Election 2024 - Keys to victory

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Some of the most intense Republican hand-wringing stems from jitters about Trump’s get-out-the-vote machine, which the campaign largely outsourced to groups like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action and the Elon Musk-aligned America PAC. It’s not hard to find a GOP consultant eager to have a hushed but panicked conversation about the lack of field offices — once a data point spun as a sign of commanding strength in battleground states.

There’s a precision to identifying and mobilizing the voters a campaign needs to win, with premiums on low-propensity voters who can tip an election. And while Kirk and Musk are unshakeable Trump allies, neither has experience in delivering the type of sophisticated turnout operation that can win the White House. Musk’s PAC has brought on professionals, including veterans of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ unsuccessful bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

A slipshod door-knocking effort could cost Trump the election. To that point, a blazing caution sign emerged this week for Trump. Nine people connected to the Musk PAC described to NBC News an operation so beset by problems — including faulty data — that it could damage the former president’s chances in battleground states decided by slim margins.

The blue wall cracks
Speaking of those crucial battleground states, it seems like so long ago now, but there was a time when Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were solidly Democratic or at least Democratic-leaning in presidential elections.

All three backed Trump in 2016 — the first time since the 1980s that they had favored a Republican for the White House. Trump’s demolition of the Democrats’ blue wall was key to his victory that year. And Biden’s repairing of it four years later, when he won back all three, was key to Trump’s 2020 loss.

Those three states are again among the top battlegrounds, with polls showing dead heats in all. And while Trump and Harris are also focused on Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, it’s hard to picture either being elected without at least one, if not two, blue wall states.

Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, have kept a steady presence in the “big three,” and Vance was picked in part because of his roots in a Midwest manufacturing town similar to those in neighboring Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump, meanwhile, is ending his campaign like he did in 2016 and 2020: with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

But Trump also is diverging from the well-beaten battleground path in the final days, squeezing in trips to New Mexico and Virginia, neither of which is believed to be in play.

Nikki Haley voters stick with Trump
Independent-minded and moderate Republicans who responded to Haley’s unsuccessful White House campaign make up a not-insignificant slice of the electorate — she received between 10% and 22% of the vote in several GOP primaries even after ending her campaign.

Harris has heavily courted those voters in the middle, boasting endorsements from the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.; former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; and former Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.

Trump has done seemingly little to keep those voters in the GOP tent. His rallies continue to deal in inflammatory rhetoric that energizes the party’s right wing. At an event Thursday night in Arizona, Trump spoke of Liz Cheney in particularly violent terms, telling the audience that the former congresswoman would not be a “war hawk” if “guns are trained on her face.”

Although Haley has made clear her support for Trump while campaigning for other Republicans, at this late moment there appear to be no plans for her and the former president to campaign together. Without a last-minute nudge, some Haley voters could stay home, vote for Harris or a third-party candidate or write in someone else.

Young men turn out
In a race that will likely be won on the margins — and in a race where there’s already a sizable gender gap — Trump’s efforts to reach young men could give him an edge.

An NBC News Stay Tuned/SurveyMonkey poll of Gen Z adults from August found that while young women favored Harris by 30 percentage points, young men favored Harris by just 4 points.

Aware of the opportunity, Trump’s team has prioritized alternative media platforms popular with young men. In the campaign’s final days, Trump and Vance each interrupted their swing-state schedules to touch down in Austin, Texas, and sit for separate three-hour interviews with Joe Rogan, whose podcast has more than 17 million YouTube subscribers.

While Texas is hardly a battleground, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which launched in 2009, is one of the most popular podcasts in the U.S., particularly among young men. Ordinarily, Rogan attracts guests from an array of industries including entertainment, sports, tech and politics.

Margins narrow with Black and Latino voters
“What the hell do you have to lose?” Trump, citing poverty, high unemployment and struggling schools, asked in a pitch to Black voters while campaigning in Michigan eight years ago.

