An Election Day Upset Hangs on Donald Trump’s Formidable Ground Game

President Donald Trump heads into the final day of the 2020 race trailing Joe Biden by an average of 8 points in national polls, but Republicans are banking that Trump’s hard-charging campaign schedule and the GOP’s year-long investment in training millions of volunteers will pay off in votes cast for Trump on Election Day. Trump campaign officials point to Trump’s breakneck pace of rallies — held at cavernous airport hangars and sports arenas with no social distancing during a pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 American lives — as a major part of Trump’s strategy to drive turnout, despite being outspent by his opponent Joe Biden and polling below him at a stable rate for the entirety of the campaign. Trump has amplified his campaign by using the trappings of his office, holding rallies with Air Force One as the backdrop, accepting his party’s nomination in front of the columns of the White House, and having agencies launch an unusual publicity blitz that spotlight his immigration enforcement actions in key battleground states. “I think we’re going to take it because we’re going to have a turnout probably on Tuesday. You know what, people like to vote, they like to vote on Tuesday,” Trump said at a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Saturday. The ground effort run jointly by the RNC and the Trump campaign has used 2.6 million volunteers, according to figures provided by the RNC. The field effort made more than 182 million voter contacts — more than five times what they did in 2016— and volunteers registered nearly 174,000 new GOP voters.
Publish : 2020-11-03 17:54:00

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