With Kos’s talking about Turning Point Action and GOTV on the front page, I’d like to follow up by posting this research I’ve been working on.
The wild card in this year’s election is Get Out The Vote. If Dems excel, we win. If we don’t (see: Wisconsin 2016) we lose by a whisker.
So far, the official Trump campaign doesn’t seem at all serious about GOTV. They’ve been saying for months — ever since Trump canned Mitt’s niece Rona as RNC chair and brought in his daughter-in-law, Lara - that they “Outsourced” this crucial campaign function to an ostensibly not-for-profit group, Turning Point Action, run by Charlie Kirk. So when you see reports of Trump’s underwhelming operation in the swing states, you have to also consider: Is that everything, or is Turning Point Action picking up the slack?
When Trump says “I have all the votes I need”, this may be what he means:
...the campaign pledges to run a more efficient operation that will lean heavily on data modeling, microtargeting and relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure and significant bank accounts to help find Trump a pathway to the 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory in November.
That sounds brilliant, but… it would require a serious centralized organization with expertise in those areas — something like Cambridge Analytics did in 2016. And what we’re seeing right now looks much less like a high-tech operation and more like… a clown show.
And I’m not the only one asking questions. When I started to research this post, I found that The Dispatch was also looking into it:
A political nonprofit affiliated with Turning Point USA plans to deploy “hundreds” of paid field staff to Arizona and Wisconsin as part of a turnout operation targeting occasional voters inclined to support Republican nominee Donald Trump this fall if they can be herded to the polls. Yet some veteran GOP operatives doubt the group will deliver as advertised.
...“Standard metrics like number of staff, offices, doors knocked and voters targeted is not something being shared or promoted as far as I can tell,” a Republican operative monitoring Wisconsin said. Added a second knowledgeable GOP operative who is involved in turning out Republican voters in multiple states: “Big press releases, big tweets, lots of smoke, very little work. That’s my assessment” of Turning Point Action.
Further, it’s unclear if Turning Point Action is sharing the voter data it gathers from knocking on doors, telephoning, and texting with the other Republican-aligned ground game groups. Most upload their data on a near daily basis to Data Trust, the party’s hub for sharing voter turnout information...The knowledgeable GOP operative who criticized Turning Point Action said definitively that the group is not using Data Trust.
It’s a serious question. TPA has a big advantage: Since they’re not a campaign, they can do unlimited fundraising. While Harris/Walz is limited in how much each donor can give, TPA can take millions from a handful of billionaires (like the
Bradley Impact Fund, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation and “dark-money behemoth” Donors Trust), then spend as much as it likes — as long as it doesn’t “Coordinate with the campaign”.
And in the past couple of days both The Guardian and the Washington Post have delved into it.
So, what’s going on?
A Politico article from June reports:
Turning Point’s dominance in Republican activism comes as the most powerful conservative groups of recent decades have lost their pull, bleeding money and hanging room dividers across sparsely filled convention ballrooms.
Once-mighty groups like CPAC and the NRA have endured leadership scandals in recent years. Longtime economic policy influencers like the Koch Network and Club for Growth have found themselves at odds with Trump, and top anti-abortion groups are now fighting for relevance as Trump has moved to distance his platform from their initiatives.
Turning Point has rushed in to fill the void. It’s placing allies on the RNC. It has spent tens of millions of dollars so far this election, according to a spokesperson, on hiring hundreds of field staff in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan.
“Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan”? What about the rest of the country? What about North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada? What about Pennsylvania?
The article is a little vague, but says TPA is acting as
“America’s ballot chasing army,” a plan in which the group is deploying hundreds of staff per state in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, in addition to the existing staff they already had in other states across the country.
The ballot chasing plan was originally announced as a $108 million goal to get out the vote, and fundraising is ongoing. The new hires are assigned to small, custom-drawn territories where Turning Point Action has determined there are several hundred conservative low-propensity voters who need urging to get to the polls this fall.
The idea seems sound: Nathaniel Stinnett is doing something similar on our side with the Environmental Voter Project. The idea is, don’t waste time trying to convince “swing voters”, instead get folks who already agree with us but don’t bother voting to get off their butts.
Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for Turning Point, said the group’s internal data show that engaged swing voters may need up to 20 interactions to convince them to show up and vote Republican, but low-propensity voters only take five.
