Allentown, Pa. — On the stump, Donald Trump likes to tell his supporters he needs a "landslide" win in 2024 so that his victory will be "too big" for Democrats "to rig."
But off the campaign stage, the former president's team is striking a more measured tone.
The GOP nominee's stronger performance this cycle in RealClearPolitics' battleground-state and national polling averages compared with 2016 and 2020 indeed has Republicans feeling confident in their chances — albeit less bullish on a landslide win than they were a few months ago when Trump was running against Joe Biden.
With less than a week to go before Election Day, Trump is better positioned in the polls than he has been at any other time throughout his three presidential campaigns. He currently leads Harris by 0.4 percentage point in a RealClearPolitics average. By contrast, with six days until Election Day, Biden led Trump by 7.5 percentage points in the 2020 RCP polling average. And in 2016, Hillary Clinton led Trump by 1.7 percentage points.
The public polling data may suggest an extraordinarily close race against Harris in the seven battlegrounds. But "if you look at the mail-in ballot requests and returns, we're far outpacing where we were in 2020 and the voter registration gap has also closed," a Trump campaign adviser told National Review in an interview. "So just looking at the metrics, things are way more favorable for us than they were in 2020."
"I don't know if I would predict a landslide," this Trump adviser added. "But I think we're all cautiously optimistic that we're going to win."
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