Given how much Democratic support is driven by fear of a Trump presidency, I asked Cecil he’s ever worried about complacency—that with increased news and poll numbers like this week’s, Clinton voters might get too confident about a Trump loss and stay at home on November 7th.

“I get paid to worry,” he said. “So the short answer is: yes. I regularly remind people that three weeks ago, most of the people that do polls and predictions were suggesting there was basically a 50/50 chance Trump would be president. By the way, this was after he had said some pretty egregious things; this was after he was running an angry and divisive primary. While we are in a strong position, it does not take a long memory to recall Trump running strong in the polls just a few weeks ago. And that can happen again.”

According to Mitch Stewart, the battleground states director for the Obama 2012 campaign and a founding partner of 270 Strategies, the most tangible negative effect of overconfidence and complacency is on a campaign’s volunteer organization. “Urgency fuels activism,” Stewart explained.

In a moment like this—where the Republican campaign is beset by sagas and sinking numbers, stuff that may delight Democratic voters but decrease their personal drive to stop Trump—Stewart said he can “understand the need to manufacture urgency” to keep Clinton supporters engaged.

But Stewart explained that if a campaign is too negative about its chances, this can have the opposite effect when it comes down to actual voting. His research shows that “people want to feel like they’re part of something bigger, and to go along with the crowd.” In other words, they want to be on the winning, or at the very least, ascendant side.

By way of an example, Stewart recalled the 2012 presidential campaign, during which Republican legislatures passed a number of restrictive voter ID laws. “We were careful about the language we used regarding how Republicans were making voting more difficult,” he said. The Obama campaign avoided using phrases like “the lines are long, turnout will be low” because, Stewart said, “that would have had the opposite effect. People hear that and they’d think: ‘Republicans are making it harder to vote?’ People wouldn’t want to turn out.”

(Ironically, Stewart said, “What Trump doesn’t realize is that the ‘rigged’ language he’s using depresses his own turnout. It’s a disincentive for voters to participate.”)

In this way, there is a strange alchemy to modern campaigning: a candidate must highlight the urgency of the choice facing voters and suggest the possibility—but not probability— of defeat. These days, Clinton’s supporters might be less inclined to believe in the probability of her defeat, but she must somehow keep alive a healthy sense of paranoia about the possibility of it.