“Previously, the consultant class would go to swing districts to try to win. We’re saying ‘No.’ The philosophy is fundamentally different,” Kolvet said. “We want to run up the score where people already like our ideas and our values.”
But can they do it? The Environmental Voter Project, like the Harris/Walz campaigns’ on-the-ground-offices, have a small number of paid staff that activate and empower a massive army of volunteers. It’s not clear that TPA have the numbers. Pushing conspiracy theories on Twitter/X is easy; motivating millions of voters is a lot harder.
Last month TPA announced another program, “Commit 100”
...TPAction is asking activists to commit to chasing 100 early ballots and 100 election-day ballots
Volunteers can sign up to ‘Commit 100’ and TPAction will reach out with the best ballots to chase using the TPAction Mobile App. Volunteers will be assigned custom lists and can chase these votes at home using the App OR schedule travel to Arizona or Wisconsin and help chase votes in person. TPAction will be covering lodging accommodations for activists who sign up and commit to helping chase 100 low propensity voters while staying in Arizona or Wisconsin after each states’ respective early balloting begins.
Again, this is great… but it just covers TWO of the swing states. Who’s taking care of GOTV in the others?
In 2024, Turning Point Action is looking to deploy an army of 1,000+ FIELD ORGANIZERS each responsible for tracking and chasing key target ballots in battleground states. We hope our program can encourage and accelerate other organizations to do the same and work together for decisive victories in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and beyond.
It’s September. How come TPA only lists three partners?
Early Vote Action
From Scott Presler’s Facebook page: “My name is Scott. I’m an Eagle Scout & son of a Navy Captain. Once upon a time, I was a dog walker & worked at Giant, as well as an elementary school. I launched an organization called Early Vote Action to register voters in swing states.
Help us win Pennsylvania for Trump”
One, Early Vote Action, is a Florida-based voter registration group run by “Stop the Steal” activist Scott Presler. He takes credit for turning Florida from a Purple to a Red state (although I suspect Ron DeSantis also had something to do with it), and says he will do the same in Pennsylvania this year. But if you go to the EVA website and click on “Events” you get… “No upcoming events. Please check back later”
There’s an app, but it only has about 5,000 downloads, and he says he keeps track of stuff on an Excel spreadsheet. He seems to have hired some staff, but appears to be mostly criss-crossing the state on his own, speaking at local GOP events.
And while he’s had some success (Bucks County, always close, now has a small GOP registration advantage for the first time since 2007), it’s not clear how much of an impact he’s going to have on his own.
Tom Bonier notes that since the changeover from Biden to Harris, new Democratic voter registrations are through the roof, particularly in core demographics like young women of color. This is a pattern we’re seeing across the country.
Also, I have seen NOWHERE any indication that EVA is going beyond voter registration to the equally important voter canvassing and GOTV planning. It doesn’t do any good if they sign up voters… who don’t actually make it to the polls.
(Eva’s Scott Presler is also more than a little… weird, from his association with George Santos’ PAC to spreading QAnon conspiracies to backing Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law despite being a gay man. There’s been talk on a couple of occasions of the RNC hiring him to run aspects of GOTV, but nothing ever comes of it, possibly due his being fired by the Virginia GOP for… having sex in the office, then posting about it.)
The Guardian notes that so far TPA has done much better at GOP infighting (like driving out former RNC head Ronna Romney McDaniel) than actually winning elections.
The new political advocacy drives come after TPUSA and TP Action sparked strong criticism from veteran Republicans, watchdog groups and analysts for backing several hard-right candidates in Arizona who were defeated in 2022, and pushing conspiracies about election fraud, Covid-19 and other issues.
“TPUSA has a radicalized worldview that they use as a litmus test” in backing candidates, said Kathy Petsas, a GOP district leader in Phoenix. “When it comes to the general elections that matter, their ROI is lousy.”
Notably, four top Arizona candidates in 2022 who were backed by TP Action lost to Democrats, including ex-Fox News anchor Kari Lake in her race for governor, and Mark Finchem in his bid to become secretary of state.
“Virtually every major race they touched they lost in the general election in Arizona,” the former Arizona congressman Matt Salmon said. “Everyone Trump endorses they get behind. It’s not clear if it’s the tail wagging the dog, or vice versa.”
Coming next…. ARE there any field offices?
