Despite polls showing Republicans trailing in polls, the GOP’s top leader has revealed that it has raised more money in a midterm election year than any party in history and that its voter turnout plan is beating Democrats in some key districts.
“The RNC is investing in over 70 races across the country,” said Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. “We’re already on the ground in 27 states. In California two weeks ago, there were seven races where Hillary Clinton won those districts. In six of those districts, more Republicans turned out than Democrats. That is very good for us in those primaries.”
Speaking to the Ripon Society, McDaniel provided details on the party’s plans for the upcoming midterm elections and how its effort to fund it have been going. So far so good, she said.
“We have raised more money than any political party in history going into a midterm,” she told the influential moderate Republican group.
“We have hit the $184 million mark. We plan to have raised $250 million, to have a quarter of a billion dollars to put into this election — which has never happened before. I think we’re absolutely going to hit that mark. We know it’s going to take those resources,” she added.
McDaniel said that the party is also working to keep its tech advantage. “On the data front, we are expanding our data. We’re making it quicker so that we can get those analytics onto the ground earlier and make decisions in different districts. What we need to do to calibrate our message so we can see if voters are going to be impacted by certain messages and how that will trend. That’s a huge part of our investment,” she said.
Her focus is also on voter turnout and she said that the results in California show that the GOP can get results for little money if it is spent strategically.
“The Democrats put $10 million into that state to push turnout. We put $300,000 in to push turnout because we knew how important it was. But we did it more strategically, and we knew exactly where our voters were because of our data. And we still beat them. A bellwether of who wins in the general has always been which party turns out more people in the primary. In the past four election cycles, the party that gets more people out in the primary usually wins in the general,” she told the group.
Added to money has been building an army on the ground, she added.
“In 2016, we had trained 5,000 volunteers to go into the presidential election. And when I say volunteers, I mean these are the people who are going to knock on doors, they’re going to be making phone calls, and they’re going to be doing all the things you need to do to turn out your vote. This cycle, we’ve already trained 15,000. And when I say train, it’s not an hour-long session where you pop in and you get a few pamphlets and then leave. It’s a six-week course where we train these volunteers on our technology, on everything that they’re going to have to do throughout the campaign. By engaging them in that six-week course, they become eligible to be hired as staff. That’s our supply chain. They are absolutely engaged, and over half of them are women,” said McDaniel.
