Campaign Ads and What To Do With The "Early Vote"
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Hi, I'm David Plouffe. And I'm Kellyanne Conway. And you're listening to the Campaign Managers Podcast. Right here on Podcast One. Welcome to the Campaign Managers Podcast with me, David Plouffe. And with me, Kellyanne Conway. David, you said in our first podcast episode, the megaphone has been shattered into a million pieces. That's a pretty insightful comment. Tell our audience what you mean by that.

Well, Kelly, and you know, when you work on presidential campaigns or work in the White House, you study everything that came before. And of course, you know that whether it was FDR on a radio address or Ronald Reagan speaking to three networks, they reached everybody. That's on kind of the earned side of the media. And of course, it was easier to reach people with advertising. You know, you bought network television, you bought radio, eventually you bought cable. But now, of course, that megaphone has been completely disassembled.

Even a president in a press conference or major speech is only reaching a fraction of the American people because a lot of those people are getting their news exclusively from TikTok or from Instagram or from YouTube. And so I think a presidential campaign really has to step back and say, okay, when we're doing an interview,

Who are we reaching with that interview? As you know, television at the local level is still really important. But even then, a lot of the voters you want to see, you've given that interview in Milwaukee or Phoenix, isn't seeing it. So how do you pay to get the best parts of that, you know, in that last mile? Then, of course, from an advertising standpoint,

presidential campaign advertising, I think, is less important now than it used to be, particularly in this race where you have two universally known figures, one current, one former president. But history is filled with whether it was the windsurfing ad that John Kerry ran against George Bush or

or Morning in America ad by Ronald Reagan. I know in the Obama campaign in 08, we ran a 30-minute ad, which is how we closed the campaign to keep that momentum up. Obviously, LBJ's ad against Goldwater and the mushroom cloud and the threat of nuclear war. All these are like historical ads. I don't know if we're going to have an ad like that, but a good presidential man has to say, okay, here's the voters we're trying to reach, and they have good data about how those people are living their lives, how they're receiving information. And so, again,

you have to have seven, eight, nine different channel strategies because you just can't repurpose an ad that you ran on YouTube for TikTok or on NBC for Instagram. Like it's super complicated. Now that doesn't mean that you have, I've never thought

you can have distinct micro messages that don't work with your core narrative. Like your core narrative is the umbrella and everything you say has to fit under that, but you can emphasize certain issues or have different messengers. Messengers are super important because TikTok doesn't allow advertising, right? So that's all about organic activity and creators, how you communicate on YouTube, very different than Facebook. And so I still think the president of the United States has the biggest megaphone in the world.

But again, it is so hard to utilize that megaphone because just a piece of it is being utilized in an effective way like it used to. So I just think, you know, Trump right now is only advertising in Pennsylvania. Is that my is my understanding? I'm sure that will change Biden's advertising in most of these battleground states. Again, I think presidential advertising is much less important than like a judicial race where the candidates aren't known.

or a secretary of state's race where the candidates aren't known. Advertising is how you get known, how you define who you are, how you define the stakes. A lot of that in a presidential campaign is already there. But I think what you're trying to do is for those voter cohorts that you think get you to a win number in a Wisconsin or Arizona campaign,

You need to back out and say, okay, what's our strategy to reach these people? So I think it's gotten much more complicated, quite frankly, than it has historically. I even look back at like 08. I mean, that seems like Jurassic Park, right? It's like, okay, you know, it's the internet. You know, we didn't even have Facebook outside of college campuses. Like it was simple compared to now.

where, you know, you got all these voters who are super important and they don't, they're not in the same place. You know, it's like Minnesota. It's like they're in 10,000 lakes and you got to find a way to get them. David, it's so true. This is my view on advertising in political campaigns. The return on investment for television advertising, given how expensive it is, given the very large confiscatory percentages that the consultants get just replacing the ads,

I'm not sure that we've had a full and fair conversation about whether to rethink the value of traditional television advertising in presidential campaigns. That's particularly true when the two candidates are named Joe Biden and Donald Trump. We're inundated all day long with images and impressions and ideas about these individuals. We do not starve for information from or about

Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And it makes me wonder that when voters, even undecided voters, if not especially on the fence voters, see some of these ads that are going to come forward in 2024, they'll look at an ad about Trump or Biden and they may just say, I already knew that. Or they'll say, I don't believe that because I've had so much time and occasion to process information about each of them. Now, they're important ads.

