Tag: swing states
'Lots Of Empty Seats' At Closing Trump Rallies In Swing States

'Lots Of Empty Seats' At Closing Trump Rallies In Swing States

Win or lose on Election Day, it’s unlikely the 78-year old Donald Trump will ever hold another presidential campaign rally again, and yet some of his supporters over the past week have stopped showing up for his final tour, leading reporters on several networks to mention there are “a lot of empty seats.”

Who will win the presidential election is anyone’s guess, but for the Republican nominee coming to the end of his third campaign, some expected more people would be out to get one last rush of the MAGA experience.

“Very low energy,” is how Mother Jones’ D.C. bureau chief David Corn described Trump’s rally Monday in Reading, Pennsylvania—a must-win state both candidates have been focusing on.

NBC News’ Vaughn Hillyard, who says he’s been covering Trump since 2015, notes Trump’s first rally on the last day before Election Day is just 70 percent full—and Trump was 40 minutes late.

And he talked about the “far smaller crowds” they’ve been seeing, including this one in North Carolina.

“I wanna show you guys real fast what this crowd looks like,” Hillyard told MSNBC viewers. “We’re looking at about a capacity, about 70% full here, and for nine years … we have talked about the enthusiasm in the masses that have come out for Trump’s rallies, time and again, even at his politically lowest points, including in 2022.”

Biden White House Communications Director Ben LaBolt, from his personal account on X responded: “The act got old.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein posted video from Trump’s Sunday rally in Macon, Georgia.

Revealing just how tired Trump’s supporters have, the comedy team of The Good Liars, who frequently go to Trump rallies and interview his supporters, on Monday caught several people holding Trump signs leaving but his rally early.

The Lincoln Project posted a video, originally posted by Hillyard, remarking, “This is how the MAGA movement is dying, like a bad club when the lights come on.”

Another Trump rally today with “a lot of empty seats.”

A CNN reporter for that same rally agreed: “a lot of empty seats.”

Democratic former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill noted that a Trump rally on Saturday also had “a lot of empty seats.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Harris Campaign Chief Says She's 'Confident' As Undecideds Swing Democratic

Harris Campaign Chief Says She's 'Confident' As Undecideds Swing Democratic

In a rare move seven days before Election Day, the chair of the Harris campaign has released a video in an apparent effort to tamp down nervousness in the Democratic base.

Jen O’Malley Dillon told supporters, “we’re on track to win a very close election,” “we feel really good with what we’re seeing,” but “we still have a lot of work to do.”

The video (below) has gone viral, with nearly 400,000 views on the social media platform X in just 90 minutes.

“I know you’re anxious,” O’Malley Dillon says, “I know you’re worried because you know what the stakes are and it’s okay to be worried, but what we can do for you is help you channel that anxiety into helping us in this campaign.” And she asked supporters to “go knock on doors.”

O’Malley Dillon, who also served as President Joe Biden’s 2020 and 2024 campaign manager, and his White House deputy chief of staff, recorded the three-and-a-half-minute “campaign update” to “tell you why you don’t have to feel anxious and you can feel good,” insisting “we have multiple pathways to get to 270 electoral votes.”

Declaring it “truly is a margin of error race,” O’Malley Dillon says, “every single state, the blue wall, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, the sun belt, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina … are in play, and in each of these states, every week we see and we monitor our numbers, we monitor the work that’s happening, and we’re seeing growing enthusiasm and we’re so excited about it.”

And she insists, “we feel really good about what we’re seeing out there.”

She says that Republicans, who historically have not taken advantage of early voting but this year are, at the behest of the RNC and occasionally Donald Trump, are simply “changing their mode of voting.”

“We are seeing Republicans voting early, but these are Republicans that are gonna vote no matter what.”

Meanwhile, Democrats are “voting at the levels we need them to vote in order for us to win,” she adds, and says early Democratic voters “are our lower propensity voters,” meaning voters who do not tend to vote in every election.

She says undecided voters are still out there, but they are moving more toward Harris than Trump, a claim confirmed in recent news reporting.

Last week the Monmouth University Poll reported the number of undecideds who are “motivated … is only 1%.”

Newsweek reported that “Emerson College polling, conducted between October 14 and 16, shows that among undecided voters who chose who they would vote for in the past week or month, 60 percent opted for the Democratic vice president, while 36 percent opted for Republican former President Donald Trump.”

She urged Harris and Walz supporters to go talk to the undecideds.

“They need to have people at their doors, they need to get phone calls, they need to see us wherever they are in any part of their life, so we leave no stone unturned.”

“Maybe you can make phone calls,” she asked, “or send texts from your home or maybe you can do something that only you can do, which is talk to people in your own lives. The people that you see every day. Maybe you work with them, maybe there are people in your life that you don’t always want to talk politics about because I know talking about politics is hard, but we need you to have those conversations. And if you even just have one of those hard conversations, that is gonna make a difference in this race.”

The Daily Beast reports Tuesday morning, O’Malley Dillon told reporters, “We’re confident we’re going to win.”

“And it’s not because we’re running away with it. It’s because we’re confident we’re on a path to win a very close election,” she said.

