Title: Which 'Get Out the Vote' Strategy Will Prevail?

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone, on Election Day 2024. Did you know it's Election Day? Okay, Captain Obvious, be quiet. Our election night coverage, just to let you know, begins at seven o'clock tonight when polls close in the first states, including the first swing states. There's nothing left for the candidates to do except get out the vote now. Let's talk about how the Trump and Harris campaigns have taken different approaches to getting voters to the ballot box. The Harris campaign says it has roughly 2,000 staffers and 250 offices across the key swing states. The Trump campaign is relying more on grassroots volunteers instead of using paid canvas. Just Trump's appearances in the media, coverage of his rallies, his presence on social media, those kinds of things. The Trump canvassers that are paid are handled mainly by third-party groups run by people like the conservative group Turning Point, their leader, Charlie Kirk, and billionaire Elon Musk, who's been running a controversial and reportedly not very effective get out the vote campaign.

Let's talk about this. Joining us to talk about how the Harris and Trump campaigns get out the vote strategies differ and how they might play out as voters head to the polls today is Stephen Fowler, political reporter with NPR's Washington desk. Stephen, I've been hearing you on the network about every 20 minutes it seems like. Thanks for giving us some WNYC time. Welcome.

Stephen Fowler: Thanks for having me. Happy to be back.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any get out the vote stories, any canvassers or volunteers out there, or anybody who has been contacted to try to get you to the voting place. If you haven't already been, tell us a get out the vote story or ask a question. 212-433-WNYC, call or text 212-433-9692 and we'll continue to invite calls as we have the whole show for any last-minute deciders who the get out the vote teams are trying to get at.

Anybody who's decided on your presidential vote, especially in a swing state at the last minute, anytime in the last week, or any other race. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. Stephen, I saw you on the NPR site writing, "Efforts the Republican National Committee undertook to make inroads with non-white voters in the last election cycle have been abandoned in favor of beefed-up election integrity teams." Abandoned?

Stephen Fowler: Yes. In the 2022 midterms, in a lot of the key states where there were important governors and Senate races, there were these minority outreach centers that targeted different identity groups. There were Black outreach centers in parts of Atlanta, there were Hispanic outreach centers, and parts of the Southwest where there are large Latino communities. They recruited local conservatives from these communities to get people to vote but also held different community outreach events like movie nights or different things like that.

It was a way to meet people where they are and it was a way to have a more authentic interaction engagement with communities that don't typically vote for Republicans than say bringing in a bunch of consultants or volunteers or staffers from D.C. to come and be like, "Hey, this is why you should vote for this candidate in this party." In 2024, when there was the changing of the guard in the Republican National Committee and Trump's daughter-in-law took over as co-chair, the focus became having the RNC become an extension of the Trump campaign.

That extension also focus on election-related lawsuits, poll watching, poll volunteers, pre-election litigation, what will likely be post-election litigation. The strategy has shifted and for all of the talk about low-propensity voters and voters of color being interested in voting for Trump, there has been a missed opportunity of that left on the table where the focus has been elsewhere instead of capitalizing on those people or the campaign of Republicans also think that these Trump curious voters who don't necessarily feel aligned with the Democratic Party will show up and vote for Trump because he is the alpha and omega of the get out the vote strategy this third time running for president.

Brian Lehrer: What's the Elon Musk role here? We hear that he's got an official role for the Trump campaign with respect to getting out the vote, but it's been criticized as ineffective according to some reporting. Here's the headline from the Guardian a few days ago, it says, "Musk's get out the vote workers didn't know they were canvassing for Trump." Actually, that was citing a report in WIRED. WIRED originally had that repeated in the Guardian and elsewhere. Are you familiar with that?

Stephen Fowler: Yes. Excuse me. When thinking about turning out and getting out the vote, there's many pieces to the puzzle. There's many slices of the pie, if you will. You've got the state-level parties, you've got the national parties, you've got the campaigns themselves, and then you have the outside super PACs and groups that are able to have different messaging and different resources and different focuses.

Musk's role with his America PAC is focused on get out the vote, especially in Pennsylvania, but in other swing states of contracting out groups to go do the door-knocking, hand out the mailers, talk to people, and say, "Have you voted? Have you made a plan to vote? Would you like to make a plan to vote?" Things like that. Now, the difference in that is that Elon Musk does not have a background in get out the vote efforts.

