Known for raucousness and bombast, President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” rallies are also the key driver behind a data analytics program that guides campaign strategy for voter turnout and resource deployment.
Trump’s high-wattage stadium rallies are intricately choreographed political revivals, with the president’s habit of ad-libbing provocative comments often sparking days of public discussion. But underneath the hood, the Trump campaign is using interest in the “#MAGA” events to gather reams of granular data on voters. That information, in turn, is used to recruit grassroots volunteers, test messaging, and decide how and where to invest in manpower and money to increase the president’s vote share.
“The rally lists are an invaluable source of data that help power volunteer efforts and small-dollar fundraising,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster and data consultant who advised the Ted Cruz presidential campaign four years ago.
“You have people who have already gone out there and taken a public action to support the president,” Wilson explained. “Those folks are a lot more likely to continue doing things than are your typical list targets who have just signed up as supporters online.”
Trump is scheduled to hold a campaign rally this Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma — his first since mid-March, when in-person political activities were suspended because of the coronavirus. Capacity at the arena, Bank of Oklahoma Center, is just under 20,000. But Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale bragged Monday in a Twitter post that more than 1 million people submitted an RSVP to attend the event.
Over 1M ticket requests for the @realDonaldTrump #MAGA Rally in Tulsa on Saturday.
Before entering each guest will get:
✅Temperature check
✅Hand sanitizer
✅MaskThere will be precautions for the heat and bottled water as well.
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) June 15, 2020
The remarkable figure is reassuring to some Republican insiders glad to see signs the GOP base remains enthusiastic to reelect the president amid a spate of polls showing him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, particularly among suburban women and independents. For the Trump campaign, the flood of RSVPs for Tulsa is doubling as a treasure trove, assisting to refine a voter file that assigns a score of up to 3,000 data points per individual.
Trump campaign officials estimate that 15% to 20% of rally goers, while inclined to vote for the president if they show up, are low propensity voters who might have participated in just one election over the past four years — if that. Many more are not registered to vote at all. So the events are used to register new voters and cement relationships with occasional voters. The campaign also tries to use rallies to convert Trump-curious Democrats.
Among the 156,632 RSVPs for the January Trump rally in New Jersey to boost Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew, more than 26% were registered Democrats, campaign officials said. Ditto for more than 25% of voters who registered to attend a Trump rally in New Hampshire in February and for 18% of voters who requested tickets for a rally the same month in Phoenix.
Meanwhile, the campaign credits a decision to sink resources into New Mexico primarily on the fact that so many RSVPs for the president’s rally in El Paso, Texas, in the summer of last year were from people who lived across the state line.
“No matter which city or state the president is visiting, he is always drawing new supporters into the fold — including formerly disengaged voters or even registered Democrats,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Zager said.
The Democratic National Committee rejects Republican claims of data superiority.
In an interview Monday, DNC spokesman David Bergstein insisted the Trump rally reveals a president who is scrambling to expand a dwindling political base. He said the strategy would fall short against a Biden campaign that is growing its support heading into Election Day.
“Successful campaigns are all about addition, and what the Trump campaign rallies demonstrate is that he is trying to reach a narrower and narrower slice of the electorate that was probably going to vote for him anyways,” Bergstein said.
