It was a classic freewheeling performance. President Trump relived the drama of his election victory, beat up on his enemies, and gave a shoutout to his host state of Ohio as the place where Annie Oakley bought her gun.
Three days later, voters propelled the Republican candidate Troy Balderson to a narrow victory and a seat in Congress.
Trump 2020 campaign officials say the event is a model for the way the president will run for for re-election, using “Make America Great Again” — often abbreviated to “MAGA” — rallies to target voters in key areas and harvest their data to persuade them to join a two-million strong volunteer army.
Michael Glassner, chief operating officer, said: “We are a data-centric campaign, and as such, rally venues are chosen strategically. We want to make the best use of President Trump’s limited time and that means selecting rally locations that are targeted, smart, and strategic.”
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The example they cite is Balderson’s victory. In the lead up to election day he was polling neck and neck with Danny O’Connor in Delaware County where they knew Trump had a 52% approval rating. It was an obvious place to use the president’s personal appeal.
After holding a rally there, Balderson took the county by 11,000 votes, providing the bulk of his 14,000 victory margin.
Beyond the on-stage message, officials say the rallies offer a chance to connect with people who do not usually see themselves as political.
At Trump’s February event in El Paso, Texas, near the border with Mexico, almost half of people who registered had voted in only one or none of the four most recent federal elections.
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“So, these are people who are not normally engaged in the political process, but they are — because they have taken the time to attend a Trump rally,” said a senior campaign official. “They are engaged because of President Trump.”
Volunteers outside the El Paso County Coliseum used electronic scanners for the first time to check tickets. Attendee details could then be fed into the Data Trust — a network established in 2011 that allows the RNC and outside groups to license and share information in a way that avoids Federal Election Commission rules on selling data and which is credited with giving Republicans an edge over Democrats in 2016.
“We know their voter habits, we know what issues they care about, we know what magazines they get, so we can better target our communication to them,” said a senior campaign official. “The RNC’s data operation is light-years ahead of what the DNC has.”
The aim is to convert a Tuesday night rallygoer into a Saturday volunteer as the campaign targets what it believes are flippable Clinton states. The list begins with Minnesota and New Hampshire — where Hillary Clinton won by less than one percentage point — and runs to Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado.
The strategy is being run from sleek, new offices in Arlington, Va., where banks of TV screens and computer terminals in a war room show how workers will respond to news reports in real time.
Trump is due to appear at a rally in Pennsylvania on Monday night. Again, it is in support of a local candidate — Fred Keller, who is running for the 12th Congressional District — but it is also a chance to return to one of the states that helped him win the presidency and a top Democratic target.
The campaign will not say it is giving up on winning Trump a majority of the popular vote, but it suggests a similar path to victory as 2016, when the Republican candidate won 45.6% of the popular vote but collected wins in key states.
“It would be nice to win the popular vote, but he’s running to win the presidency, which means winning the Electoral College,” said the senior official. “Democrats haven’t yet succeeded in changing that rule.”
