Trump official says campaign has '3 major voter suppression operations under way' to discourage Clinton supporters

A senior Donald Trump official told Bloomberg in a story published on Thursday that the campaign had "three major voter suppression operations under way."

The effort, according to the unidentified official, was aimed at discouraging three groups Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton needs to turn out at the polls - white liberals, millennial women, and black Americans - from voting.

The official explained that the Trump campaign was highlighting the ongoing dumping of Clinton campaign emails from WikiLeaks and her past support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to turn off supporters, or suppress the vote, of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Allegations of sexual misconduct against former President Bill Clinton were meant to turn off young women, the official further explained, and Clinton's decades-old comment about "super-predators" was intended to discourage black voters.

The Bloomberg report also highlighted details of Trump's major data operation, called "Project Alamo."

Brad Parscale, a high-ranking Trump official closely tied to the project, said expensive internal polling done by the campaign showed that Trump was behind in the presidential race.

"Nate Silver's results have been similar to ours," said Parscale, referring to the renowned FiveThirtyEight statistician, "except they lag by a week or two because he's relying on public polls."

The campaign has a model called the "Battleground Optimizer Path to Victory," to help weigh the states that the data team assessed are most critical to hitting the needed 270 electoral votes in November. Florida is the top state in this model, followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia - a reliably red state.