Clinton Campaign Isn’t Worried About Trump’s Poll Numbers—Yet

Campaign manager Robby Mook says to wait until after the Democratic convention to judge whether Trump’s ahead.

Robby Mook, right, is Clinton's campaign manager.Brian Snyder/ZUMA

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Donald Trump has taken a lead in several national polls following the Republican convention, but Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook isn’t sweating it yet—at least not publicly.

Polls from the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and CBS News all have Trump slightly ahead nationally following the RNC. But at a press briefing on the opening morning of the Democratic National Convention, Mook dismissed concerns that his candidate was lagging, pointing out that conventions have always boosted a candidate’s polling numbers in the past. “There’s a clear trend historically in polling that after your convention, you always get a bump,” Mook said. “I would kind of suspend any kind of polling analysis until after our convention.”

Polling guru Nate Silver weighed in over the weekend and said that while Trump’s poll numbers certainly have improved post-convention, “the initial data suggests that a small-to-medium bounce is more likely than a large one.” He added on Twitter that Trump got a typical bounce of 4 percent. Still, Silver’s model on FiveThirtyEight now predicts that Trump would stand a 57.5 percent chance of winning if the election were held today. But like Mook, he notes that Trump’s lead is due to a standard convention bounce, and his more advanced model has the same message for Clinton supporters: Don’t panic just yet.

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