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Trump’s ground-game gamble
A Trump Vance campaign sign sits at the Cobb County Republican Party's booth at the Pigs and Peaches Country Festival in Kennesaw, Georgia, on Aug. 17, 2024.
REUTERS/Megan Varner
September 24, 2024
Less than six weeks before Election Day, Donald Trump is gambling on an unconventional (and untested) strategy to target potential voters. The polling margins in the states expected to decide the election’s outcome – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada – areexceptionally tight. That’s why theget-out-the-vote operations supporting the Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns are even more critical than usual.
Both sides know they must motivate as many supporters, and potential supporters, as possible to cast a ballot. Harris is taking a more conventional approach to the “ground game” by relying on the resources of the Democratic National Committee and onhundreds of thousands of volunteers to knock on doors in key states and to register more voters likely to support her.
Trump has a different strategy. Rather than relying on the Republican National Committee and volunteers as past GOP presidential candidates have done, the Trump campaign is reportedly outsourcing these operations to outside groups, including one backed by Elon Musk, to target mainly undecided voters. These groups pay workers to do the groundwork once done mainly by volunteers.
If this strategy works, it may change future campaigns for both parties. If it doesn’t, Trump’s gamble will likely be remembered as a bad idea that helped cost him the election.
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