Election scorecard: President Trump — 1,000,000; Joe Biden — 0.
Team Trump said its supporters knocked on at least 1 million doors last week, while Team Biden said it knocked on zero.
The Trump campaign is sticking with the tried-and-true methods of getting out the vote: Face to face meetings with potential voters. The Biden campaign, meanwhile, is keying on more modern ways of campaigning, looking to online efforts and massive use of email and text messages.
“Biden and the Democratic National Committee aren’t sending volunteers or staffers to talk with voters at home, and don’t anticipate doing anything more than dropping off literature unless the crisis abates,” Politico reported. “The campaign and the Democratic National Committee think they can compensate for the lack of in-person canvassing with phone calls, texts, new forms of digital organizing, and virtual meet-ups with voters.”
“At first I was nervous, but our response rates on phone calls and texts are much higher and people are not necessarily wanting someone to go up to their door right now,” Jenn Ridder, Biden’s national states director, told the political website. “You get to throw a lot of the rule book out the window and try out new things.”
Elliott Echols, the Republican National Committee’s national field director, said, “From now to Election Day, voters may only see one campaign at their doors.”
“If this were Barack Obama running, Democrats would want to be out there knocking doors. They don’t have enthusiasm or a strong field operation, so it is a convenient excuse. We can do this safely for President Trump and Republicans up and down the ballot,” he said.
While Biden outraised Trump in May and June, Team Trump and the RNC in July raised more money than Biden’s campaign.
Trump’s 2020 campaign and the RNC reported $165 million in campaign donations last month, more than was raised during any single so far in the 2016 election, the campaign said. The Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign, meanwhile, reported raising $140 million in July, with 97% of the contributions coming from small-dollar donors.
But with fewer than 90 days left until Election Day, both sides are close in cash on hand: Team Trump reports having $300 million in its coffers, while Biden’s has $294 million.
Both parties have also decided against holding their quadrennial conventions. Biden will not go to Milwaukee for the Democratic National Convention to accept his party’s presidential nomination because of fears over COVID-19, The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
DNC organizers said in a statement on Wednesday that the “worsening coronavirus pandemic” has prompted convention officials to cancel the event’s speaking engagements “in order to prevent risking the health of our host community as well as the convention’s production teams, security officials, community partners, media and others necessary to orchestrate the event.”
Late last month, Trump scrapped plans of hosting his party’s convention in-person as planned.
“I looked at my team and I said, ‘The timing for this event is not right.’ It’s just not right with what’s happened recently, the flair-up in Florida, to have a big convention, it’s not the right time,” Trump said. “For me, I have to protect the American people. That’s what I’ve always done, that’s what I always will do.”
Trump did say that some festivities in Jacksonville will still occur, and the official activities that go on at the convention will still happen for select delegates.