During a call with reporters Friday, the Clinton campaign touted that they were seeing higher early voting numbers in the key state of Florida, a positive sign for Clinton in an increasingly tight presidential election.
On the call Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said that early voting in Florida was up 52 percent over 2012 and up 16 percent over 2012 in North Carolina. A demographic breakdown showed that early turnout of Hispanic voters – a key component of the Democratic base– was up 120 percent in Florida and was already higher with five days to go until the election than it was in 2012 overall.
The campaign also boasted that early African American turnout in Florida was up 22 percent in the state.
In North Carolina – a state Romney won in 2012– the Clinton campaign conceded that while Latino early votes were up, African American turnout was still slightly below where it was for Obama in 2012.
“More people are voting earlier,” Mook said, highlighting that Clinton’s strategy all along has been to turn out a large share of lower-propensity voters in early voting.
Mook said the campaign believes “this will be the highest turnout election we’ve ever had.”
He added that Trump’s lack of ground game in key states was a “real compounding problem.”
“If he hasn’t banked his base by this point, he’s gonna have an even taller task in the final days of the election without a ground game,” Mook said.
