Harris never led Trump, internal polls showed — but DNC officials were kept in the dark

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Harris aides point fingers at 'sexist' media, hurricanes for election loss

Emily Domenech and Fred Hicks discuss the criticism facing Vice President Harris and her campaign following her 2024 loss.

A top aide to Vice President Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign recently revealed that internal polls never actually saw her defeating President-elect Donald Trump, but apparently this was not conveyed to those collecting high-dollar donations for her bid. 

"That's not what we were told," DNC National Finance Committee member and Harris campaign fundraiser Lindy Li shared with Fox News Digital. 

"We were told definitely that she had a shot at winning – it wasn't even a shot. I was even told that Pennsylvania was looking good, that we would win 3-4 swing states."

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Harris campaign senior advisor David Plouffe said Vice President Kamala Harris' loss to President-elect Trump was due to the electoral weaknesses in the battleground states. (Getty Images)

"And on the night of election night… we were told that we were going to win Iowa."

But Harris senior adviser David Plouffe presented a much different analysis of the vice president's chances at that point in time on "Pod Save America," a show hosted by staffers of former President Barack Obama.  

"We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day," he told the hosts in the episode which aired on Tuesday. 

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As President Barack Obama holds a news conference, staffers, from left, communications director Dan Pfeiffer, deputy communications director Jen Psaki, senior adviser David Plouffe and press secretary Jay Carney listen in the East Room of the White House on June 29, 2011. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

"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, along with other top Harris aides Jen O'Malley Dillon, Stephanie Cutter and Quentin Fulks, joined the podcast to share why they believed they lost the election. 

While the top advisers on the campaign were apparently aware of Harris' polling deficit, this information was seemingly obscured to other relevant parties, including those soliciting capital from donors, such as Li. 

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Jen O'Malley Dillon, campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris, before Harris gives her concession speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2024. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Li, it is "absolutely not" normal for a campaign to obscure this type of information. 

"I've been doing this since I graduated from college more than a decade [ago]. Absolutely not."

She also shared that donors' trust will need to be gained back because of the daylight between what the campaign was telegraphing about its situation and the reality. "But like for some casual donors, they're going to be like, no f---ing way," Li said. 

DNC member Lindy Li speaks to Fox & Friends Weekend about why the Harris campaign ended in such "disaster." (Fox News)

"It's not that he'd beat her that's a shock. It's the extent to which he beat her. It wasn't even close. It was a decisive defeat." 

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Harris had rivaled Trump and even defeated him in numerous respected public polls across the country, which Plouffe acknowledged in the appearance.

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"When Kamala Harris became the nominee, she was behind. We kind of, you know, climbed back, and even post-debate, you know, we still had ourselves down, you know, in the battleground states, but very close. And so, I think, by the end, it was a jump-ball race," he said.