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As I’ve explained, this issue of turnout operations and what we can glean about them is one of the things I’m most interested in finding out more about as we hurtle into the last 30 days of the campaign. None of the information I’ve found so far gives any definitive answers. I’m not even sure definitive answers are possible. But I’m going to pass on some interesting hints I’m finding. The thing you hear again and again about canvassing and ground operations is that you cannot just overwhelm it with money. Money is obviously critical. But you need a lot of institutional experience and time to make it work. With TV ads you really can overwhelm it with money. Get a billionaire with unlimited funds, cut some good ads and get them on TV. Done and done. One of the big factors operating now in swing states is that outside groups are paying 10 to 25 times the ad rates of campaigns. But still, unlimited money can help with that. Canvassing and field operating takes time and institutional experience.
TPM Reader BP in Maine notes this article in The Bangor Daily News which reports that Elon Musk’s America PAC is hiring canvassers in Maine now — as in, a little more than a month before Election Day. On September 23rd, Bloomberg News reported hiring in New York, California and Michigan. (In the first two, that’s going to be for House races rather than the presidential.) I don’t want to rule out the possibility that this is additional hiring in Maine for the final push. But it doesn’t sound like it. Other reports noted that Musk’s group recently fired the firm they’d hired for field work in Nevada and were looking for a new firm. Again, this all seems quite late in the game to be in the hiring stage. But I stress again that we’re possibly getting an incomplete view.
Another tidbit comes from this article from a couple weeks ago which notes that Turning Point Action, which was supposed to be an anchor of the Trump campaign’s outside group strategy, ramped its efforts back to focusing on Arizona and Wisconsin and didn’t have the resources to be operating in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and other swing states.
Here’s a snippet from that article …
But one group that has long been the subject of Republican scrutiny for its ground game promises is Turning Point, which set a goal earlier this year of spending more than $100 million on a “Chase the Vote” program. Now, the group told Semafor, its effort will be more narrowly focused and mostly in Arizona, where it is headquartered, and Wisconsin.
“I wish we had the resources to blanket Michigan and to blanket Nevada and blanket Georgia, like we’re doing [in] Arizona [and] Wisconsin,” Andrew Kolvet, a Turning Point Action spokesperson, said in a statement to Semafor. “But barring a last minute major infusion of resources we’re just simply not able to staff those regions like we’d want to.”
Turning Point Action did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News. One Republican operative with experience in field operations said the statement from the group in Semafor validated warnings that Republicans shared with Trump about Turning Point for months — and contributed to the campaign’s ramp-up of its in-house program in recent weeks.
Again, that doesn’t sound great. And Turning Point, at least in my understanding, is basically one of the two tentpoles of the whole plan.
In all these articles you hear named or unnamed swing state Republicans being quoted raising doubts. The Trump campaign has a two-tiered response. The first is that these people aren’t looking in the right place. Old school GOTV, they argue, was in the dense suburbs while they’re focusing on very low propensity voters in the exurban and rural areas. The second part of the argument is that these are just disgruntled people who are mad because they didn’t get the contracts they’re used to getting.
That second point — people who are just miffed they didn’t get hired — definitely can be true. But on the first point, TPM Reader RB, a politico from Michigan, makes what strikes me as a compelling point. Okay, you’re focused heavily on very low propensity voters in low density population areas. But it’s not either/or. Maybe you’re making good headway there. But if you literally abandoning the suburbs, the densely populated areas where you can contact a lot of Democrats and Republicans, that’s a problem. Observers in both parties are saying they’re simply not seeing much of a GOP ground operation. By this they mean mainly in the suburbs. And if I’m understanding this the Trump campaign is essentially conceding this point: that they’re not active there. That does seem like a problem for their efforts even if the focus on rural areas is basically accurate and even working well.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying or predicting that Trump’s ground game is going to collapse. Hard evidence for what is going on either way is hard to come by. And we should want even more evidence if what we’re trying to find out or prove is something we’d like to be true. Even at their most successful, ground operations are something that help at the margins, maybe hustling out an additional percentage point of support. In a close race, of course, that can make all the difference. My sense is that there’s enough indications here to think there are real problems in this part of the Trump campaign operation — late starts, reliance on inexperienced people, leaving some key areas mostly untouched. Whether that has a big impact on things, I’m less sure. On the other hand, if the Trump campaign stumbles on Election Day, you won’t be able to say there weren’t quite a few warning signs.
I’m going to keep an eye on it and if you have experience or knowledge of specifics of what’s going on please be in touch.