Vice President Kamala Harris' internal campaign polling never showed her leading Donald Trump in the presidential race, according to a senior campaign adviser.
President-elect Trump defeated Harris on Nov. 5 after most preelection national polls showed each candidate leading at times and indicated a toss-up race.
Harris seemed to give Democrats renewed hope after replacing President Joe Biden atop the national ticket. Biden had been considered the party's presumptive nominee until his disastrous debate performance against Trump in June.
Despite widespread mainstream media belief that the vice president was ahead heading into the election, Harris campaign senior adviser David Plouffe said the campaign's internal polling always showed Harris behind or tied.
"We didn't get the breaks we needed on Election Day," Plouffe said during an appearance on the Pod Save America podcast. "I think it surprised people because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw."
Plouffe added that internal polling remained mostly static after Harris replaced Biden in July.
Campaign Chair Jen O'Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks, and Stephanie Cutter, who oversaw messaging and communications, joined Plouffe on the podcast.
"The truth is that we really thought this was a very close race; we talked about the entire time we saw it as a margin-of-error race," Dillon said.
Plouffe said Biden's unfavorability numbers, and inflation helped form a "challenging political environment" for the Harris campaign.
"The fact we got the race to dead heat was positive but, boy, it was slow moving," he said.
Plouffe said hopes of a Harris victory were diminished after seeing "massive shifts" toward Trump in blue states such as California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York.
"I think where Kamala Harris campaigned we were able to keep the tide down a little bit, but it ended up being a pretty strong tailwind for Donald Trump," Plouffe said.
Many comments about the podcast on YouTube ripped the guests.
"This interview was absolutely bananas. They admit zero fault. What a disaster," one person wrote.
"The long and the short of it is that none of these people should ever run a national campaign ever again. The Obama era is over," another wrote.