The historic switcheroo at the top of the Democratic ticket earlier this cycle is having strategic repercussions now at the start of the early voting period.
By next week a double-digit tally of states will have started allowing some form of early voting, but at the top of the ballot, Democrats remain in a persuasion and engagement phase.
“You have two new candidates at the top of the ticket. We need to educate voters about their record, their vision for the future,” said Mariel Sáez, an EVP at SKDK who previously was part of President Biden’s White House comms shop.
“That’s why you’re seeing them engage on a nationwide battleground state tour … they can lay out that affirmative vision and engage surrogates all across the country as validators and messengers to reach communities about why they’re the right choice for our country.”
Speaking at a panel hosted by The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs in partnership with Campaigns & Elections on Tuesday, Sáez noted that a big part of the Harris-Walz persuasion effort is focused on young voters.
“We are absolutely still engaging people, especially young people, to be committed voters so we have that persuasion effort that’s underway,” Sáez said. “I think we’ll see in the coming days and weeks, as early voting continues to ramp up, a real effort to switch into an actionable phase where we’re really injecting energy and enthusiasm into turning out at the polls and really laying out for people that it’s easy — there are multiple ways to do it.”
You can watch Tuesday’s full conversation here.
Since the pandemic began in 2020 voters have been spoiled for choice in terms of how to cast their ballots. With so many universes to chase down — in-person voters, mail-in voters, absentees — Tad Rupp, a partner at GOP shop Targeted Victory, believes there’s an opportunity for young staff to gain a larger foothold in the industry this cycle.
He recalled the 2004 Bush-Cheney reelect “where they used microtargeting for the first time at scale and they opened up all these local victory offices — that’s really what trained a generation.”
He added: “But the end of the day, all we were doing was monitoring volunteer calls and maybe pulling a list. What [young staffers] are able to do now with all the different types of content that’s needed in order to reach [voters] and be optimized in every single channel … it’s very exciting and allows anybody with a phone to be an organizer and to be a content creator.
“Both of our sides are probably slicing and dicing [GOTV universes] a hundred different ways,” Rupp said Tuesday. “It is very different.”
