables here,” he noted, wondering if there would be a “hidden vote” for Harris from groups like Republican women, or if there’d be “the same effect we’ve seen in the last elections, where Trump produces a vote that has eluded pollsters.”
“A lot of the pollsters say, we’ve done so much to guard against that that we may have over-cranked against that possibility,” he said.