As campaigns pull ground troops from the field and convert voter turnout machines to virtual operations because of the coronavirus pandemic, Republican operatives are confident President Trump has the upper hand over his Democratic opposition.
The Trump campaign entered the 2020 contest with a critical infrastructure advantage after it spent last year building an extensive field and data program and deploying more than 800 paid staff and volunteers to key battleground states. But even with the switch to virtual campaigning, to avoid excessive person-to-person contact to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Republican insiders say the president’s eventual Democratic challenger will begin the general election at a significant operational deficit.
“This situation helps Trump a great deal,” said Jim Dornan, a Republican strategist. “The voter contact his campaign is doing is so technologically advanced, it’s going to make it even harder for the Democrats to catch up.”
The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee are postponing all in-person organizing activities, including knocking on doors to identify and motivate the president’s supporters.
A previously planned “national week of training” to fine-tune the Trump campaign’s ground game in conjunction with primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Ohio was still set to kick off Saturday, but it will now be conducted via a mixture of telephone and video conferencing. The weeklong program leads into a “super Saturday” call day scheduled for next Saturday, to be led by senior field staff and neighborhood team leaders.
In place of peer-to-peer contact, generally considered the most effective of turnout methods, the Trump campaign is going to lean on its “Army for Trump” website and its related smartphone app. The RNC also uses several digital tools that enable its field volunteers to keep in touch with targeted voters.
The RNC voter registration program also is also going virtual, with plans to contact thousands of people who have attended Trump campaign rallies and expressed support for the president.
“With our field organization largely built out and over half a million volunteers already engaged, we are in an incredibly strong position to activate an aggressive digital and virtual political operation,” RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.
While former Vice President Joe Biden tries to solidify his lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders after a long and divisive Democratic primary, Trump has the luxury of focusing solely on November. As a crowded Democratic field battled for the nomination over the past year, the president’s team refined his political operation, including a program for digital communications that is going to be so crucial for succeeding during this virtual phase of the 2020 campaign.
But some Republicans caution that the next few weeks could be unpredictable, while emphasizing that a superior ground game (virtual or otherwise) is a difference-maker only as long as the race between two candidates remains close.
