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Last month, volunteers Rachel Gottberg and Chris Gottberg from the Trump campaign team went door-knocking in York, Pennsylvania, targeting infrequent voters whom they believed could be crucial to winning in this battleground state.
The couple aimed to reach newly registered voters and what their campaign team refers to as “low-propensity” voters, those who do not turn up for every election cycle and may even skip a presidential election every four years.
Dressed in red t-shirts with “Trump Force Captain” printed on them, they were among the few canvassers gathered at the GOP headquarters in this city, home to around 45,000 workers. The couple planned to take their eight-month-old baby in a stroller while knocking on doors.
Rachel, 34, a seasoned canvasser who has participated in multiple campaign activities, told Reuters, “This is definitely a new focus, different from the situation in 2020.” With that, she and her husband set out to find voters, with their car’s hood decorated with Trump campaign logos.
Interviews with over thirty Trump campaign staff, grassroots organizations allied with the campaign, county-level Republican party chairs, donors, including a previously unreported phone interview with donors, revealed that the Trump campaign team and their allies have unprecedentedly decided to target these infrequent voters in seven battleground states. These states could determine the outcome of the election on November 5th against Democrat Kamala Harris.
However, a Republican official and an academic expert warned that this previously unreported strategy is a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy that could bring in a wave of new voters, but if the target voters ultimately stay at home, the efforts could be in vain.
Candidates typically target infrequent and swing voters to expand their voter base, but unlike previous campaign cycles, Trump is more inclined to see infrequent voters as crucial. The target voters mainly consist of rural white and young voters, as well as a significant portion of people of color.
James Blair, the political director of the Trump campaign team, told Reuters, “We know they agree with us, support us, but we have to get them to go vote.”
A survey released by The New York Times/Siena College on Sunday revealed the opportunity that the Trump campaign team has among unreliable voters. The poll showed that among all potential voters, Trump leads Harris by a slight margin of 48% to 47%, but among voters who did not vote in 2020, Trump leads Harris by 9 percentage points, 49% to 40%.
The Trump campaign team and allies believe that capturing steadfast supporters who are less inclined to go to the polls is key to victory. They also target independents and other persuadable voters, estimating this group to make up 11% of battleground state voters.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for the pro-Trump organization Turning Point Action, said, “When you analyze these numbers, you realize there are 300,000 low-propensity conservative ballots in Arizona alone.”
He added, “When you lose by 10 or 20 thousand votes in these states, you realize the potential if we had done the work to mobilize these voters in advance.”
In contrast, Harris’s well-funded campaign team appears to be making broader efforts to secure votes. Although campaign officials declined to discuss their specific targets, their efforts seem to include outreach through rallies and voter registration drives to appeal to women and other groups not in favor of Trump.
Jason Cabel Roe, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, noted that targeting infrequent voters is a wise move for the Trump campaign team, as these voters helped Trump win in 2016.
Roe said, “Trump’s support hinges on those low-propensity voters who didn’t actually participate.”
Reuters found at least four pro-Trump organizations specifically focusing on low-turnout voters, a strategy that has greatly benefited Trump’s campaign efforts.
These pro-Trump organizations include the super PAC America PAC supported by tech billionaire Elon Musk and the nonprofit Turning Point Action led by conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
However, not everyone participating in Trump’s campaign activities believes that focusing on infrequent voters is a good idea.
A party official working in a battleground state expressed concerns about too many resources being concentrated on infrequent voters while overlooking swing voters, who are not particularly loyal to a party and more likely to participate in voting.
This official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal plans, said that infrequent voters may not see political engagement and may not watch television ads, thus requiring significant campaign team efforts to get them to the polls, including multiple door-knocking visits and phone calls.
Donald Green, a political science professor at Columbia University, said that Trump’s strategy is supported by academic research, indicating that mobilizing infrequent supporters in a presidential election year can be relatively effective as these voters are more susceptible to persuasion.
However, he also sees the risk in this approach. Green said, “The issue is whether the campaign team’s efforts are effective, if they go to the same places, contact the same people, it’s a waste of resources.”
Blair stated that the Trump team has not neglected swing or regular voters, as they are still targets for mail, messages, and door-knocking, but the “hardest to reach” voters receive the most personal attention.
The Republican Party and its external allies are also investing heavily in registering new voters and promoting mail-in voting, an area that has historically been a weakness for the GOP.
The Trump campaign team is following the blueprint of the strategy used in the Republican nomination race in Iowa in January last year. At that time, a large number of volunteers organized in their communities, helping Trump secure 51% of the vote.
Currently, the campaign team is working to train 50,000 captains like the Gottberg couple in Pennsylvania, who said they have knocked on 250 doors this election cycle.
In contrast to past campaign operations, these volunteers do not need to cast a wide net. They receive a smaller neighborhood list first, and then make contact through visits, phone calls, and mail as requested.
In some aspects, the Democratic Party appears to be building a larger campaign machinery.
For instance, Harris’s campaign team stated that they have 1,600 paid staff members across battleground states, whereas Trump’s campaign team disclosed only “hundreds.” In Pennsylvania, her campaign team claims to have 50 offices, twice as many as those disclosed by Trump.
However, Blair emphasized that the Trump campaign team is not at a disadvantage.
New federal guidelines passed this year have paved the way for the campaign team to exchange data with external organizations and coordinate more closely, with Trump relying heavily on external organizations to boost voter turnout. A Trump campaign team official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there are 2,000 paid canvassers on the ground, including these organizations and plans to knock on 15 million doors before Election Day.
Reuters interviewed over a dozen county-level Republican party chairs, with all but one stating that the Republican Party’s canvassing efforts in their areas are highly active.
Dave Smith, the Republican chair of Pima County, the second most populous county in Arizona, was an exception, noting that Democrats outnumber Trump supporters in his area, prompting him to request more canvassers from Turning Point Action.
While the organization’s spokesperson Kolvet pushed back on any claims of issues in Pima County, he did confirm they are indeed training more on-the-ground canvassers.
According to a Zoom call recording shared with Reuters, during a closed-door meeting with donors at the end of July, the organization’s chairman Kirk expressed concerns that Democrats had outperformed them in ground game efforts, with Harris having a slight edge.
When asked for a comment on this call, Kolvet stated that Kirk always aims to prevent complacency and tends to act as if “we’re trailing 10 percentage points in the polls.”
In the call, Kirk encouraged donors to fund his organization.
He said on the call, “It’s going to be a political trench warfare, who can identify 10,000 ‘low-propensity’ voters more and get them into the system.”