I keep finding news stories about how the Trump “ground game” is a mess. Today I found another one, by Reuters. Trump dismantled the RNC’s existing GOTV structure in favor of getting by on the cheap and relying on a largely Elon Musk-funded operation thrown together this year. The canvassers are doing a hit-and-miss job, by all accounts. Meanwhile, the Harris team has built the single largest get-out-the-vote effort in modern history, it says here.  At the same time, Republicans continue to worry that Trump’s efforts are not getting the job done.

Not even Republicans are convinced Trump’s on-the-cheap effort will work. As early as last year, some party insiders griped that “nobody wants to admit” the former president’s efforts are not yielding winning results. “That’s why we’re losing elections,” one veteran GOP strategist told NBC News.  

They aren’t wrong. Studies dating back to 2007 have shown that volunteer canvassers who join a campaign because they are highly motivated outperform even highly paid field mercenaries. That shouldn’t be too surprising: Volunteers who feel they are fighting for their values will work harder and care more about the outcome than canvassers simply in it for the paycheck. In their effort to leverage billionaire fortunes as an organizing force multiplier, Republicans have hired a wave of apathetic, disconnected canvassers.  

This was published recently in the New York Times:

With 2,500 staff members located in 353 offices, the Harris campaign is working to convert the strongest backers into volunteers and to ensure that sporadic but supportive voters cast a ballot, all while winning over independents and moderate Republicans. Last week, the campaign said, it knocked on over 600,000 doors and made over three million calls through 63,000 volunteer shifts.

Mr. Trump’s team is largely operating under the assumption that Republicans who voted for Trump in previous elections will once again back him in large numbers. His campaign is focusing on a smaller number of infrequent voters who his team believes will back Mr. Trump if energized to vote. 

It has to be noted that ground operations have not always made a difference in presidential elections.

Both sides agree that a bigger ground game doesn’t ensure victory. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign boasted about its operation, while Mr. Trump had almost no field staff in the key states. Four years later, the second Trump campaign bragged about knocking on one million doors weekly, while the Biden campaign conducted no in-person canvassing out of concern about the Covid pandemic.

But today the Guardian reports that some of Elon Musk’s canvassers appear to be lying about how many doors they knock on.

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter. … leaked America Pac data obtained by the Guardian shows that roughly 24% of the door-knocks in Arizona and 25% of the door-knocks in Nevada this week were flagged under “unusual survey logs” by the Campaign Sidekick canvassing app.

But the Sidekick canvassing app also has been a mess. It often doesn’t work in rural areas with little wifi, but such areas are where Trump’s voters live. And one would think that in such a close election, turnout in swing states is critical. It’s also the case that the canvassers are being hired and supervised by local contractors, and the contractors are loathe to fire people because they’re getting paid to get bodies out door-knocking. It’s not exactly a well-oiled machine, in other words.

Meanwhile, Trump is planning to hold one of his last big rallies in Madison Square Garden. Yes, New York City. This will be Sunday night, October 27. It’s been noted that he’s been making campaign appearances in blue states, It’s argued that he gets good national publicity from these appearances, but I wonder if ultimately this is about Trump’s vanity and possible delusions that he could win California or New York or wherever. Do read A week before the election, Trump will hold his most unsettling spectacle yet by Sidney Blumenthal at The Guardian. Very nice bit of writing and analysis. (And can he fill Madison Square Garden’s 19,500 seats? I guess there are enough Trump supporters in the greater NYC area to do that. We’ll see.)

As promised, Judge Tanya Chutkan did release a big pile of J6 evidence yesterday. Much of it was already public, and much of it was from the House J6 subcommittee. I don’t believe any big, new revelations came out of it, but Jack Smith’s case seems substantially reinforced..