“We were hopeful. I don’t know how optimistic we were, but we thought, OK, this is tied, and if a couple things break our way [we could win],” David Plouffe, a senior adviser to the campaign, said Tuesday on the “Pod Save America” podcast in a joint interview with fellow Harris campaign alums Jen O’Malley Dillon, Quentin Fulks and Stephanie Cutter.

Plouffe said the campaign’s internal polling never had Harris ahead of Trump.

“We didn’t get the breaks we needed on Election Day,” he said. “I think it surprised people, because there was these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw.”