Former Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was reportedly “completely shocked” to lose to President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to the authors of a new bombshell book.
Newsweek reached out to Harris via her website on Thursday.
Why It Matters
Polling portrayed an incredibly tight race between the former vice president and Trump right up until Election Day last year. The data showed an essentially tied contest, with some polls suggesting Trump had an edge, while others showed Harris in the lead.
Harris and her team maintained that they felt confident going into Election Day, but narrowly lost in all seven battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump won 312 votes in the Electoral College compared to Harris’ 226.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris pauses while speaking during a campaign rally at the Rawhide Event Center on October 10, 2024, in Chandler, Arizona.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
What To Know
The new book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes was released on April 1. The book shares behind-the- scenes reporting of the 2024 campaign of former President Joe Biden, his decision to drop out of the race and the subsequent Harris campaign, which ultimately failed.
Allen and Parnes spoke with journalist Tara Palmeri on her podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win for a new episode released on Thursday. The authors said that Harris and running mate Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota were completely taken aback when she lost handily to Trump—despite the polling showing a toss-up race.
“She was completely shocked, and Tim Walz was shocked. We take you inside his hotel room at the Mayflower, and he’s sitting there stunned. He has no words,” Parnes said on the podcast. “And people are kind of explaining to him, same thing with her. And she’s like, are you sure? Have we done a recount? Should we do a recount?”
She added, “they thought that they were going to win. And so, you know, when they come back now and say, ‘oh no, we didn’t really have a chance.’ No, that’s not what they were thinking. They thought they were going to win.”
The author said that even Harris’ staffers felt “gaslit” by the campaign leadership. Parnes said that Harris and her team were relying a lot on vibes to gauge voter sentiment.
“Kamala Harris was looking at her crowd size and she was looking, you know, they felt like the vibe was strong and, you know, people were saying, oh, we have more boots on the ground,” she said. “We’re doing better in fundraising. And she bought all of that. She bought the hype.”
David Plouffe, ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama and a consultant to the Harris campaign, told Pod Save America in late November, after the election, that the campaign’s internal polling was worse than public survey data. “We still had ourselves down in the battleground states, but very close,” he said.
“Where we inherited a deficit [from the Biden campaign], we got it to even, but the thing never moved [beyond that],” Plouffe said.
Stephanie Cutter, senior campaign adviser, said on the same podcast that Harris “wasn’t willing” to distance herself from Biden. The former vice president reportedly thought breaking with the president would create a “different set of problems” for her campaign.
What People Are Saying
Harris, the day after the 2024 election, on X, formerly Twitter: “My heart is full today—full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country, and full of resolve. The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, but hear me when I say: the light of America’s promise will always burn bright.”
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Harris’ campaign manager, in an email to staff after the election: “Losing is unfathomably painful. It is hard. This will take a long time to process.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who supported Harris, said that her loss was “no great surprise.” The progressive lawmaker said in a statement after the election: “First, it was the white working class, and now it is Latino and black workers as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they’re right.”
Walz, to news station KSTP-TV in December: “It felt like at the rallies, at the things I was going to, the shops I was going in, that the momentum was going our way. And it obviously wasn’t at the end of time. So yeah, I was a little surprised [we lost]. I thought we had a positive message and I thought the country was ready for that.”
What Happens Next
Harris’ plans remain to be seen, but she is rumored to be considering a run to be California’s governor in 2026. According to polling, she would also be a front-runner to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination again in 2028.
