Requests by Democrats for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania are outpacing Republican requests by a factor of more than two to one.
As reported by this week the New York Times’ Nick Corasaniti and Jonathan Weisman:
As of Monday, Democrats in the state had requested about 881,000 mail ballots, and Republicans had requested 373,000, less than half of the Democratic total and only about a quarter of the total mail ballots requested in the state.
While it is still early (the last day to request a mail ballot is Oct. 29), such a large gap shows it is extremely unlikely that Republicans will come close to parity with Democrats in voting by mail in Pennsylvania. It is stark evidence that former President Donald J. Trump’s longstanding criticism of mail-in voting — including misinformation that it is rife with fraud — has had a stubborn and lasting impact.
That’s what happens when you demonize voting by mail year after year to your zombie base.
But I get it. Not to worry, because Republicans will all turn out on election day to make up those numbers. All part of the plan, right?
However, as reported this week by Politico’s Megan Messerly, Natalie Allison and Elena Schneider, it’s important that you actually get those voters to, you know… vote.
In interviews, more than a dozen Republican strategists and operatives in presidential battlegrounds voiced serious concerns about what they described as a paltry get-out-the-vote effort by the Trump campaign, an untested strategy of leaning on outside groups to help do field work and a top-of-the-ticket strategy that’s disjointed from the one Republicans down the ballot are running.
The Trump team, however, has a ready explanation for this seeming paucity of visible effort on the ground:
As the Politico article notes:
Both the Trump campaign and outside groups say it makes sense that battleground Republicans may not be seeing their work because they are trying to reach low- and mid-propensity voters. That means spending less time than before in the dense, high-turnout suburban areas where the swing voters “need more persuasion attention and less turnout attention,” said James Blair, Trump’s political director.
“We’ve really worked hard to mobilize the infrequent or occasional Trump-inclined or anti-Harris voter that’s pretty disconnected from politics, a little bit off the grid, not contacted by campaigns regularly,” Blair told POLITICO. “And that often means they skew more rural or exurban, live in less dense areas, lower income areas, are newer to voting. And sometimes that means there’s less frequency and less visibility in areas that plugged-in politicos who talk to media are used to.”
OK, let’s assume that’s not a lie and there is an actual Trump strategy at work here. Fine. But to overcome a 2-1 mail-in advantage amounting to literally over half a million votes? You really expect to get that many “infrequent or occasional Trump-inclined voters” in Butler, Clinton, and all the “red” counties to show up on Nov. 5? While sacrificing almost all GOTV efforts in the voter-rich suburbs around the major cities?
Do you really think you’re going to “depress” the Philly and Allegheny county vote that much? With a Black female candidate at the head of the ticket?
I’m voting in person on Nov. 5, because I like to show up at my precinct. It’s just a point of pride. But see, I’m a Democrat. I’m there to cancel out that “infrequent” Trump voter. And I expect I’ll see an awful lot of my like-minded neighbors doing the same thing. simply for the satisfaction of actually seeing their vote go in the machine and be tabulated.
So, I’m not sure where Team Trump thinks this is going to lead. If the strategy is “Oh, we’re just going to file lawsuits to invalidate all those (so-called) ‘fraudulent’ votes,” there’s a little problem. PA has a Democratic Governor, a Democratic AG, a Democratic House (right now, anyway) and probably most importantly, a 5-2 advantage on the PA Supreme Court. They’re not going to buy into this GOP election-denying nonsense any more than they did in 2020.
So this “strategy’ has me a little puzzled. I mean, Pennsylvania is the place where Trump has to win, obviously but there doesn’t appear to be any reason this fundamental imbalance by party in mail-in voting requests would be different, in, say, Michigan (which doesn’t register voters by party). Michigan Democrats have historically heavily exceeded Republicans in mail-ins, as do Wisconsin Democrats. And both of those states also have Democratic governors, Democratic AG’s and (currently) Democratic-majority Supreme Courts. If the strategy for those states is to sacrifice the suburban GOTV for the “infrequent or occasional” Trump voters in the exurbs, I’m not seeing the logic any more than I see it in PA.
Anyway, I’ll try to be canvassing and doing other GOTV this week. Everyone here ought to be doing something to help that effort, if they are able. That’s really the only way we are going to win this thing: By exploiting what seems (at least to me) like a serious flaw in Trump’s “strategy.”
