Trump camp: Turnout models confirm momentum shift to president, undercut Dems' 'Red Mirage' script

The Trump campaign on Monday said its internal voting turnout models show President Trump with robust victories in the battleground states of Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Nevada. They also said that if Trump wins enough votes on Tuesday evening, then he will declare victory — regardless of claims by Democrats.

Beyond internal polling, further external evidence shows a growing momentum shift toward Trump in the last 10 days, accelerating through the final weekend: tightening polls in battleground states where Trump had trailed, along with surprising GOP strength in early voting results and polls showing late breakers tilting toward Trump.

On a press call with reporters Monday afternoon, senior leaders of the Trump campaign said opponent Joe Biden's campaign was lagging behind in early vote tallies to levels that would be impossible to overcome after Election Day turnout. For example, Nick Trainer, director of battleground strategy for Trump 2020, said that Biden was leading in Pennsylvania Monday evening by approximately seven hundred fifty thousand votes heading into Election Day. 

"But we know right now, there are 2.6 million Trump voters likely to show up tomorrow," Trainer said. "And there are 1.5 million remaining Biden voters to show up tomorrow," he said, which would leave an insurmountable gap for Biden of 350,000 votes.

Trainer said their turnout modeling showed Trump will win Election Day in Arizona by 150,000, Wisconsin by more than 100,000, Nevada by approximately 50,000 votes, and 400,000 votes in North Carolina, Ohio and Michigan.

In the prize state of Florida, Trainer said, "President Trump has an election day margin of over 500,000 net ballots." The South Florida Sun Sentinal reported that through Sunday, the ballot differential was "Razor thin: 66.2% of registered Democrats have already voted, as have 65.9% of Republicans."

"It's pretty simple out there," he told reporters. "If the voters that we know are still left in the electorate and still wanting to participate in this election, show up tomorrow — as they've been telling us for well over two years now — President Trump is going to have four more years in the White House, and the Democrats are scrambling and panicking."  

Trump told reporters in Milwaukee on Monday night that he thinks his campaign is in a much stronger position than it was four years ago. 

"The campaign — I mean, you're a witness to it," Trump told reporters after the Air Force One arrival at General Mitchell International Airport in the swing state of Wisconsin. "The campaign has even more energy. The crowds are much bigger. Much bigger. And we had the biggest crowds ever, and these crowds are much bigger. Nobody has ever seen this. This has never happened before.  And there's a — there's a tremendous spirit ... And, you know, I'm honored to be a part of it. I'm just a part of it. I'm representative of it, but I'm really just a part of it, and I'm really honored by it. And I think you're going to see all of those people voting, and it's going to be a wave. And it's my opinion, but I've never seen anything like it either." 

Trump campaign officials also said the Biden campaign is preparing election-night messaging saying that a so-called "Red Mirage" — an apparent Election Night Trump victory — will eventually succumb to a "Blue Wave," through counting of ballots still in the mail, provisional ballots and court challenges.

"We know that they're going to start using the phrase 'Red Mirage,'" Tim Murtaugh, Trump 2020 campaign manager, told reporters Monday. "We know that they're going to start throwing up the smokescreen imagining postal delays and claiming that — falsely claiming — that simply because they mailed out ballots to voters that have not come back yet that those votes — which have not been cast — should be counted. "All sorts of different shenanigans like that." 

Murtaugh said Democrats were planning to using celebrities in their "Red Mirage" ad campaigns to try to convince people that "this is the right and reasonable thing to do, when in fact, they're trying to buy time so they can go to court and steal this thing." 

"The fact that they have television ads already tested and queued up, ready to go to try to convince people that this delay is prudent — when in fact what they're doing is trying to buy time so they can circumvent laws," Murtaugh said.

Murtaugh rejected claims that Trump would refuse to concede if he loses or that he would prematurely claim victory.

"If the president wins on election night, and it is clear — or the morning after — and it is clear that he has won, he's going to say so," Murtaugh said. "And so we already have seen the Democrats in the media — through some anonymous sources — saying, 'Oh the President's going to declare victory no matter what happens.' That's not the case. If the president wins, he's going to declare that he won."

Bloomberg News reported that senior leaders of Biden's campaign "are increasingly worried about insufficient Black and Latino voter turnout in key states like Florida and Pennsylvania with only four days until the election."

The Biden campaign did not respond to request for comment from Just the News. Progressives in the media have pointed to favorable signs for Biden, including reporting on data from Tufts University showing an enormous groundswell among 18-29 year old voters, who lean heavily left, in early voting and requests for absentee ballots.

However, data from polling firm The Trafalgar Group, which specializes in tracking "hidden" Trump voters and successfully predicted GOP victories in 2016 and 2018 missed by many other mainstream pollsters, found that late breaking voters are moving toward Trump, especially on the issue of COVID-related shutdowns. Trafalgar polling also showed Trump up almost 5 in Pennsylvania and leading in Michigan, Arizona and North Carolina. 

The Des Moines Register poll last week showed Trump pulling away with a 7-point lead in Iowa.

And the RealClearPolitics battleground spread has narrowed — from Biden +5 to Biden +2.3 in the last 2 weeks. 

Gallup's presidential approval stood at 46% last week (up from 39% in June), showing rising satisfaction for Trump. 

Even with some positive polling data, the overwhelming number of national polls showed Trump losing to Biden, sometimes by double digits. Because of this, Trump campaign officials cautioned against relying too heavily on polls. 

"I would stress to everybody — take polls at this point with a grain of salt," Justin Clark, deputy campaign manager, told reporters Monday. "We're at a point right now where we are talking about who is actually showing up and voting tomorrow. Polls mean less than they have at any point in this election."

Both Clark and Trainer said that hard data on who had registered and voted was far more useful to the campaign than traditional polls.

"What we're telling you is not a poll, these are actual votes," Clark said. "These are modeled voters that we think are going to turn out tomorrow. So RealClearPolitics may have their averages and their polling averages, but at this point with as many votes cast as there have been cast, the only real way to measure where we are is to look at who has voted and who is remaining to vote." 

Trainer said polling sampling methodology, which often produces wide margins of error (a criticism leveled last week by Brexit engineer Nigel Farage in an interview with Just the News), also yields far less precise results than their turnout models.

"There are over 8 million Floridians that are participating in this election now," Trainer said. "We can learn a lot about those people, and certainly a lot more about about the state as a whole, than an 800-person sample, via a traditional poll. Modeling is what modern modern campaigns do now, to better understand the electorate. And the model tells us the President Trump is going to win tomorrow."