Turn Out, Not Polls, Will Determine Who Wins in 2024

Donald Trump continues to lead Joe Biden, albeit slightly, in national head-to-head polling, and enjoys a larger single-digit lead in most of the key swing states polls.  If the election were held tomorrow, he would likely win the presidency, based on the polls alone.  But polls, while suggestive, aren’t necessarily predictive. It’s not that the polls are wrong or even subject to change, it’s that stated voter preference, especially five months from election day, doesn’t necessarily determine voter behavior.  In the end, it all comes down to voter turnout.  Whichever candidate is better able to convince his partisans and the relatively small sliver of swing voters to show up for him at the ballot box will ultimately win.

What determines voter turnout?  Some of it comes down to passion, which seems to favor Trump by a considerable margin.  But it’s not just a question of energy and interest.  It’s also a question of campaign infrastructure.  Who has more people in the field to canvass key neighborhoods, ring the doorbells and make repeat phone calls to mobilize prospective voters to actually vote?

 Arguments about the two parties’ “ground game” – and its influence on electoral outcomes – have raged for years.  In 2008, Barack Obama’s pioneering use of digital technology to identify voter sub-group preferences – right down to their zip codes – and to coordinate and adapt his campaign’s field operations with tailored issue messaging has been widely credited with spurring him to a breakthrough victory over Republican John McCain that year.

It’s taken the GOP at least two cycles to begin adapting some of the same “micro-targeting” tools to their own campaign operations.  By contrast, Hillary Clinton largely mishandled their use in 2016 – and Democratic turnout sagged, especially in the key swing states, one of the reasons Trump was able to sneak past her to victory.

Who has the better ground game in 2024?  By most accounts Biden still does.  That’s one reason so many Democrats remain optimistic about 2024.  With less than 5 months to go, Biden has far more campaign field offices in place in the key swing states than Trump, and until recently, at least, far more money available to finance their operations.

In theory, that means disaffected voter groups, especially Hispanics and African Americans, who may not feel the same level of enthusiasm to vote for Biden they did in 2020, will be getting a lot more attention from Democratic canvassers than from Republican ones.  So will the slender portion of the electorate that hasn’t voted consistently one way or the other – the so-called “persuadables,” including some Republicans deeply disenchanted with Trump.

It’s not just Democrats that are touting their ground game advantage – privately, so are some Republican veterans of past campaigns, and they’re worried about catching up.  But Trump campaign officials say they’re holding back on staffing more state and local field offices until the summer, allowing Democrats to gain a false sense of optimism about their chances in November.  In fact, in recent weeks, the Democratic funding advantage – which was pronounced in the spring – has all but disappeared.  The GOP is now out-raising the Democrats, and some Democrats are getting worried.

But there’s another cause for worry:  Trump’s campaign isn’t planning to rely as heavily on state and local field offices as they did In 2020.  Instead, it’s turning to an affiliated organization, Turning Point USA, helmed by conservative firebrand and Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk.  Thanks to a little-noticed FEC ruling, outside groups can now coordinate their messaging campaigns with the established candidates, giving them a major two-fer operation.

Kirk’s group, which started as little more than a Christian-oriented student movement two years ago,  was once dismissed even by Republican officials as an unwieldy and ineffective operation from which the GOP should withhold its support.   But with Trump now firmly in control of the party apparatus, Kirk’s group has been welcomed into the fold – and indeed, has become Trump’s not so secret weapon for getting out the vote.

“(The) ability to work with outside groups on field work alleviates the need to have the same size staff footprint as in previous cycles, allowing us to retain a greater share of resources for advertising and paid voter contact programs than in past cycles,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN this week.

Kirk’s rapid rise within the GOP is largely due to the disappointment conservatives experienced in the 2022 midterms when their expected “Red Tsunami” failed to materialize.  Democrats kept control of the Senate and the GOP lost seats in the House.  Most Democratic governors survived.  Voter backlash to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe V. Wade  and the weakness of some prominent pro-Trump candidates broke the GOP’s momentum, and gave Democrats a renewed sense of optimism about 2024.