The firms that he subcontracted out do but with Musk and with Charlie Kirk of Turning Point, you have people that don't have a lot of experience with get out the vote generally being tasked with an ever-evolving piece of the pie for the Trump campaign, and it has had mixed results. I talked to a Republican pollster a few weeks ago who explained to me that typically, these outside groups, they're an appropriate mix of the puzzle. Maybe 30% to 40% of the total turnout efforts are the outside groups, with the rest being done by the campaign and the national party.

In this case, he said, more than half of the total turnout effort is going to these inexperienced individuals at the last minute. There's the potential to leave a lot of voters on the table. There's been reporting that I haven't been able to confirm personally, but anecdotal reporting of people fraudulently putting in numbers of doors that they knocked while they sat at a nearby restaurant, or falsifying records, or the reporting that you mentioned of people not knowing exactly who they're working for and what they're doing and being in conditions that aren't exactly ideal if you have the goal of getting a lot of people to show up and vote for your candidate.

It's a bit of an unorthodox situation. A lot of that goes back to, again, the theory that for Republicans, getting somebody to show up and vote for Trump in this election is best done by Trump himself and everything about him.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Even all the coverage that he has provoked, which I guess is controversial among his campaign advisors. All this name calling, all this race-baiting, all this false claiming of known election fraud, which there's no evidence of, and then there's a backlash to it and the media covers it and says, isn't that outrageous? That's actually a get out the vote strategy, seems to me. Can you confirm that by reporting?

Stephen Fowler: Yes. The key piece, it's called Trump Force 47. The get out the vote strategy that the campaign has is reliant on training a lot of grassroots volunteers and people that are enthusiastic about Trump to go out in their own communities and talk to their friends and their neighbors and their coworkers. A little bit like the minority outreach centers, but using people who have the passion for Trump and who know their own communities to get in that relational organizing efforts.

They've touted a lot of success that they've had with doors knocked and calls made and people signing up to be volunteers as Trump force captains. We're a decade into the phenomenon of Trump dominating the Republican Party and honestly, American politics. It's not a stretch to say that-- there's not much left to know about Donald Trump and what he says and what he does and what he would do if elected, but it is a lot of effort at times to get people to actually show up and cast that ballot for Trump.

There's a big difference between people who like Trump and would like for him to be president and those who actually are the ones that show up to vote. Every headline, everything that Trump says and does just furthers the piece of that puzzle and gets the attention because, for every headline that Trump says, XYZ latest outrageous thing, there is a counter headline somewhere in the right-wing media ecosystem or at the local level with these Trump force volunteers to then go out and say, "Hey, the left is trying to silence Trump or they're trying to beat us or we need to get out because it is too big to rig is what a lot of the messaging has been.

A lot of the criticism that people have about what Trump says and how he says it, those aren't the people that need to be convinced to show up and vote for Trump. It's the other ones who need a little bit more of that attention.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from somebody who's doing get out the vote work for Harris. Susan, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susan. Susan, are you there? Susan Once.

Susan: Yes. Sorry about that.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, there.

Susan: Hey, there. I spent two weeks in Georgia for the Harris for Georgia campaign and I can't remember the stats that your guest used, but there's like 2,000 volunteers around the country and I can't remember the number of offices, but that in no way accurately captures and understandable. It's hard to do just the number of people that those organizers have identified and motivated to work as super volunteers for the campaign.

When you see people day after day coming into the office volunteering, but then right now, they are out there in their communities working their list, getting people to the polls, crossing them off, moving on to the next person. It's an amazing effort. It is very comparable, if not surpassing the effort that I saw in 2008 for Obama for Ohio.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, thank you very much. Here's another caller who's doing Georgia get out the vote for Harris. Jane in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hello. I apologize, listeners. I think we have a little phone glitch. It's taking the callers a few seconds to hear me. Since this has happened with a couple of calls today, I guess it's a little ghost in the machine. We'll obviously get it cleared up. While we're waiting for Jane, I see Eddie in Coney Island, who's a poll worker and on the job, is calling us during what I think is a 10-minute break. Eddie, can you hear me and do I have that right?

Eddie: Yes, Brian. I'm taking a break, but it's not a 10-minute break. It's an hour break for lunch.

Brian Lehrer: Okay. Thanks for using some of that time to call us. What do you want to report?

Eddie: Yes, I live just a few minutes away by bike from where I'm polling today and it's been a relatively organized calm morning. We had a good couple of hundred people by the time I left to go to lunch that came to vote. A few errors here and there, a few unregistered people, and a few people who came to the wrong location. This is a very diverse area full of people from, let's say, the former Soviet Union area as well as Southeast Asian people and pretty diverse people, different races. My point is here is that I'm pretty shocked at how many people are voting for Trump.