He went on to predict that he would win more than 95% of the Black vote in his 2020 re-election campaign. Exit polls from that year showed him winning only 12%. Latino voters favored Biden over Trump, 65% to 32%.

Trump and his advisers have talked about narrowing Democrats’ winning margins with voters of color. There have been signs of promise — especially with polls showing Harris underperforming Biden with Latinos. But Trump’s rhetoric, as well as the rhetoric surrounding his campaign, continues to risk offending many of these voters.

He compared Detroit, a majority-Black city, to a developing nation and called it a “mess” while campaigning there this month. And at his Madison Square Garden rally this week in New York, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with racist jokes.

Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” talked about carving watermelons with a Black friend and, speaking about Latinos in general, crudely said that they “love making babies” because “there’s no pulling out.”

“They come inside,” Hinchcliffe said, “just like they did to our country.”

Arizona and Nevada have sizable Latino populations. And Pennsylvania, the state that may decide the election, is home to the third-largest Puerto Rican diaspora in the country

Hold her ground with Black and Latino voters
One of the agonizing questions for Democrats in this election is whether they will maintain overwhelming support among Black voters and prevent the further erosion of Latino support. In 2020, Joe Biden carried 92% of Black voters and 59% of Latinos.

Harris cannot afford much slippage with these groups, which are full of low-propensity voters who need encouragement to turn out. But holding on to them is easier said than done in the 2024 election.

Surveys show a significant slice of Black and Latino voters are Trump-curious this year, with the potential to deliver meaningful gains for his party.

Abortion powers women to the ballot box
All signs point to a widening gender gap, with women moving further toward Democrats and men — including nonwhite men who historically vote blue — trending toward Republicans. The election could yield one of the biggest gender gaps in modern history and come down to which side turns out in greater numbers.

Harris has zeroed in on abortion and reproductive autonomy to try appeal to women voters, seizing on Trump’s success at ending Roe v. Wade and the possibility that Congress and the president could either enshrine Roe in law or ban abortion nationwide. Harris made a recent appearance on the popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast to mobilize less politically engaged women.

Will young men defect and turn out for Trump? If so, Harris will need to run up the score with women to defeat him. The early vote shows women turning out in bigger numbers, but there’s no guarantee that remains the case by Election Day.

Grow Democratic support in the suburbs
Harris is working to juice her margins in the suburbs, courting soft Republicans, center-right independents and moderates who are turned off by Trump. She’s campaigning with former Republican Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who have excoriated Trump as an authoritarian, citing among other things his calls for using the power of the state against political rivals and his quest to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.

The well-educated and disproportionately white suburban voters have been a bright spot for Harris this cycle, especially with Trump making no meaningful effort to hold on to the one-fifth of voters who cast ballots for Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican primaries. They could give Harris a crucial boost because these voters tend to reliably turn out in election after election.

Neutralize Trump on the economy and immigration
A high priority for Harris down the stretch has been to cut into the “trust gap” that Trump enjoys with voters on handling the economy, with the cost of living registering as a priority issue for voters in swing states.

Her team believes it needs to fight the issue to a draw in order to prevail and appeal to voters on the question of who cares more about them. Harris, by putting cost-cutting at the center of her agenda, has gained considerable ground compared to where Biden was before he dropped out in July.

Will it be enough? Some surveys show she has all but neutralized the issue. The question is whether that extends to the electorate that turns out. If so, Harris will have covered her biggest vulnerability with swing voters.

In addition, Trump has campaigned heavily on the fears of migration and blamed Harris for chaos at the southern border. It’s a major vulnerability for the vice president, but is it politically fatal? Harris has responded by shifting to the right and attacking Trump for killing a bipartisan border security package that would have made it harder to gain asylum. She doesn’t need to win on this issue, but she needs to mitigate the damage.

Deliver on a superior ground game
If the election is indeed decided narrowly, Harris may need her “ground game” — the unglamorous mechanics of door-knocking, voter mobilization and using local presence to turn out supporters — to deliver the margins that will make the difference.