In fact, GOP turnout in 2022 actually surpassed that of the Democrats, reversing the trend from 2018 and 2020.  Republicans made some important gains with Hispanic voters and rural voters and even kept their losses among women lower than expected, primarily by getting relatively higher numbers of GOP women to the polls.  Still, their 2022 turnout wasn’t on the massive scale that Republicans had hoped for, which gave once ostracized conservative firebrands like Kirk an opening to peddle a new strategy

That strategy, outlined in some detail in a recent CNN article, allows Turning Point’s young field operatives a chance to engage in what they call “relational” organizing much like the community organizing campaigns waged by the left over many years and by the Obama campaign in 2008.  The idea is to tap into prospective sources of Trump support among disaffected conservatives that haven’t voted in recent years, dating as far back as 2016.  Kirk’s group has culled data from past elections to identify and target these disgruntled anti-establishment conservatives, dramatizing the stakes for the country in 2024, and offering guidance and support to get them to cast ballots, much as Democrats do, especially with minority voters.

There’s a sound foundation for this strategy that should worry Democrats. Polls show that “non-engaged” or “unlikely” voters – who are typically missed in national polling – do strongly favor Trump, by as much as 2-1, the former president a potential groundswell of support, once tapped. offering

Trump is clearly planning to rely heavily on Turning Point in the key swing states where Kirk’s organization is focusing most of its current efforts.  In Trump’s recent appearances in Arizona and Michigan he has spoken at events organized by Turning Point affiliates.  While mainstream GOP officials who have waged past election campaigns remain skeptical of the group, saying it’s difficult to manage and  lacks “accountability,” theTrump campaign – now under the direction of Lara Trump, the former’s president’s niece –sees it as a “force multiplier” that can make up for the campaign’s relative lack of financial resources by placing additional “boots on the ground” backed by outside organizations and individuals – mainly oil execs and sundry multi-millionaires – not bound by traditional campaign funding restrictions.

In many ways Turning Point is filling the void left by older once highly popular conservative youth organizations like Young Americans for Freedom whose members have aged out or simply lost their relevance to students on college campuses where they were once based.  Turning Point supports numerous college-based issue and messaging campaigns – often trashing feminism and diversity programs and touting America as a bastion of world freedom.  Should Trump win with the organization’s critical support, Turning Point could well emerge as a thriving conservative grassroots organization – the “shock troops” – that might help Trump promote his national agenda everywhere.

The threat posed by Turning Point over the next 5 months shouldn’t be underestimated.  In fact, Democrats may have their own turnout disadvantages, relative to past election cycles.  In Nevada, the death of the state’s long-time senior senator, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,  in 2021 has removed the kingpin of his party’s historically powerful get-out-the vote operation, which includes its Hispanic-dominated state teachers’ and service worker unions.  In 2016 and 2020, Democrats only carried Nevada narrowly (by 2.4 points), compared to Obama’s commanding double-digit victories in 2008 and 2012 which occurred at the height of Reid’s political influence.

In Michigan, there are also some doubts about the ability of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) to get its membership, to say nothing of workers and voters statewide, to the polls for Biden.  Blue-collar workers in the state generally favor Trump and even a growing share of the UAW back the former president.  Michigan’s popular two-term governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who co-chairs Biden’s campaign, will weigh in heavily for the president, as she did in 2020, but in 2024, the race is still a toss-up, just as it was in 2016.

In truth, both sides may well be overstating their respective ground game advantages.  And the fact is, getting voters to the polls – partisans as well as persuadables – still depends heavily on the popularity of each candidate and the quality of his messaging.  Right now, there are a record number of “double-haters” in the electorate – about 25%, up from 20% in April.  And their numbers may grow even higher as the race winds down to an ignominious end.  Disenchantment at this level could end up demobilizing prospective voters for both candidates, leading to one of the lowest turnout rates in years.

But if 2016 is any guide, in a race to the bottom against an unctuous Democrat, Trump, warts and all, is still the betting favorite. Biden’s net approval rating has reached an all-time low –  about 4 points lower than Trump’s, which has actually improved of late. Biden desperately needs a “reset” of some kind before November – a possible debate “win,” a breakthrough on foreign policy or economic good news that can be spun to voters as “progress”.  Any one of these might help, but unless Biden can maintain a substantial ground game advantage – and right now, that appears to be slipping, as Trump’s novel operation surges – he can probably kiss his re-election prospects goodbye.

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