In closing days, Harris leans on ground game advantage as outside groups bolster Trump's voter mobilization
In Allouez, Wisconsin, a Democratic-leaning neighborhood in a county former President Donald Trump won in 2020, voter Mark Losson said the canvassing effort by Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has been persistent.
One door knocker was "insistent on a response" and repeatedly offered to come back until his wife was home, Losson told CBS News.
"She had a checklist and she was making sure she checked all her boxes," said Losson, a former Republican voter who did not vote for Trump in 2020, and is leaning towards voting for Harris.
The Harris campaign has held a steady advantage over Trump in terms of physical resources on the ground. It has 353 field offices and over 2,500 staff members in the battleground states.
The campaign says its volunteer effort has been surging and said from Oct. 14-21, during over 124,000 shifts, volunteers knocked on 1.6 million doors and made 20 million phone calls.
The Trump campaign did not disclose how many field offices it has, but it said there are about two dozen in Pennsylvania, which is considered to be the most critical battleground state in this election.
The Harris campaign is banking on its ground game advantage with volunteer resources on the ground to help push the vice president over the top in November. The presidential race in every battleground state remains within the margin of error, according to CBS News polling.
"I can't really speak to what Donald Trump is doing," Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly told CBS News in early October. "My guess, from what I can tell about the way he campaigns, is he just drops verbal bombs on TV and doesn't do the hard work. It got him across the finish line in 2016. I don't think it's gonna work again."
"Trump Force" captains and low-propensity voters
The Trump campaign has taken a less traditional approach to its get-out-the-vote efforts in the battleground states. It's trying to mobilize low-propensity voters — people who infrequently cast their ballots in elections — to win in the crucial battleground states with what they've dubbed their Trump Force 47 program.
The program relies on Trump's most loyal supporters — referred to as "Trump Force" captains — who are recruited by the campaign to go after these voters. The campaign provides the captains with a list of 25 people in local areas inclined to vote for the former president but who have not yet voted.
The captains are then tasked with identifying, engaging and "activating" those voters by encouraging them to make a plan to vote early, by mail or in person for the former president.
The Trump Force 47 program is also incentivized by tiers. The first tier is called "Ten for Trump." If the captains engage and activate ten voters for Trump, they receive a red t-shirt that says "Trump Force 47." When they achieve the next tier, "24 for 24," captains get expedited entry into campaign rallies. And if the captains reach 45 voters, they achieve the tier called "45 for 47" and receive a white "Trump Force Captain" hat. Captains also receive a "Trump Force 47" patch for completing the basic volunteer training.
The model, developed by the campaign's political director James Blair and deputy political director Alex Meyer, was first deployed in Iowa, where Trump won the GOP caucuses decisively.
The Trump campaign is outsourcing its mid-propensity and high-propensity voter outreach to groups like Elon Musk's super PAC and Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA group.
In Wisconsin, another critical battleground state, Elon Musk's America PAC combined forces with Turning Point Action. Musk, who has donated $75 million to his PAC, has taken the lead on data and ground game operations using Turning Point staff.
Musk has also held events with his super PAC in Pennsylvania this month, where he urged attendees to register to vote. He's also pledged to give $1 million to a registered voter from a battleground state a day, sweepstakes-style. Election law experts are raising red flags about the giveaway.
The big tent for the Harris campaign
Harris inherited an already-built ground operation from President Biden when he left the race, and it also taps into the existing infrastructure built by state and county parties. In the closing weeks, the campaign has taken an "all-of-the-above" voter contact strategy.
While traditional door knocking and phone banking remain at the core of their voter outreach, the campaign is focusing on digital and social media ads, too. A campaign official also pointed to "relational organizing," that is, urging supporters to convince their family, friends and neighbors to vote for Harris.
The universe of voter targets for the campaign is large, and that's evident from Harris' recent travels. Within 48 hours in the last week, Harris spoke at two Black churches in Atlanta to mobilize base voters and then toured the "blue wall" states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for town halls with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to appeal to Republicans and moderates.
Black and Latino voters are key get-out-the-vote targets, an official says, but the campaign is also trying to reach Republicans and rural voters to cut into Trump's margins in some counties where some GOP voters have shown a reluctance to support Trump.
Suburban voters, primarily women and college-educated voters, are also key for Harris in states like Michigan. Wisconsin Democratic officials are focusing on Dane County, home to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a large number of young voters.
"Normally, campaigns shift to straight mobilization in the final sprint," this official said. "But because of how unpopular Donald Trump is with Nikki Haley voters and others who have traditionally voted Republican, we are continuing to reach out to and persuade conservative-leaning voters right through the very end."
Harris, with help from super PAC Future Forward, has maintained an advantage over Trump on ad spending in the battleground states in the closing weeks, according to advertisement tracking firm AdImpact. From Oct. 1 through Election Day, Harris and her super PAC will have spent $328.3 million on ads in the seven battleground states, compared to $215.9 million spent by Trump and Republican groups.
Only in Pennsylvania has the gap narrowed, in part due to pro-Trump outside groups such as the Florida-based "Right for America" PAC, which has spent $11.7 million on ads in the closing month.
Harris' running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has had a steady drumbeat of battleground state campaign events. Top surrogates within the Democratic Party, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, have also been deployed to the trail to mobilize voters.
Obama is slated to appear with Harris in Atlanta on Thursday and former first lady Michelle Obama is campaigning with Harris in Michigan on Saturday. Early voting is underway in both states.
The volunteers knocking on the doors
In northeastern Wisconsin, a competitive but Republican-leaning part of the state, Democratic-leaning voters voiced a mix of confidence and anxiousness about the election, if they were willing to talk.
Sarah Stabelfeld, a Wisconsin Harris campaign volunteer, hadn't knocked on doors since Obama's run in 2008. She was dispatched to knock doors in Appleton, Wisconsin, a Democratic-leaning town in Outagamie County where Trump won by 10 points in 2020.
"What feels different this time around is much more hesitancy when we knock on doors, people are hesitant to share their opinions," she said at a Harris event in Ripon, Wisconsin, with Cheney.
"Door knocking is so labor intensive. We're all experiencing ads, commercials, mailers. But there's nothing like that human-to-human connection," said Wisconsin State Assembly candidate and local Democratic county chair Christy Welch. "If they're willing to have a dialogue."
Welch knocked on the door of Democratic voter Barbara Biebel, who said she's seen much more activity and investment from the Democratic side in her area. She said she's still anxious.
"[Trump] would be devastating for our nation. It doesn't keep me awake at night, but I clench my teeth a lot," said Biebel, who added she and her neighbors have agreed not to bring politics up. "We know who is who on this block."
In Nevada, the Harris campaign's efforts are bolstered by canvassers for the Culinary Union Local 226, an influential labor union that represents 60,000 voters in Las Vegas and Reno.
When they walked door to door in North Las Vegas on Thursday, the canvassers ran into just one undecided voter: Shirley Jackson, an older Black woman who supported Democratic voters in the past but wanted to know more about how Harris would address the rising costs in groceries and health insurance.
"I really don't know her. I'm still trying to decide," Jackson said, adding that while she thinks Trump is "a little better" on the economy, she's not considering voting for him.
