Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a response to Donald Trump’s top aides suggesting that they will depressing turnout by going negative: You’re too late.
Trump’s campaign has been rocked by allegations of sexual assault and a 2005 video that shows the candidate casually talking about groping women. In response, they have pledged “war” on the Clinton campaign, hoping that an increase in negativity will turn off so many Americans that turnout will be dramatically low.
Clinton’s campaign, while nodding to the fact that they are concerned about the strategy, have said made a concerted effort to push that they’re ground game — and early voting that is already taking place in a number of battleground states — will render the strategy moot.
“All of the data that we are seeing is reinforcing that this will be the biggest election and biggest turnout in our history,” Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said on a conference call about turnout with reporters Thursday.
Mook went state by state highlighting turnout numbers that hint at not only a high turnout election, but one that favors Clinton.
Mook highlighted higher-than-normal expected turnout among Hispanics in Florida, North Carolina and Nevada. Hispanic voters overwhelmingly back Clinton and Mook stressed that in each swing that registration numbers and early vote figures — some of which are proprietary to the campaign and not specified to the media — refute Trump’s strategy.
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, said this week that Trump’s strategy is to “disgust everyone with our Democratic dialogue so that they won’t come out to the polls.”
Trump’s aides have backed up that comment. On Thursday, a Trump aide described their strategy towards Clinton as “war.”
Early in the campaign, Clinton’s campaign believed that Trump’s comments about Latinos, African-Americans and women would boost turnout in those communities, surpassing whatever gains the Republican nominee enjoyed with white, working-class voters. And aides said Thursday that, for now, that theory still holds.
But as Trump goes more negative, there is a fear that the tenor of the debate could depress day-of voting.