I've written before about the Republican love of the bandwagon effect, which basically relies on the idea that if you act like Donald Trump and pretend you've definitely got it won, some people will naturally follow along because they want to go with the winner. They've been doing that long before Trump came along, but nobody in politics has ever been more naturally adept at deploying it than he is. And we've discussed, ad nauseam, that Democrats are suffering from post-2016 PTSD and are inherently more likely to believe the sky is falling. Many of these races have been so close for so long that they are rationally worried that it will fall the wrong way.
Former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer recently explained why these behaviors may be counterproductive this time around, particularly on the GOP side. The political strategy behind the bandwagon effect was meant to target the high-propensity voters to whom Republicans have traditionally appealed: older and mostly college-educated people who always turn out. That is why they would win the low-interest midterm elections while Democrats are more likely to win big popular-vote victories driven by people who vote only sporadically or rarely, which to some extent counteracts the GOP base of regular voters in the presidential years.
Therefore, Democratic strategists turn up the hand-wringing toward the end of a campaign to ensure their base knows their vote matters, so those lower-propensity voters don't go with "Why bother?" and simply stay home. Republicans, meanwhile, push the illusion of momentum in an effort to motivate stragglers to go with the perceived winner. But Pfeiffer points out that the two parties' coalitions have changed dramatically since 2016, and strategies that worked with the older configurations may not make sense today. He pointed to a recent Cook Political Report finding:
Our final poll finds Harris leading 51%-47% among high-engagement voters — a remarkably stable four-point lead the same as the previous two polls — only this time with just 2% remaining undecided. But Trump has bounced back to a seven-point lead with low/mid-engagement voters, 52%-45% — smack dab in between his 10-point lead over Biden among those voters in May and his three-point lead over Harris in August. The likely explanation? Since August, Trump has consolidated more Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supporters and other third-party voters to his column, allowing him to increase his low/mid-engagement vote share from 48% to 52%, while Harris’s share among that group has remained stagnant at 45%.
In other words, the GOP's bandwagon strategy may not work with Trump's low- or mid-propensity voters who figure they don't need to turn out if he already has it won. They can just keep playing "Call of Duty" or scrolling social media without having to worry that their "gangsta" leader won't win. Without the hardcore high-propensity voters they used to count on, Republicans may be making a mistake by acting overconfident. Of course, it's not like they have a choice. This is Donald Trump we're talking about.
Democrats, on the other hand, don't have the same worries. They don't lose any of the college-educated types by being nervous nellies. In fact, it may get them out to vote early. And they're still working hard at trying to get out their own low-propensity types, including younger progressives, Black and Latino voters and members of other minority groups, who tend to have busy lives and need to be contacted and persuaded. They're even working in rural areas to try to cut into Trump's margins, if only by a little which could absolutely make a difference in the closest swing states. Those voters will know that the Harris campaign needs their votes.
The big question for both campaigns at this point, with the race so close, is whether their field operations are up to the task. Early voting appears to be robust in the swing states so far, but comparisons with 2020 are useless because that was such an unusual circumstance. And who knows what Republicans are thinking about Trump's inconsistent directives about early voting or constant carping about the elections being rigged?
When Trump engineered the ouster of RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and brought in his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and North Carolina operative Michael Watley to run it, he made it clear that he didn't think they needed a get-out-the-vote operation. He instructed them to focus on so-called election integrity, by which he means vote suppression, poll watching and contesting results. Trump believes his presence alone is enough to get out the GOP vote.
But after an FEC ruling last March allowed more coordination between the campaigns and outside Super PACs, the Republicans did decide to try an experiment and outsource their field operations to Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA and Elon Musk's Save America PAC (previously Ron DeSantis' very grifty GOP primary PAC) who are focusing all their energies on those low propensity voters. Nobody knows whether it will work, and the signs are that having gotten a very late start and being run by people with no experience it's pretty disorganized. The Associated Press reports that people on the ground aren't seeing much activity and the technology that was supposed to revolutionize their new approach doesn't work half the time. They were firing some of their vendors and subcontractors and replacing them as recently as this month.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk has taken matters into his own hands and is camped in Pennsylvania until the election. He's holding rallies and paying people a hundred dollars to sign a petition ostensibly supporting the 1st and 2nd Amendments which is obviously a thinly disguised list-building exercise. He's now giving away a million dollars to a random signer every day, creating a sort of electoral lottery. This is of very dubious legality but Musk doesn't care. He believes he is operating with impunity and he's probably right. The real question is why he needs this list at this late date. And why shouldn't Harris voters rush to sign these petitions and get in on the action? It's just more weirdness from the Trump camp.
The Democrats have been building their ground game for many months, prepared as they were for the fact that Joe Biden's unpopularity was going to require them to work extra hard to get out their own voters. Harris' entrance into the race changed that dynamic with massive new enthusiasm and fundraising and that operation has only grown. Whether that's enough to turn out their own low-propensity voters and cut into Trump margins in those battleground states remains to be seen. But considering the GOP's new coalition, Trump bragging that he's already got it won may be a big mistake and when you combine it with the fact that his ground operation is run by grifters and megalomaniacs I can understand why just about every Democratic strategist you hear from says, "it's too close for comfort, but I'd rather be us than them."