Brian Lehrer: How can you tell?

Stephen Fowler: I did not expect it. Well, a lot of times they asked me to help some. We've had many errors where people will-- you know how the row of you can only vote for let's say one person in a row, but they may be in the Republican and the conservative party or the working families or the Democratic Party and sometimes they put both down. We had many, many errors like that. Some people have actually put, for example, Trump and they were also right, Trump in on the right side. Then they come up and ask you because the scanner isn't doing the job. I see many, many of those.

Brian Lehrer: Eddie, thank you for checking in. Certainly, we know there are conservative voters in South Brooklyn. You're calling From Coney Island, part of South Brooklyn is part of Nicole Malliotakis Congressional District Republican. There have been local Republicans elected from South Brooklyn, so it's not that surprising to me, but it's certainly an interesting report. Let's get another get out the Vote worker on the line here. Here's Caleb in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Caleb. I see you've been working in multiple states on phone banks.

Caleb: I have been phone banking in Nevada, Arizona, and in Pennsylvania quite heavily as well, from Brooklyn, of course. Yes, it was an interesting experience. Left a lot of voicemails and it was a lot of just talking to people about, "Hey, here's information about your polling place. These are what to do with your mail-in ballots if you haven't sent them in yet," that kind of thing. It was great. I did get to have some conversations that were powerful, predominantly, Kamala voters or leaning Kamala, but I did have some Trump supporters in there, people who had already voted for Trump.

I think the broader issue that I wanted to just throw out there is that I just feel like turnout in general isn't what it used to be and I really don't feel like the messaging gets out there like it used to. I grew up in the 80s. I remember Rock the Vote on MTV. It seemed like there was so much more propaganda or information about getting out to vote on election days than I feel like I see now in the public sphere. Even on some election days, especially in midterms, I don't see the turnout that I'd like to see.

It's my understanding that less than a million people voted in the mayoral primary, which essentially elected Adams as mayor because the Republican was never going to win. I feel like if we had more turnout in that primary, we could have had a different mayor experience than we're having right now. Just something that I see come up. I don't know if the numbers flush out that way for you. I'd love to hear you do a whole episode on this and what turnout really is and how much messaging gets out there. I just feel like people don't use traditional media spheres anymore and it's just a different landscape.

Brian Lehrer: Caleb, thank you.

Caleb: Yes, it's been great and helpful.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Let me get Stephen Fowler from NPR's take on that. Certainly, we've seen indications that turnout is going to be very high for the presidential election in the swing states, though obviously, we don't know the final numbers yet, but any reaction to what he's reporting and any difference or lesser attempt to get out the vote than maybe compared to past decades, as he asserts?

Stephen Fowler: Yes, it is hard. I live in a swing state and it's been a swing state for quite a while. The get out the vote effort has been very intense here, especially as evidenced by a lot of your callers coming here and volunteering.

Brian Lehrer: Where are you? What state are you in?

Stephen Fowler: I am in Georgia and I live in Georgia. I'm looking forward to the day when I can get regular advertisements on TV for cars that I'm never going to drive or food that I'm never going to eat instead of campaign ads. I live in Georgia and the turnout here, I just left a briefing from the secretary of state's office. They said Election Day turnout is going to be high and smooth. We had near-record early voting turnout. Our presidential totals will likely be higher than 2020, which itself was a record turnout.

You do have an interesting phenomenon with the different states and depending on how competitive they are. New York is its own unique animal because of control of the U.S. House and how things go through. There has been more turnout in the last decade because of people very motivated for and against Donald Trump. Also, the COVID pandemic made it easier for a lot of people to vote by mail. Turnout and enthusiasm is high.

Over the summer before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race, there was a lot of question of if there was going to be enthusiasm on either side for either candidate and people didn't want to rematch between the two. Really, in the last few months, like I said, I live in Georgia and have traveled a lot throughout the south, especially on reporting trips.

This is going to be a very enthusiastic election. We've already seen a lot of early voting, excess turnout of people switching to vote early. I think from what I have seen skimming the wires and skimming reports from swing state and non-swing state alike, that this is an election that a lot of people are very interested in making their voices heard.

Brian Lehrer: Stephen Fowler, a political reporter with NPR's Washington desk, thanks for all your coverage, first of all, and thanks a lot for giving us some WNYC time today. We really appreciate it.

Stephen Fowler: Thank you so much.

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