Faced with troubling poll numbers, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made a point -- and a joke -- on Thursday about his "high energy" from the Republicans' second presidential debate. Bush insists he is "having a blast" on the campaign trail.

In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the White House hopeful went to predict that he would emerge as the GOP's nominee when actual voting starts in February, USA Today noted.

"I'm having a blast and it's going well," Bush said. And his poll numbers "don't matter to me in October."

The Floridian's assertions come in the wake of a Washington Post story that asserted that some of his main donors had warned Bush to either demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or expect notable defections among his supporters. The unnamed backers pointed to Bush's continued decline in surveys.

In a national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Sunday, the former governor came in at just 7 percent support, the newspaper detailed. Front-runner Donald Trump, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former HP chief executive Carly Fiorina are among Republicans who perform better than Bush, often perceived as an establishment candidate.

But Bush himself disputed the Washington Post's account, noting on "Morning Joe" that "no donor's called me up."

Republican strategist Henry Barbour, meanwhile, said that he still had confidence in Bush's run for the nomination. "People assume that they know who Jeb Bush is, and that's part of the struggle the Bush campaign has," Barbour told the Washington Post.

"I think if people get to know Jeb and they give him a chance, he's going to be tough to beat," he added. "But they don't know him yet. And you've got a right wing of the party that is almost determined not to get to know him. They want to believe that because they disagree with him on a couple issues that he's not their guy."