Nobody wants to not have television ads, but I think sometimes they're more an insurance policy than a get to know me component of a campaign, let alone a piece of persuasion. And I think ads can achieve two different things in the political context. One is you can shock the conscience. So you can shock the conscience maybe about the other person's record or statements or any other number of issues or images. Yeah.

Or you can warm the heart. Shock the conscience or warm the heart. And that's your traditional, look what I've done for you. Look at all the veterans, military spouses, active military who are excited I am or have been commander in chief. Look at all the working class people in America I've helped. Look at all the...

folks that I've made whole, whether through my economic policy or my crime policy, whatever the case is, I think you can shock the conscience or warm the heart or do a little bit of both. But you said something really important. In 2008, you hardly had an opportunity to

Even with your young and seemingly hip, cool, historic candidate, Barack Obama, you didn't have as much opportunity to run ads on social media that we did eight years later. And here are the facts of 2016. We were underfunded and understaffed at the Trump campaign compared to Hillary's operation in Brooklyn.

And so they had all the King's horses, all the King's men, all the money. They ran TV ad after TV ad after TV ad. We couldn't do that. In 2016, the Trump campaign dwarfed all the competitive social media footprint. We ran 6 million Facebook ads, 5.9 million.

We ran $44 million worth from June to November 2016 alone. Hillary Clinton's campaign, 66,000 Facebook ads. Donald Trump's campaign, 5.9 million ads on Facebook. And at the start of the year, a guy named Andrew Bosworth, he goes by Bos, who led Facebook's ad team during the 2016 election, said Trump ran the single best digital ad campaign he's ever seen.

from any advertiser. Of course, we agree, but necessity is the mother of invention. We had no choice. And I think this is important because we also were doing them on YouTube and Google and other social media platforms. You're right, TikTok is the only one that doesn't allow it, ironically, given the current debate. But I think that when you have a ton of money

As Hillary Clinton did in 2016, as Donald Trump's reelection campaign did in 2020. You prove that all that is to be true, that the fastest way to make a small fortune is to have a very large one or waste most of it. So I have been very publicly against that.

ridiculous ad investments by the Trump 2020 campaign, like the Super Bowl ad in early February. It featured Alice Johnson, a woman I've come to know, and I just adore her story. She was somebody who benefited from President Trump's criminal justice reform, a big bipartisan action on his part. But

a Super Bowl ad for $11.5 million, and then you're running out of money closer to election day to run ads in these key swing states. So they need to be strategic and smart. Last point I want to make about this, just a table set for our listeners with respect to ads and the presidential campaigns. Here's a fact. Fewer and fewer American households, particularly in the seven or eight swing states, have traditional TV subscription service packages.

Cable was the gold standard. You stuck with your cable provider. Now, almost every single household in this country has some kind of streaming app or streaming package or streaming capability. And so that's where the migration of voters is going. They're watching streaming. And the New York Times had a remarkable article, David, in April of this year called Americans' New TV Habits, Subscribe, Watch, Cancel, Repeat. So.

