Republican officials see Trump’s campaign as comparable in size to a midterm election rather than a presidential
Republican officials are raising the alarm that Donald Trump’s campaign has invested far fewer resources for its voter turnout operation in battleground states than previous presidential election races, and attempts to bridge the gap with political action committees have come too late.
The Republican National Committee once envisioned an extensive field operation for the 2024 election, including having about 90 staffers in the must-win state of Pennsylvania.
But the Trump campaign scrapped those plans when it took over the RNC in March, redirecting the focus on field operations to combating supposed voter fraud and pursuing a twin voter turnout strategy of relying on several political action committees and ardent Trump volunteers.
It’s a really interesting test of how much conventional campaigning and turnout strategies really matter nowadays.
Quite a bit of what we do is because “we’ve always done it this way,” and there’s surprisingly little data on what actually makes a difference in an election at this level where both of the candidates are universally known.