Trump's Eggs Are Mostly in One Basket - wasting money [View all]

[Demovictory9]

Trump’s Eggs Are Mostly in One Basket
While Democrats can feel good about the record number of early voters, I believe the most important story now is tactical.

The Trump campaign spent millions of dollars sending mailers encouraging his supporters to request mail ballots and vote in-person. The Trump campaign sent three mailers to my household, addressed to the prior occupant, encouraging him to request a mail ballot and vote in-person early. (Who hasn’t lived here in several years and is no longer on the voter file. That is some poor targeting.) His money has largely been wasted because Trump’s supporters are listening to his rhetoric about mail ballot fraud. Even if occasionally he grudgingly tells his supports to vote by mail or vote early, Republicans aren’t doing it yet. Maybe Trump feels he can waste his money this way, but throwing away money only means the Biden campaign has even more of a cash advantage over Trump.

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign is analyzing the same early voting data of individual voters available to me. They are merrily scratching names off their target universe and re-concentrating their efforts onto voters they want to vote who haven’t participated yet. This means that Biden is able to more effectively use the money he has.

Trump is putting his eggs into the Election Day basket, and that is risky. It is not unheard of for bad weather to happen on Election Day – a snowstorm, rain, or even a tropical disturbance. Bad weather is known to depress turnout. There will be fewer polling locations because of COVID, so Election Day lines could be unusually long and miserable to stand in with bad weather. A COVID issue could unexpectedly shutter an election office or polling location, creating last minute chaos.

Again, maybe Republican start voting in-person over the next two weeks. If I were running a campaign, I’d much prefer to be the one where I’ve already banked millions of votes more than my opponent.

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/Early_Vote_Analysis_10_18.html