So they call them, you know, there's a, there's a word for them. They sort of, they're serial churners. Right. To watch the show they want to watch and canceling their streaming subscription until it comes back. Right. So how are we going to follow, how are we finding and following them around streaming? So I think that's further complicating what was already happening.

an increasingly dubious way, best way to communicate to voters. I hope Republicans will spend money on traditional TV ads, radio, the whole social media, the whole kinkaboodle. However, I also hope that they will invest heavily in what I call the non-sexy parts of politics, the stuff you can't see that matters, the illegal ballot harvesting, the early vote programs, the making sure people know where they can vote, when they can vote.

where they can register, when they can register, and all of that that you're not going to see in a 30-second ad. Well, that's the most important advertising, I think, because particularly, listen, Donald Trump right now, if the polls are to believe it,

Right.

here's how to ask for an absentee ballot if you're going to do that. Here's when early vote is. Here's the hours your polls are so important. I agree with that. I'm curious, O'Kelley, because if you look at history, the candidates that tend to do best in the most important medium of the moment, they win the elections and they basically look back on as kind of geniuses of that realm. So FDR and radio. I think both Kennedy and Reagan for TV.

right? In 08, we didn't have social media to a huge extent, but we had the internet. And I think we use the internet as kind of, we were an internet first campaign. In 16, I think that was the Facebook election and Donald Trump dominated. And Twitter and him on Twitter. And Twitter. Yeah. Which is less where voters are, but that's where the political conversation helps with a lot of, you know, happens with reporters. So the question is in 24, like, is there going to be one TikTok's interest? Now you and I have both done some work on this issue. I think we both believe it shouldn't be banned. So let's

Take that hat off. Just speaking as a practitioner, we know it's going to be around for the election and it's where so many young people and even, you know, people in their 30s and 40s, particularly of color, are getting their information. And it seems to me so you can't advertise. So that tools out. So you've got to think through organizing. But I actually think Republicans have had for the last decade,

advantage on YouTube. I think the Biden campaign is doing some smart things there to try and narrow that gap. I'm very concerned about that though. YouTube is obviously a place where a huge percentage of Americans are getting most of their information, but TikTok to me is going to be important and that's going to be about creators and authentic organic content. And I'm just curious your thoughts on that because you can't advertise, right?

So any thoughts about how important that platform is going to be in this election? I think TikTok is incredibly important to this 2024 election for a few reasons. One is you can't buy your way onto TikTok. They won't take ad money from the super PACs, from the Biden campaign, from the Trump campaign. You've got two varying opinions on the future and fate of TikTok. You've got President Trump saying he's against a ban.

mainly because he doesn't think that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta should become more powerful. He feels that you're singling out a company. And he knows that after in 2016, after we did successfully run 5.9 million ads on Facebook to Hillary Clinton's 66,000 ads, put so much of our ad money on social media rather than traditional television and had to given our limited resources that Zuckerberg sort of turned around. And in 2020, Zuckerbucks, uh,

contributions that he and his wife made to nonprofits ended up

helping to influence the elections. There's very little question about it to the point where 17 or 18 states have taken action against that kind of money, not by Mr. Zuckerberg, but by anybody. And they have promised not to be involved in quite that way. Why is this important? It's important because there are other entrants into the field. And the value of TikTok, in my view, in the 2024 elections, is that people are there for Biden or for Trump organically.

And one thing President Trump does know now is that, gosh, if you look at TikTok, just organic groups that sort of bubble up, he's probably got a 10 to 12 to 13 X over Biden's organic groups. The enthusiasm and energy you see following Donald Trump around to Wildwood, New Jersey, 80,000 to 100,000 people breaking a record for any political rally in New Jersey state history, we read in

in newspapers that don't want Donald Trump to win. That kind of energy enthusiasm is following onto social media platforms like TikTok. And if those folks feel organized in an organic way, hey, I just got this information. Click your state. Here's when you can register. Here's how you can vote. You live in Nevada, six electoral votes. You can actually register and vote in the same day in Nevada. Here's how you can do it. And so on and so forth. So if they can get

get a little bit more involved in the mechanics if they want to post original videos or memes or debate clips to one of our earlier points, David. I think that could be the use of TikTok, but that's going to come mainly from We The People.

not from the Biden or Trump campaigns. We should note that even though Biden has said, put the ban of TikTok on his desk, he'll sign it. His campaign is on TikTok. And we should note that President Trump has said he's against the ban of TikTok and only recently, but I think very fortunately, one of his super PACs, I believe, went on to TikTok. So there is a presence there.

