Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

What We're Watching

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.

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
Make us preferred on Google
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 – are exceptionally tight. That’s why the get-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 on hundreds 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.

More For You

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez walks to greet European Council President Charles Michel at Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, May 30, 2024.

Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez walks to greet European Council President Charles Michel at Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain, May 30, 2024.

REUTERS/Susana Vera
Spain will head to the polls next monthSpain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap election today for November 29, after losing a vote on Friday to pass emergency measures to quell nationwide protests over the country’s housing crisis. The Sánchez government has faced growing criticism in recent months over issues including the Ceuta [...]
People walk past near a campaign billboard featuring Milorad Dodik, Aco Stanisic, Savo Minic, Zeljka Cvijanovic and Damjan Skipina, candidates of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) in Bosnia and Herzegovina's 2026 general election, in Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

People walk past near a campaign billboard featuring Milorad Dodik, Aco Stanisic, Savo Minic, Zeljka Cvijanovic and Damjan Skipina, candidates of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) in Bosnia and Herzegovina's 2026 general election, in Pale, Bosnia and Herzegovina, September 29, 2026.

REUTERS/Amel Emric
EU vs. Russia on the ballot in BosniaBosnians will head to the polls this weekend for elections in one of the world’s most complicated political systems. Voters will elect three national presidents representing three main ethnic groups – one Bosniak, one Croat, and one Serb. Collectively, they serve as the country’s head of state. But the biggest [...]
In this drone view an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants makes its way towards England in the English Channel, Britain.

In this drone view an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants makes its way towards England in the English Channel, Britain, August 6, 2024.

REUTERS/Chris J. Ratcliffe
One in, one out, all done: UK and France scrap migration pactLast year the two countries struck a landmark deal to reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel from France in small boats: for each undocumented migrant that the UK returned to France, British authorities would accept an asylum applicant with known family links in [...]
A plane, carrying passengers who were on the FlyDubai aircraft bound for Israel from the United Arab Emirates, which was diverted to Saudi Arabia following an emergency signal, on the tarmac as it arrives at the Ben Gurion International Airport, in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel.

A plane, carrying passengers who were on the FlyDubai aircraft bound for Israel from the United Arab Emirates, which was diverted to Saudi Arabia following an emergency signal, on the tarmac as it arrives at the Ben Gurion International Airport, in Lod, near Tel Aviv, Israel, September 30, 2026.

REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Attempted hijacking suspected in Dubai-Israel flight chaos A flight from Dubai to Israel plunged nearly 20,000 feet on Wednesday during a blood-spattered fight in the cockpit. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said the co-pilot had tried to stab the pilot in an attempt to hijack the plane and crash it. Passengers and crew intervened to land the plane [...]