'Turning off the wrong voters': How Trump’s lackluster ground game could lose Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is the biggest prize of the 2024 election, with 19 electoral votes being awarded to the eventual winner of the Keystone State. And if it comes down to which candidate has the best ground game, former President Donald Trump may come up short.
Online news outlet NOTUS reported Tuesday that both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have spent the most money in Pennsylvania, with $1.2 billion spent by both parties in the commonwealth. This is a historic first, as no battleground state has ever topped $1 billion in political spending in any previous election. FiveThirtyEight's aggregated polling data shows that both candidates are locked in a dead heat heading into today's election.
But uiltimately, if Pennsylvania is decided by the strength of each candidate's turnout machine, Harris may end up adding the commonwealth to her win column. J.J. Abbott – a Democratic strategist based in the Keystone State — said Harris is running a textbook winning campaign.
READ MORE: Winning these 2 states would make Harris or Trump 'overwhelming favorites' to win election
"I guess we’re going to find out what works better, just trying to sort of get up enough outrage to get people to vote, or, you know, doing the things that winning campaigns have done for decades," Abbott said. "She’s pursuing a bunch of paths to increase her margins in different ways. He seems to be kind of, like, turning off the wrong voters while having to bank on some of the most difficult voters to turn out."
While Harris' campaign has relied on a heavy get-out-the-vote (GOTV) operation relying on detailed data and metrics, Trump has instead outsourced his GOTV efforts to far-right activist Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and tech billionaire Elon Musk's America PAC. But those groups' strategy to turn out Trump voters has been met with mixed results.
America PAC in particular has been reportedly making canvassers use apps that aren't available on either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store to log their door-knocking efforts. Additonally, these apps don't have geo-tracking features that allow campaign field directors to ensure that canvassers are actually out walking neighborhoods and contacting voters. The Guardian reported that in the battleground states of Arizona and Nevada, America PAC canvassers were logging fraudulent GOTV contacts. The outlet even reported that said they were walking a neighborhood when the app actually showed them stationary at a Guayo's On The Trail restaurant.
"I think it’s what happens when you let a bunch of grifters take over,” an anonymous "Trumpworld source" given anonymity to speak candidly told Wired magazine in its own report on America PAC's canvassing efforts. “S— is always gonna produce s—.”
READ MORE: Trump advisor laments ground game in key swing state outsourced to 'a bunch of grifters'
Kirk, in the meantime, has found his group potentially endangering the tax-exempt status of churches used as hubs for its own GOTV efforts. Legal experts told NBC that the group's "ballot-chasing" operations at churches — which involves tracking down likely Republican voters and filtering out Democratic voters – was explicitly partisan activity that could strip those churches of their 501(c)(3) status.
Harris' campaign has been not only reaching out to Democratic voters, but also Republican voters who have been alienated by the MAGA movement. Ann Womble, who is co-chair of Pennsylvania's Republican Voters for Harris group, told NOTUS that she believes at least 10% of Republicans in the Keystone State will support the Democratic ticket.
"Our message has been about persuading Republicans that, if you’re dissatisfied with Trump, if you’re disaffected from the current MAGA version of the Republican Party, then it’s vitally important they actually vote Harris, not just to write in a name or not vote," Womble said.
Click here to read NOTUS' report in full.
READ MORE: Experts say churches helping MAGA group turn out GOP voters 'most likely violated tax law'
