The Trump campaign is deploying a new strategy to reach out to “hard-to-reach, low-propensity voters” who have indicated they could be interested in supporting the Republican nominee in the general election.
According to campaign training materials obtained by Axios, Trump’s staff are working to court voters who have shown interest in their candidate by attending a rally but haven’t been reliable in showing up at the polls in the past.
According to the documents, the campaign’s volunteers are incentivized to reach out to specific lists of voters. They are given an initial list of 25 voters, with a goal of visiting at least 10 in person. The volunteers are then rewarded for engagement with Trump merchandise and “expedited” entry into Trump rallies. As the volunteers contact and engage more voters, they are eligible for larger rewards. The most active volunteers could be rewarded with an exclusive “thank you party.”
Outside groups, such as Turning Point Action, helmed by Charlie Kirk, and other super PACs are helping supplement the campaign’s outreach efforts. They are also working with the Early Vote Action group, which has been registering voters at Trump rallies, gun shows, and other locations.
The Trump campaign had previously focused on getting 100,000 or more people to help with poll watching to “protect” the votes after they are cast, developing an “election integrity” team, an incentive that promotes the former president’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
President Joe Biden, and then Vice President Kamala Harris, benefited from the advantage of incumbency and virtually no primary season to get a head start on ground operations. From the beginning, it appeared the Trump team was behind in the numbers of volunteers in key battleground states. The Trump campaign said it has about 27,000 volunteers (and “hundreds of thousands” more in other roles, while Harris’s campaign has said it has 60,000 volunteers in Pennsylvania alone, per the outlet.
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According to the Harris campaign, they have 312 coordinated campaign offices and more than 2,000 staff across the battleground states, including offices in Republican strongholds to cut into Trump’s margins. The Biden-Harris campaign utilized its fundraising muscle to open dozens of field offices in some of the country’s most Republican-leaning counties in swing states earlier this spring.
Trump and the RNC have trailed the Democratic presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee in fundraising. The Harris political operation recently announced that it raised $361 million in August, more than double the $130 million Trump’s team raised the same month. In July, Harris’s record-breaking $310 million more than doubled the roughly $139 million raised by the GOP.
