Inside Trump world, good news is treated with suspicion

Republicans around the country — Donald Trump’s campaign included — are exuding confidence in the days leading up to the election, buoyed by polling showing Trump in a better closing position than any of his previous elections.

Inside Trump’s inner circle, though, that confidence is being matched with an equal amount of skepticism. The suspicion is not because the campaign is seeing dire numbers — in fact, it’s the exact opposite: The data, both internal and external, actually looks promising, something that Trump veterans aren’t used to after heading into the final days of 2016 and 2020 as clear underdogs in swing state polling. Instead, there’s a persistent fear that some factor they haven’t spotted, from a polling error to unexpected turnout issues, might swing the race.

“There’s not enough wood to knock on,” one person close to the campaign told Semafor. “There just isn’t. After what happened in 2020, and the ‘red wave’ that didn’t materialize in 2022, there are more skeptics than there are optimists.”

This is the Republican version of election anxiety — paranoia concealed behind a layer of bravado. It’s less overt than the quadrennial freakouts endemic to the Democratic party, who seem to find the doom in every data point that doesn’t point to sweeping victory.

The Trump campaign has been spending time poring over the numbers to ensure nothing has been missed as election day draws near, three people told Semafor. Advisors, who have different opinions on which external data is the best, have compared publicly available polls to their internal figures, which one person said are slightly “more positive.” They’re also encouraged by early voting data, which experts warn can be fickle, but at minimum suggests relatively more Republicans are voting early this year after Trump reversed his prior opposition to the practice.

“Everything we are seeing is beyond good for us,” a person on the campaign noted, trying to capture the distrustful attitude toward the news. “So naturally, because we spend all of our time in adverse conditions, we’re all looking around going, ‘Is this happening? Are you seeing what we are?’”

Election forecasters like Nate Silver have rated the race almost a pure toss-up based on public polling, though his model also gave Trump his highest odds of victory since mid-September on Monday: 55%. A slight polling error or late shift in either direction could tip all seven major battlegrounds to one candidate or the other.

“Nobody is taking anything for granted,” a Trump spokesperson said. “We have work to do and we’re going to do it.”

Many on the Trump campaign also echo their candidate’s superstitious nature, which plays a role in the hesitant response. While Trump refused to concede the last election and as a rule projects confidence about victory even sometimes in deep blue states, he was also reluctant to engage in 2016 transition planning for fear of tempting fate. Some in Trump world live by an unspoken rule to not talk to Trump about post-election matters before the election is over.

But even with those nagging suspicions, the campaign is cautiously optimistic, and the public confidence is real — it’s just balanced out with hand-wringing and disbelief after years of facing an upward polling climb. That isn’t to say there isn’t some chest-beating: At least some in Trump world believe a “blowout” is possible, an impression Trump has sought to cultivate with late scheduled stops in reach states Virginia and New Mexico, and are predicting a collapse in Harris’ standing.

“We’re looking for reasons to not believe it, and we can’t find it,” the person close to the campaign said.