'With your vote:' Donald Trump stumps in Michigan while turnout machine looks for voters

WASHINGTON - As Republican White House nominee Donald Trump stumped Friday to Michigan, thousands of the former president's supporters are working behind the scenes on a project that will likely decide the election: getting their people out to vote.

"By the way, we win Michigan, we win the whole thing ... like we did in 2016," Trump said during a jobs speech to close out the workweek in Walker, Mich. "But you gotta vote!"

In Trump's case, his turnout operation is different from the one he rode to Electoral College victory in 2016. It's also the source of angst among some Republicans - for two big reasons.

One, the Trump campaign is relying in large part on outside groups to walk neighborhoods, knock on doors, and persuade people to vote. Two, the Trump campaign is targeting people who often don't cast ballots at all, "low propensity voters" as opposed to "swing voters" who could make the difference in a closely contested state.

"We will make more voter contacts in the 2024 election than we did in the 2020 election, by the time Election Day rolls around" on Nov. 5, Trump political director James Blair recently said on "The Sean Spicer Show," hosted by the former Trump White House press secretary.

"We will have successfully canvassed more voters than we did four years ago," Blair said.

Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, including a popular vote margin of 81.3 million to 74.2 million. Many Democrats credited their turnout operations, including a heavy emphasis on early voting and mail-in balloting - items that are also a Trump campaign priority in his current battle with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

During his jobs speech in Michigan, which was largely a response to Harris' visit Friday to the U.S.-Mexico border, Trump attacked his opponent over migration, economic policies, and support for electric cars. The ex-president also suggested that his support of tariffs is the reason that people in foreign countries want to assassinate him.

Trump, who had an evening event in the Detroit suburb of Warren, ended his Walker speech by urging supporters to participate in early voting if necessary: "Thank you very much ... God bless you ... Go out and vote!"

Democrats said they are not worried about Trump's turnout operation, questioning the expertise and commitment of outside groups and the wisdom of focusing on low-propensity voters.

"The campaign side-idea of asking people to narrowly reach people in their universe theoretically makes sense, but I don't think they're actually implementing it at scale they would need to win," Democratic operative Eddie Vale said.

As for using private groups to promote turnout, Vale said "outsourcing it to the outside groups never works." He noted that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis tried it during his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and "it was literally an epic disaster."

Some Republicans have grumbled about the Trump operation, but have not gone public. Reuters, which polled Republican operatives nationwide, reported that the focus on people who usually don't vote is "a high-risk, labor-intensive strategy that could bring in a wave of new voters but could also fall short if their targets ultimately stay home."

Trump officials said their turnout operation is state of the art, and will make the difference in the seven key battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.

It's easier - and cheaper - for campaigns to work with outside groups because of a Federal Election Commission ruling that allows coordination of canvassing projects and the sharing of voter lists and data.

The Trump team is working with political committees of groups that include Turning Point Action, led by millennial influencer Charlie Kirk; the Faith & Freedom Coalition, headed by long-time Christian conservative Ralph Reed; and America PAC, backed by billionaire Trump endorser Elon Musk.

Michigan is one of those closely contested states that could be decided by which party has the best turnout machine.

The Wolverine State helped Trump win the 2016 election, but the Michigan Republican Party has been in turmoil in more recent years, Four years ago, Trump lost to Biden in Michigan by fewer than 160,000 votes.

Asked by Spicer about the use of outside groups in turnout, Blair said: "I feel more confident in some groups than others, shall we say ... But there are ways we can check on what they're doing."

Political analysts said there's nothing particularly radical about what the Trump campaign is doing - and, in any case, it's impossible to assess how effective a turnout machine is until the votes are counted in November.

"The results in the battleground states will depend on whether one campaign hired and deployed the more competent field operation," said James Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor of government who studies voter turnout.

Given the stakes, he said, it's not surprising that people would complain about these kinds of operations.

"There is a lot of hand-wringing about the competence of field operations in every close election," Gimpel said. "Mobilization could definitely make the difference in battleground states. So of course candidates, parties and interested observers should be concerned."

He added: "In this very close contest, both parties should be very concerned about their field operations."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Two reasons why Trump's vote turnout operation is worrying Republicans