It's yeah. Well, just a little fact checking. I do have to say that the election assistance that Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan provided was available to every jurisdiction in America. And I think a lot of small red counties took advantage of that. I would say this, that I'm concerned about TikTok as it relates to Joe Biden, just because I've always believed in politics. You're trying to get 50 percent of the vote. Maybe in this election, it's not 50 or 48 percent.

And so you got to chase people wherever they are. And there's a bunch of people. Now you can try and knock on their door. You can go to bars. You can reach. But like at the end of the day, so offline is still very important part of politics, right? Just shoe leather politics. TikTok is the only way to reach a lot of people. So you mentioned Biden's campaign is on the platform, which is great, but we need to see it front and center. I mean, I really think in this campaign, you need to be thinking TikTok and YouTube first. Maybe you'd include Instagram in that. That's first.

The speech you're going to give secondary, the interview you're going to give third, the television ad you're going to run fourth. Like that's the windshield you have to look out of. And I'll be curious. I got to think Trump's going to get on TikTok himself or at least, you know, his campaign just given the dynamics, because he's obviously showing some strength amongst younger voters, at least more than last time. So I think that's very much worth watching is, you know, the engagement levels on TikTok,

Just as important to look at YouTube, just as important to look at Instagram. And what's interesting, of course, is social media advertising. You know, when a presidential candidate runs a television ad, all the reporters see it, they chew on it. But the most important advertising, and I would even argue organic content that's not advertising is happening on these platforms.

below the radar. By the way, these campaigns are not advertising in 43 of the states. So if any of us live in those states, we're not seeing any of it. Yes. You're just seeing it if you're in these battleground states. It's like a fascinating war, you know, that most of us don't see.

Both these campaigns are hiring people out of the tech world and smart consumer companies who have the latest tactics and ways to measure. So to me, this is really important. And I am concerned at the end of the day. I'm thrilled that Biden's on the platform. But you mentioned some of the numbers. There is a disparity right now between intensity. And if you're if you're the Biden campaign, obviously, you're watching that very carefully.

I want to talk about early vote for a minute because Kelly and you've actually been, I think, consistent about this, which you thought Republicans were making a mistake. You know, when I started in politics, by the way, Republicans kicked our butt at early vote wherever it was available, like Florida. I started organizing in Iowa. You know, that was absentee ballot. And it's important to remind people early vote is a bunch of different things. It's voting by mail.

Different rules in different states. Some states have early vote where you can show up a couple weeks before the election in person and vote. And so I think what was interesting to me is in 22, I don't think any Republican candidates criticized early vote. Donald Trump obviously did that heavily in 20, and I think he paid a price for it. It was a form of malpractice.

He is now, correct me if I'm wrong, he has said he wants his people to vote early if that's what they want to do. Is that correct? So if that's the case, I just as a campaign manager, how do you think the 20 race might have been different if there had been more of an embrace of that? And does that mean we're less likely to have drama? Because if Donald Trump is telling his people in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to vote early, but those ballots don't get counted until after the polls close on Election Day,

Does that mean we're not going to have a rerun of the 20? We should like stop the vote. I just love your thoughts on that. Sure. So a few things, a lot there. I'm going to fact check the fact check too, though. I want our listeners to pay attention to a documentary called Rigged.

It was by David Bossie, and there are some facts in there. There's no question that some of the more rural districts were able to take advantage of some of this, quote, nonprofit half a billion dollar funding by California's richest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

they gave almost a half a billion dollars, probably half a billion dollars all told. And that's fine under the guise of quote, safe voting measures during a COVID election. But, um, then why were the vast majority of grants of $100,000 more in districts that Biden won? I think that's a fair question. People should ask. Cause those are bigger counties. That's why. Well, then there we go. But at,

