"I hear we’re leading Florida by a bit," he said, which was true when he said it but, thanks to a new survey released Thursday, is no longer the case. "I don’t know why we’re not leading by a lot," he said. "Maybe crowds don’t make the difference."

Maybe, Donald Trump mused, crowds don't make the difference.

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One of the features of Trump's campaign from the outset has been his large, boisterous crowds. This was a feature of Bernie Sanders's campaign, too, which prompted us to debate the extent to which such crowds mattered. There was certainly a correlation between the Vermont senator's big crowds and his prowess at raising money from donors, just as it seems there's a correlation between Trump's enthusiastic base and his small-dollar donations. Crowd size didn't make the difference for Sanders, though, in the sense that he didn't win.

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But look at this from Trump's perspective. Guy leaves his Trump Tower penthouse, heads to the airport with his staff, goes to Jacksonville, walks on stage to an approving crowd, says the same things that the news media scolds to raucous cheers and heads back home. With the exception of those members of the media, there's no obvious point in this process where he faces negative feedback.

In most campaigns, that duty falls to campaign staff. Candidates are usually surrounded by people with particular job functions such as creating TV ads, running turnout operations, conducting polling or prepping events. Because Trump's campaign doesn't do much in the ways of advertising, polling or field work, there are fewer experts in his orbit. Trump has a campaign manager, Paul Manafort, but a CNBC report this week indicated that he'd given up on trying to steer Trump. "Manafort not challenging (Trump) anymore," a message sent to the network's John Harwood read. (The campaign denied the report.)

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On Twitter, Adam Sternbergh put the overarching problem another way:

Trump has said in the past that the election is rigged and that the polls don't adequately reflect his support because his supporters are cautious about admitting it. We noticed this last October: Trump did better in online polls than ones where a pollster spoke to people on the phone, which could have been to Trump's point. But that gap no longer exists: He's been doing better against Hillary Clinton in live-caller polls than online ones.

But because he's doing the same things he did in the primaries — which led to big poll numbers and an eventual victory — something must be going wrong, right? There much be some glitch in the system. All those people cheering!

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This is reinforced in the broader public conversation. Social media makes whispers sound like shouts as a few dozen people chiming in on a subject can make it seem like there's a significant undercurrent. We tend to engage with people that agree with us online, heightening partisan gulfs.

Supporters of Trump and Clinton are mostly surrounded by people who support the same candidate in real life, too, which can give the impression of more support than actually exists. (This is the apocryphal Pauline Kael quote after Richard Nixon's 1972 victory: "But no one I know voted for him!") Trump supporters, like Trump, are mostly surrounded by people who agree with them in the real world and online. Those who don't agree with Trump seem like an aberration.*

That the media questions what Trump says, then, reinforces the idea that the media must be biased against Trump. If you mostly hear from people who agree with you about Trump but are exposed to media outlets that question his statements, it's the media that seems out of step, not the candidate. Trump plays up the media bias idea because it serves him to portray our fact-checking as being somehow hostile — but it's safe to assume that he also sees a lot of reporting as unfair.

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It's not clear the extent to which Donald Trump believes his own hype, the point to which he sincerely thinks he's doing as well as he lets on. But that quote in Florida cracks the facade a little. The big crowds he enjoyed in the primaries reflected an energetic core of support that, running against 16 other Republicans, kept him at the front of the pack early on and allowed him to pick up stragglers as other candidates dropped off. Running against one candidate, though, that isn't enough.

Maybe — just maybe — crowds don't make the difference.

* Again: This also holds for Clinton backers.

What Donald Trump is doing on the campaign trail share Share View Photos View Photos Next Image MANCHESTER, NH - NOVEMBER 7: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at SNHU Arena in Manchester, NH on Monday November 07, 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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