Confidently Worried……
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….
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Some in Trump world live by an unspoken rule to not talk to Trump about post-election matters before the election is over….
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