What's Trump's ground game?

October 25, 2016 10:30 PM

Can you direct me to short articles (for political dummies) on what Trump's ground game for getting voter turnout is?

Inspiration for this question was from me and some other people I know who I wouldn't consider likely Trump voters, getting repeated calls from his campaign. Googling hasn't helped me, but I'm guessing I just don't know what to google. Are there any articles discussing what his campaign plan is?

posted by Toddles to Law & Government (4 answers total)

The growing consensus (including among veteran GOP campaign pros with field experience) is "there isn't one."

Less facetiously, the ground operation has been largely outsourced to state and county parties. Where those parties have well-established ground games, they can get people out, though they're lacking the money and on-payroll staff they'd usually expect from a presidential campaign, and are drawing instead from joint Victory Fund contributions from high-rollers, plus RNC/NRSC/NRCC funds and staff/volunteers, as well as downballot campaign funds. There's no sense of Trump running rallies to guide early voters to the polls, while Clinton and her surrogates are doing nothing but. Local GOP chairs are going on TV and complaining about the lack of support.

We already know from the fundraising emails going to random foreign politicians that Trump Tower's data operations are a mess. We already know that there's a prevailing belief within Trump Tower that a hidden surge of voters -- previously unregistered, perhaps still Dem-registered -- who will show up on enthusiasm alone. The national campaign director -- a senior field operative -- "stepped back" from the campaign for personal reasons last week.

The professional field people see it as a test of whether their jobs matter.

(Were they robocalls from 'Trump for President, Inc." or robocalls from a different group, or live-person calls from local volunteers?)
posted by holgate at 11:32 PM on October 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: Great answer Holgate, thanks! To answer your question: both myself and others appear to have gotten calls from real live people, but they appeared not to be volunteers as they ended the call with "this call was paid for by the Trump campaign" or something along those lines. In my case, the calls came from out of state.
posted by Toddles at 11:50 PM on October 25, 2016

This seems relevant to your interests.
posted by Too-Ticky at 11:57 PM on October 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

both myself and others appear to have gotten calls from real live people, but they appeared not to be volunteers as they ended the call with "this call was paid for by the Trump campaign"

That sounds like Trump Talk, the phone banking system for volunteers. (The campaign is paying the call charge, not the person making the call.) The callers will have scripted bits to follow.
posted by holgate at 6:49 AM on October 26, 2016