Conventional wisdom in politics says that a good field operation is worth about 3 percentage points. In the case of a tie, getting out voters becomes even more important. But while Democrats continue to build strong field programs, Republicans have failed to keep up.
And now they’re starting to notice.
One of the first things Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, did after the former president took over the Republican National Committee in late April was to fire everyone working in the field operations. And abandon the plan The administration will open 40 field offices in battleground states. The Washington Post also Reported In August, “a now-abandoned plan included 88 staffers and 12 offices in Pennsylvania with goals of visiting 3 million homes and making 2.4 million phone calls. In Arizona, the RNC’s plan called for 62 staffers and seven offices to reach 558,000 voters.”
Fields proved too appealing to Trump, who used the money on legal fees and fanciful “voter integrity” efforts while continuing to pretend that he lost in 2020 because of fictitious fraud.
By June, the party had made no new moves to open offices, instead Abandoned the ground war to right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA activities;
This was the shrewdest decision: entrusting Kirk, a strong Trump ally, with this high-paying and lucrative assignment. It was an odd move considering Turning Point USA’s only previous experience with voter turnout was in the 2022 Arizona midterm elections, where Democrats won the biggest races: Governor, Senator, Secretary of State, and Attorney General. Republicans held onto their congressional majorities by slim margins but got nowhere. And of course, this was a midterm election with Democrats in the White House, a golden opportunity for the historically “out” party to make gains at all levels of government.
Not surprisingly, given his failure in the 2022 elections in Arizona, Trump has pinned his reelection hopes on Kirk.
Since then, there has been little information about the Republican field offices. The Trump campaign has nothing to brag about. The Washington Post article outlines Trump’s turnout strategy: “The campaign’s field operations are using the same formula that led Trump to victory in the Iowa caucuses, with dedicated volunteers acting as local leaders. Under the banner of ‘Trump Force 47,’ the campaign is rounding up volunteers in key locations and assigning them a list of 10 neighbors to personally mobilize.” The Trump campaign did not disclose how many such volunteers there are.
“By contrast, outside groups allied with the Harris campaign said they would not change course in the wake of the Federal Election Commission’s decision,” The Washington Post reported. “The campaign said it has 1,300 staffers (including those on the party’s payroll) and 250 offices in battleground states conducting events, training, door-to-door canvassing, phone calls and online peer messaging. It has recruited 170,000 new volunteers since Biden dropped out in July and held 2,300 events in battleground states last weekend to mark 100 days before the election.”
On the campaign trail, when there is good news, they are not afraid to brag about it.
Seeing the dysfunction at Republican headquarters, a group of Republicans decided to join in the scam in early August. “Everybody knows there’s a market here,” a “prominent” Republican told The Washington Post. “Everybody knows that there’s a market here. Every … [Trump] “The campaign isn’t doing that, and there’s a great chance.” As a rule, if a team is motivated by the cash that comes from a “huge (market) opportunity” rather than the ideological imperative of winning an election, it’s probably not a good sign.
Fast forward another month, it’s now September, and there are new headlines about the Republican Party’s lack of ground-level activity.
“The Republican National Committee (RNC) had previously envisioned a massive field operation in the must-win state of Pennsylvania in 2024, including deploying around 90 staffers to the state.” Reported The Guardian reported, “But the Trump campaign abandoned these plans when it took control of the Republican National Committee in March, redirecting its on-the-ground efforts to combat voter fraud and pursuing a dual turnout strategy relying on multiple political action committees and enthusiastic Trump volunteers.”
The Trump campaign still refuses to give exact numbers but claims its field operation is larger than the 350 staffers it had nationwide and 50 in Pennsylvania in 2022. The Harris campaign now has 375 staffers in Pennsylvania alone, more than the entire Trump campaign.
And Turning Point USA? “But [be] Voter groups working to fill the gaps are late in preparing, according to people with direct access to the data from groups like America Pac, Turn Out for America, Turning Point Action and America First Works. “They’ve only started hiring rapidly in recent weeks, which means reaching out to Trump voters late in the election cycle when it often takes multiple contacts with voters to get their ballots returned,” the people said.
According to The Guardian, the slow rollout of these coalition groups has led the RNC to “bolster its own paid staff in battleground states, put more effort into its Trump Force 47 Captains program, and reduce its reliance on the Pacific Islands League.” The claim comes from a “Trump insider” source, but it sounds more like fake propaganda than anything else.
“Republican officials have been wary of the program, criticizing it as an incentive for volunteers to rush through the process just to get their hands on a hat, as with other vote-seeking efforts, and pointing out that voter turnout for Trump in the primary was not particularly high,” The Guardian reported. fell short of the poll numbers He bragged about voter turnout in the primary, so any boasting about voter turnout in the primary becomes immediately suspicious.
While it is impossible to objectively measure the relative effectiveness of field activities, a good field program is worth three points, and if Trump’s election is close to the midterm elections (as the Guardian article argues), even an advantage of 1 to 1.5 points could determine the outcome of the November election.
While that in itself may not be decisive for the election outcome, it is another self-inflicted blemish working against Trump.
