WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — As Donald Trump adjusts to the reality of his new race against Kamala Harris, his campaign is counting on younger male voters to give him an edge in November in a presidential race they say he will lose. .
Trump and his Republican campaign now face a dramatically different race than they did just three weeks ago, before President Joe Biden dropped his bid. While they acknowledge that the polls have tightened with Harris as the Democratic nominee, they argue that the fundamentals of the race have not changed, and voters are deeply hurt by the direction of the country, and especially the economy.
“What’s happened is we’re witnessing a kind of out-of-body experience where we’ve suspended reality for a couple of weeks,” a Trump campaign poll. Tony Fabrizio told reporters at a press conference in West Palm Beach on Thursday about the current state of the race.
It was a message Trump repeated at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago club.
“The honeymoon is over,” he claimed, downplaying the size of the crowds Harris has been drawing and hitting on his new opponent. “Let me tell you: we’re excited.”
Campaign officials acknowledge that Harris had energized the Democratic base and that his team has taken the lead in fundraising. But they insist they have more than enough to do what they need to win. The Trump campaign and its affiliates reported raising $138.7 million in July — far less than the eye-popping $310 million reported by Harris. His campaign started in August with more cash.
With less than three months to go, campaign officials are focused on a group of persuasive voters they believe will be the key to victory. The targets, which they say make up about 11 percent of voters in key battleground states, are younger and disproportionately male and moderate. Although more than half are white, they include more non-whites, particularly Asians and Hispanics, than the broader electorate.
They are especially frustrated with the economy, including their personal finances, and are pessimistic that things will get better.
“We’re trying to move a very narrow group of people,” Fabrizio said of the effort. Since these voters don’t engage with traditional news outlets and have switched to cable streaming services, the campaign has sought to reach them in new ways.
“There’s a reason we do podcasts. There’s a reason we do Adin Rossi,” Fabrizio said, referring to the controversial internet personality who ended his interview with the former president earlier this week by giving him a Tesla. Cybertruck wrapped in images of Trump raising his fist after his assassination attempt.
“There’s a reason we do all these things. You know what these people pay attention to? MMA, Adin Ross,” he said. “MMA” refers to mixed martial arts.
Trump campaign officials acknowledge that the Democratic base is now motivated in a way that was not when Biden was running. They say Harris is likely to do better than Biden with black voters, especially women and older men.
But they argue that Harris is doing little to attract swing voters. And they plan to spend the next 80-plus days painting him as a radical liberal and establishment representative, not one for change, tying him to the most unpopular practices of the Biden administration.
“There’s a lot more information about him that they don’t know they’re going to hear. And we’re going to make sure they do,” Fabrizio said.
They believe that by the end of the race, neither candidate will be favored, but voters will choose the candidate they believe will most improve their economic circumstances.
They pointed to a line Harris has used to refer to Trump’s presidency — “We’re not going back” — as particularly poorly handled because some voters say things were better when Trump was in office than they are now.
Trump campaign aides said they now have staff on the ground in 18 states, from critical battleground states to Democratic-leaning states like Virginia that they hope to bring into play.
The campaign says it now has hundreds of paid staffers and more than 300 Trump and GOP offices open in battleground states.
But much of their efforts depend on volunteers and outside groups.
They’re trying to replicate a model they used successfully in the GOP primary in Iowa this winter, where volunteer “demand captains” were given a list of 10 neighbors they promised to turn out. Thanks to the campaign, the model has increased the voter turnout on a brutally cold and icy election night.
The “Trump Force 47” program focuses on targeting low- and middle-income voters. Volunteers go through, write postcards, manage the phone bank and organize their neighbors.
According to officials, so far 12,000 captains have been trained and given voter target lists. In addition, 30,000 have registered as volunteers, and more than 2,000 have received training in the week leading up to election day.
Much of the campaign’s outreach also depends on outside groups conducting paid polls and polls thanks to new Federal Election Commission guidelines that allow campaigns to coordinate with outside groups. previously prohibited.
The campaign says it has more than 1,000 paid voters in battleground states and is also working to register about 1.6 million target voters in those race seats.
