Republican National Committee chief strategist Sean Spicer suggested on Tuesday that Democrats may be overconfident in their nationwide ground operation, and said the GOP has had an army of staffers working to court voters since 2013.
“When you look at the number of people that we have both paid and unpaid that are committed on a full-time basis to getting out, knocking on doors on a daily basis, we have the most sophisticated ground game, bar none,” Spicer, who also serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, said on CNN.
“We’ve been out there touting our ground game since 2013,” he continued. “The number of people that have been in those states, knocking on doors, making persuasive voter contact, registering people – we’ve had people in all those states now going back for years.”
Spicer rejected the idea that Democrats have an advantage because they have more field offices open in battleground states and are running up large leads during early voting.
RNC’s @seanspicer tells @AlisynCamerota that he’s feeling optimistic thanks to early voting. https://t.co/SK2i2FbTa5
— New Day (@NewDay) October 25, 2016
“They can talk about the number of offices all day long, but at the end of the day, the number of people who are requesting an absentee ballot, who are returning that ballot and who are voting early are favoring us and not them,” he said, adding that “Republicans do better on Election Day.”
“Democrats have always done better in early vote, but what you’re seeing in this cycle is we’re catching up to them,” Spicer claimed. “They’re not doing as well as they have in the past and they have an enthusiasm gap.”
Nevertheless, a survey released Monday by the left-leaning Public Policy Polling found Democrats carrying 27-point lead among early voters in the swing state of North Carolina.
