Harris Campaign Manager Sends a This-Is-Fine Email to Staff: ‘We Feel Good’ About Blue Wall States

AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager for Vice President Kamala Harris, emailed a memo to staff late Tuesday evening, urging them to get some sleep and voicing optimism for the “Blue Wall” states yet to be called.

As polls closed on Election Day and results began to be announced, the predictably red states were called for former President Donald Trump and the predictably blue states were called for Vice President Kamala Harris. Decision Desk HQ called both Georgia and North Carolina for Trump, but several other media outlets were keeping their powder dry on making a projection.

The New York Times live election needle went live shortly after 8 pm ET, projecting a likely Trump win. Other prognosticators were leaning towards Trump as well, including Nate Silver. Still, a number of key states remain undetermined, and similar patterns have emerged in recent elections, with counting needing to continue throughout the night — possibly for days.

That was the message O’Malley Dillon sought to emphasize in her staff-wide email, according to multiple media reports on its contents.

The text of the email:

Subject: What We’re Seeing So Far

Team, As polls close across the country, I wanted to give everyone an update on what we’re seeing. As we have known all along, this is a razor thin race. Thanks to this amazing team, we have seen incredible turnout across the Battleground States, and the closeness of the race is exactly what we prepared for.

While we continue to see data trickle in from the Sun Belt states, we have known all along that our clearest path to 270 electoral votes lies through the Blue Wall states. And we feel good about what we’re seeing.

• In Pennsylvania, we overperformed turnout expectations in Philadelphia, and overperformed in our early vote expectations in Bucks County. We don’t have Election Day results from Philadelphia, but we do know that we overperformed turnout expectations there, and have seen especially high turnout in places with large non-white and student populations. We expect to see higher turnout in Philadelphia than in 2020. Outside of Philadelphia, we have limited data on turnout and support right now, but what we do have is tracking with our expectations. We are awaiting more results (like everyone else!), and hope to get a closer read in the coming hours.

• In Michigan, we are awaiting a significant amount of votes to come in. The City of Detroit won’t be reported out until roughly midnight, but we have seen strong turnout throughout early vote and Election Day there. Other results in Michigan are harder to parse, since results are coming in more piece-meal than elsewhere.

• In Wisconsin, we know there is a significant amount of vote remaining in Dane and Milwaukee counties, and we are seeing signs of strong performance in the WOW counties, where we have partial data. We don’t expect complete results from Wisconsin until tomorrow morning between 3 am – 5 am.

Polls just closed in Nevada and Arizona so, as expected, it will be a while before we have more information from both
states.

We’ve been saying for weeks that this race might not be called tonight. Those of you who were around in 2020 know this well: It takes time for all the votes to be counted – and all the votes will be counted. That’s how our system works. What we do know is this race is not going to come into focus until the early morning hours.

We’ll continue to keep you all updated as we get more information. This is what we’ve been built for, so let’s finish up what we have in front of us tonight, get some sleep, and get ready to close out strong tomorrow.

JOD