YORK, PA, Sept 9 (Askume) – For the past month, Trump campaign volunteers Rachael and Chris Gottberg set out to knock on doors in York, Pennsylvania, with the goal of scoring unusual victories that drive turnout in states the campaign believes are the key to victory in battleground states.
Wearing red T-shirts that read “Captain Trump Troopers,” they were among a handful of door-knockers gathered at Republican headquarters in this working-class city of about 45,000 people. They planned to travel with their 8-month-old baby in a stroller.
The couple said they are focusing on newly registered voters in political campaigns and so-called “low propensity” voters — people who don’t show up every voting cycle and may even skip the presidential election that takes place every four years.
The Trump campaign and its allies are focusing unprecedented attention on these rare voters in seven battleground states who could decide whether Democrat Kamala Harris will also lose the Nov. 5 election .
One Republican official and one academic expert said the focus, which has not previously been elaborated on, is a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy that could bring in a wave of new voters but would also be less effective if their goal ultimately narrows to “stay home. That doesn’t cut it.”
“It’s definitely a new focus that wasn’t the case in 2020,” said Rachel Gottberg, 34, a door-to-door campaign veteran from past campaigns who then worked with Together, where her husband drives a car adorned with a large Trump badge to find voters.
Candidates often target infrequent and swing voters in an effort to expand their base. But Trump views infrequent voters as more important than in previous cycles. The targeted voters are predominantly rural, white and young, but also include a large number of people of color.
“We know they agree with us. We know they support us, but we have to get them to the polls,” James Blair, the Trump campaign’s political director, told Askume.
A poll released Sunday by The New York Times and Siena College underscores the Trump campaign’s chances among less reliable voters. The poll shows that while Trump leads Harris 48% to 47% among all likely voters surveyed, Trump leads Harris by 9 points, or 40% to 49%, among voters who likely won’t vote in 2020.
The Trump campaign and its allies argue that turning out diehard supporters who are less inclined to vote is crucial to victory. The campaign also targets independents and other constituencies, which it estimates make up 11% of voters in battleground states.
“When you break down the numbers, you see about 300,000 less-leaning, conservative-leaning votes in Arizona alone,” said Andrew Cole, a spokesman for Turning Point Operations, a pro-Trump group that helped mobilize these voters.
“When you lose these states by 10,000 or 20,000 votes, you realize how much potential there is if we do a good job of reaching out to these voters,” he said.
In contrast, the well-funded Harris campaign appears to be launching a broad effort to get out the vote. While campaign officials declined to discuss their specific goals, the approach appears to include appealing to women and other non-Trump groups through rallies and registration drives.
Jason Cabell Roy, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, said the Trump campaign wisely selected rare voters who were credited with helping Trump win in 2016.
“One of the hallmarks of Trump’s support is that low-propensity voters aren’t really engaged,” he said.
The composition of the Trump coalition is changing
Askume found that the campaign benefited from the help of at least four pro-Trump groups that specifically targeted low-frequency voters.
These include America PAC — the super PAC backed by tech billionaire Elon Musk — and the nonpartisan group led by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, while the for-profit organization Turning Point Action plans to spend $108 million to hire hundreds of paid knockers in battleground states.
Not everyone involved in Trump’s get-out-the-vote effort thinks focusing on infrequent voters is a good idea.
A party official in a swing state briefed on the grassroots gaming strategy said he was concerned that too many resources were focused on infrequent voters at the expense of swing voters who were not particularly attached to their party loyalty.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning, said infrequent voters sometimes have to spend a lot of time getting to the polls, including multiple visits and phone calls. They may feel alienated from politics and may not watch TV ads.
Donald Green, a political science professor at Columbia University, said Trump’s strategy is backed by academic research showing that efforts to mobilize fewer supporters are relatively effective early in a president’s term because these voters are more willing to be wooed. But he also sees risks to this approach.
“The question is whether they are doing their job efficiently. If they go to the same places and contact the same people, it is a waste of resources,” he said.
Blair, of the Trump campaign, said they are not ignoring swing or average voters, who are still being targeted with emails, text messages and door-knocking, but the “hardest to vote” voters are getting the most personal attention.
Republicans and outside coalition groups are also investing heavily in registering new voters and encouraging mail-in voting , long a weakness for the party.
The Iowa model goes national
The Trump campaign is emulating a strategy used in Iowa’s Republican nomination race last January, when a group of volunteer captains organized their communities to help Trump win with 51% of the vote.
The campaign is working to train 50,000 Pennsylvania door captains like Gottberg, who says he’s knocked on 250 doors this election cycle.
Unlike previous events, these volunteers weren’t asked to cast a wide net. First, they were given a list of neighbors and asked to build relationships with them through visits, phone calls, and postcards.
In some ways, Democrats appear to be building a more powerful voting machine .
For example, Harris’s campaign said it has 1,600 paid staffers in battleground states, while the Trump campaign disclosed “hundreds.” Her campaign says it has 50 offices in Pennsylvania , double the footprint Trump touted.
Blair insisted no harm had been done to the Trump campaign.
New federal guidelines passed this year pave the way for campaigns to exchange data and coordinate more closely with outside organizations that Trump relies heavily on to boost turnout. A Trump campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity said there were 2,000 paid canvassers on the site, including groups he said planned to canvass 15 million doors before Election Day.
Askume spoke to more than a dozen Republican county chairmen, and all but one said the Republican get-out-the-vote effort was strong in their districts.
The exception is Dave Smith of Pima County, Arizona’s second-most populous county, who said Democrats in his district are more supportive of Trump and had asked Turning Point Operations to provide more lobbyists.
“He said, ‘It’s coming. Get some peace of mind, man.’ I was like the old guy talking to the young guy,” Smith said.
Corvette dismissed any suggestion that there was a problem with Pima and said that in fact more lobbyists were being trained.
In a closed-door pitch to donors in late July, Turning Point’s Kirk said Democrats were beating him in on-the-ground races and that he believed Harris was the favorite to win, according to a recording of the Zoom conversation shared by Askume.
When asked to comment on the call, Corvette said Kirk always wants to avoid complacency and prefers to act “as if we’re 10 points behind in the polls.”
In a previously undisclosed speech, Kirk encouraged donors to fund his team.
“This is going to turn into a political battle in the trenches … who can find those additional 10,000 low-income people and get them into the system?” Kirk said by phone.
