Hillary Clinton was not able to get past her 45 percent "ceiling" for support, and Donald Trump's camp knew that was a weakness for the Democratic nominee, his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, said Wednesday.
"Her floor and her ceiling were dangerously close together," Conway told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program. "We saw some vulnerability and softness there in her numbers."
In addition, Conway said, polls did not monitor the electorate correctly when forecasting a win for Clinton.
"They're using old models that reflect different candidates and different times and not really appreciating the fact that people make up their minds based on a number of inputs," said Conway. "The issues, the individuals, the images, the ideas. They stir that up in their big voter caldron and make a choice."
And then there's Trump, said Conway.
"The man is brilliant," she said. "The man is gutsy. The man ran and sacrificed to do this for the country. He didn't need the money and the fame and the power and the status. It's very attractive to people because for him, he can literally, literally satiate that appetite for an outsider who goes to Washington owing nobody anything."
Conway described Trump as being "humble for a while," and when he's been talking about a "rigged system," he was talking about the polls.
"He was never leading in Pennsylvania, not one time," she said. "We would not give up on Pennsylvania. That was my reach state as the campaign manager. We just kept going there. Ivanka Trump went there, Melania trump, Tiffany Trump, Mike pence.
"We invested money there in ground game. Why? Because his message is one that fits with so many people in Pennsylvania."
As soon as the campaign saw Trump was taking the core states of Iowa, Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina, "which were no small feat, we knew that we could just flip one or two more states and become president of the United States."
The "undercover" Trump voters also came into play, and Conway said she thinks they have been treated unfairly.
"It's not that they're embarrassed to say they're voting for Donald Trump," she said. "What they are is tired of arguing with people in their social circle or their families because normally these people would vote for a Democrat.
"Indeed, many of them did vote for President [Barack] Obama twice. Some of them even voted for President Bill Clinton twice."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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