Harris campaign feels ‘really good’ about early voting numbers, adviser says

Vice President Harris’s campaign feels “really good” about early voting numbers, a campaign senior adviser said, despite Republicans having submitted more ballots so far in some swing states. 

“We’re seeing a lot of Republicans voting early this time that didn’t vote early four years ago,” said Ian Sams, Harris’s campaign senior adviser, during his Tuesday appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill.” 

“Four years ago, Donald Trump was running around trashing early voting and saying, ‘Don’t do it. It’s corrupt. It was a lie.’ But that’s [not] what he was saying this time,” he added. “He’s actually encouraging his voters to go vote early. And so what we’re actually seeing in the data is that these are a lot of Donald Trump’s own 2020 Election Day voters who are just casting their ballot early.” 

Even with GOP voters having cast more ballots in battleground states of Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, Sams argued the Democratic nominee’s campaign is fine with the current numbers and added that they have surpassed surpassed its “internal metric” from two years ago. 

“We feel really good about the numbers that we’re seeing in our own early vote push,” Sams said. “We’re exceeding our own internal metrics from 2022, and we’re excited about bringing us home next week.”

More than 53 million voters across the country have cast their ballots this with less than a week before Election Day, according to the University of Florida’s tracker. More than 25 million ballots have been returned, while more than 27 million were cast in person. 

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the chair of Harris’s presidential campaign, acknowledged Sunday that it will be a “close race” but said the campaign feels “very good about where we are. We are very confident we’re going to win this thing.” 

The campaign chair said the campaign has seen “high turnout everywhere.” 

“We’re seeing strong turnout,” O’Malley Dillon said told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “Our margins are strong, and the folks that we’re focused on — those lower propensity voters that don’t always vote — they are tuning in and showing up at a higher level in support of the vice president.”

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