Trump campaign goes digital as it contacts Pennsylvania voters
Before March 13, Donald Trump’s re-election campaign was on the ground in Pennsylvania, talking face to face with voters and volunteers at house parties and training sessions about how the president helped usher in a new American economy.
Now, and over the past three weeks as the COVID-19 pandemic has restricted gatherings and reorganized voters’ priorities, the campaign has shifted its strategy to digital-only and its message to how Mr. Trump has handled the COVID-19 pandemic.
Officials said the entire strategy was flipped in a matter of 24 hours on that day in early March, facilitated by the partnership between the official campaign apparatus and the Republican National Committee. The operation is entirely virtual now. Its main volunteer training program — the Trump Victory Leadership Initiative Training sessions — has moved to Google Hangout and Zoom videoconferencing, and the newly trained volunteers are using livestreaming and digital techniques to contact and register voters from the comfort of their own homes.
“We’re teaching [volunteers] our digital organizing skills, voter contact techniques, and [how to utilize] social media platforms,” said RNC spokesperson Mike Joyce, who oversees the efforts in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Delaware and Maryland. “We do already use this kind of technology for our ground and field team, so it wasn’t a huge learning curve.”
The campaign had to move its National Week of Training and National Day of Action drives in March to virtual spaces, as well — and ended up holding more than 300 events to train volunteers on how to use inhome calling applications, among other things. Not a single call was made in a campaign office, Mr. Joyce noted.
Mr. Joyce said in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s re-election effort has made more than 1 million voter contacts already and has more than 60 staffers on the ground coordinating virtual volunteer efforts.
“We never left the state since 2016,” Mr. Joyce said. “We’ve had people on the ground ever since.”
The campaign’s message has changed as much as its technique, he said. It’s all about COVID-19.
When they reach a voter by phone, volunteers are tasked with asking how that voter is doing and how the pandemic is impacting their life. They’re then supposed to direct the voter to federal and state resources for information — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, for example — then pivot to talking about “the president’s strong leadership during the coronavirus outbreak,” Mr. Joyce said.
Mr. Joyce said the message, specifically, is that Mr. Trump has been trying to get “out in front” of the pandemic as quickly as he can, has tried to use the private sector to make up for deficiencies in supplies and has moved to protect small businesses. They’re aiming to convince voters, too, that some Democrats are politicizing the pandemic instead of working with Republicans.
If a voter doesn’t answer, the campaign leaves a voicemail from Lara Trump, senior campaign adviser and the president’s daughter-inlaw, saying much of the same.
“We’re fully prepared to do this as long as we need to,” Mr. Joyce said.