“She added that the Harris campaign has seen a ‘growth of support’ since Trump’s Sunday rally, where a comedian’s insulting joke about Puerto Rico offended many Latino voters.”

Watch O’Malley Dillon’s video below or at this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Donald Trump

'No Ground Activity': Republicans Fret Over Lackluster Trump Campaign

With the final two months of the 2024 election at hand, some Republicans are privately fretting that former President Donald Trump's campaign isn't doing nearly enough basic voter engagement necessary to win.

According to a Tuesday report in Semafor, several GOP operatives — including former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel – are bearish about Trump's chances in several must-win battleground states due to his campaign's relative invisibility compared to Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign. Semafor's Shelby Talcott and Burgess Everett reported that McDaniel recently "grumbled to allies that the [Republican] party’s on-the-ground efforts are lacking."

One unnamed "Republican strategist in a swing state" speaking anonymously told the publication that they've seen "no ground activity at all" from the Trump campaign, but instead have only seen "election integrity" efforts. This is in reference to Republicans' strategy of deploying activists to voting precincts and litigating election results in key swing states.

“They’re really only focused on recruiting folks to volunteer to be poll watchers,” the strategist said. “I mean, they do a lot of that s—. But what’s the point of watching the vote if you haven’t turned out the vote?”

Another swing state Republican voter speaking anonymously said they were concerned about the field strategy they were seeing from the Trump campaign. While both campaigns rely on field offices in various major battlegrounds to deploy volunteers to knock doors, drop off campaign literature, conduct phonebanking outreach efforts and distribute lawn signs, this voter said they felt out of the loop when attempting to connect other potential voters to the campaign.

"I’m as plugged in as they get — and yet I don’t even know who my friends and family back home can contact for a yard sign or to knock doors in their precinct," the Republican voter said.

In the 2024 cycle, the Trump campaign's ground game has been somewhat outsourced to far-right activist Charlie Kirk's group, Turning Point USA (TPUSA). The Arizona-based group has identified 300,000+ potential voters apiece in both Arizona and Wisconsin that it feels could help win those states, another 40,000 in Michigan, and roughly 30,000 more in Nevada. The group hoped to raise $108 million to engage with those voters, but it has so far not reached that amount.

A decision earlier this year by the Federal Election Commission allowed for more communication between campaigns' official employees and members of outside groups. One operative said that's helped the former president shore up his ground game in certain key states.

“The FEC ruling allowing party committees to more closely work with outside groups on ground game has been a huge benefit when it comes to targeting low propensity and swing voters,” National Republican Senatorial Committee political director Tim Edson said. “We also expect the Trump campaign to bring out a number of low propensity voters that pollsters often miss, as he has done in the past.”

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Kamala Harris

Election Expert: Harris Is Erasing Trump's Lead In Swing States (VIDEO)

President Joe Biden's path to 270 electoral votes was very narrow, and depended entirely on the three so-called "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But according to one election expert, Vice President Kamala Harris has a much more varied path to a 270-vote Electoral College majority.

In a Friday interview with MSNBC, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics said that thanks to growing enthusiasm around her candidacy, Harris is positioned well to win not only toss-up states like those in the Midwest, but also in other states that were previously favorable to former President Donald Trump. Sabato said one example is Georgia, which President Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes.

"Most of the Georgia experts we know and check with felt that Georgia was clearly leaning to Trump for most of this year, even before Biden's troubles, but that isn't true any longer," Sabato said. "[T]hose very same people — some of them Republicans — think it's a very competitive state, that Georgia could go either way. So it's now a toss-up."

Sabato also said that states Trump won in 2016 and 2020, like North Carolina, are also in play with Harris at the top of the ticket. He noted that even though former President Barack Obama won the Tar Heel State in 2008, he lost it in 2012, and it's remained in Republican hands since then.

Harris winning the state would be a major victory, as North Carolina has voted for Republican presidential candidates in all but two elections dating back to 1976. And according to Sabato, North Carolina Republicans nominating an "extreme" candidate in this year's gubernatorial race in the form of Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson could end up providing additional turnout from the state's more liberal voters who hope to keep the governorship in Democratic hands.

"That's one we're really watching. That is normally a Republican state," he said. "The demographics in North Carolina are changing, and those who have professional degrees of one sort or another are becoming more dominant in certain parts of North Carolina."

"Some Republicans get turned off by the gubernatorial candidate, and they may not be excited about Donald Trump, and they may not vote," he added. "So, will that happen? I don't know yet, it's too early to say. But it's certainly worth watching."

The Georgia electorate in 2020 not only delivered the Electoral College to Democrats, but also flipped two Republican-held U.S. Senate seats. The 2020 election and the 2021 runoff resulted in the Peach State voting for a Democratic presidential candidate and elected two Democratic senators for the first time in more than three decades.

However, Georgia's Republican-dominated state government has since made adjustments to state election law that will make a Democratic victory in 2024 that much more difficult. Earlier this month, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger announced the rollout of a new website allowing any Georgian to challenge a voter registration in the Peach State. This is an accordance with a controversial new law passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature and signed into law by Brian Kemp allowing a Georgia resident to challenge an unlimited number of voter registrations.

Watch Sabato's segment below, or by clicking this link.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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