I think it's advisable that they seem to not want to do that again. And I tend to recall that maybe you were involved with them. So I apologize if that's true, or maybe we should tell our viewers that. So in any event, you were involved with them, right? In that, now that I'm remembering. I'm an advisor to their philanthropy. I worked there for a while. Yes. And it is through their, I think it's through, I think they gave to their nonprofits and God bless them for being philanthropic. I would prefer that to their,

you know, these big donors trying to swing elections on either side. It's very concerning to me because we have these limits for individuals in place. So moving on. Let's just, I think we can both agree. Let's fully fund elections with public money so that they have all the resources in terms of like, no, no. Well, we need the right amount of poll workers. We need the right amount of equipment. It's basic math. We should get this right. And I think

Private money was necessary in 20 because of the pandemic and the unprecedented nature. But going forward, hopefully every state, red, blue, purple, you know, just says here's it's a math exercise here much. Here's how much money and how many people we need to run a good election where we count the votes as quickly as possible.

And I'd like to see more of that being done. Like, let's apply math to this, right? We shouldn't have huge lines. It shouldn't take three weeks to count the vote. But it's math, right? You have to apply the resources. Anyway, go ahead, Kelly. So early vote and absentee vote are different. I just wanted to level set for our audience. For years, we've always had absentee voting. That means if you think that you're going to be unavailable or you are...

somehow physically infirm, unable to get to the polls. You know, you're going to have business travel. You're expecting to deliver a baby, whatever your reason is. You're deployed. Whatever your reason is, people have sought absentee ballots over years. Early voting is different. Early voting is more convenience voting. It's the state saying, okay, you can, for example, Wisconsin, you can vote early in-person absentee.

You can vote early by mail. I think in most of these states you can vote early in person. But every state, David, has different rules and regulations for when you can register to vote.

and be eligible for this election, where you can register to vote, when you can vote, where you can vote early in person. It's become quite complex and confusing. And I would say it's not uniform at all because it is a state's rights issue in terms of how do you want to run your elections in your state and even in your local municipality. A state like Nevada, which is on the swing state list, a state that Republicans haven't won presidentially since 2004, six electoral votes,

President Trump in the polls outside the margin of error in most of these polls beating Joe Biden. What's Biden's advantage? You can register to vote on election day and vote that day. I think that's an advantage for the left because they just have those mechanics and those procedures in place. They're well, if not infinitely funded, it feels like some days.

So then you go to a state like Pennsylvania. In 2016, I was on television many times per day saying Pennsylvania is our reach state, 20 electoral votes. We're being forced a little bit to pull out of Nevada and New Hampshire. So we're going to look elsewhere. Pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes. Wisconsin, Michigan. I was talking about Pennsylvania as a day of voting state because Pennsylvania had a very rich tradition of voting on election day and not too much early voting like, say, an Ohioan in Iowa had.

Why was this important? Well, we're the underfunded, understaffed, underestimated underdog campaign. We needed every hour of every last day. Election day was November 8th, 2016, not November 3rd or 4th or 5th. So we took advantage of those extra days, kept going back to Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania of 2016 that was my restate for Trump's election no longer exists.

Now they have a ton of early vote. They have no excuse voting. You can get an early vote for any reason. And you said no Republicans complained about early voting in 2022. I don't know if that's true or not true, but I'll tell you what, not enough of them took advantage of it. In Pennsylvania, John Fetterman beat Mehmet Oz in early votes four to one. You're not going to make up that deficit on election day, even though Dr. Oz did get 2 million votes on election day.

Why would you do this to yourself, folks? Yes, if you're old and old-fashioned, you think early voting is 6 30 a.m. on November 5th. I got it.

But in this business, you adapt or you die politically. And early voting has become the norm. It is the law. It is the process by which the Democrats are going to continue to put up early points on the board in all these swing states such that there will be stories. Joe Biden's the comeback kid. Oh, my goodness. He's beating Donald Trump by 30 points in North Carolina, where you can vote super early for no good reason, it sounds like.

But I think now you have to show your ID. So we'll see how all these new processes and mechanics play out in a state like North Carolina that has a Democratic governor, Republican state legislature. So I say this because I think we're still adapting to this new normal of early vote. What President Trump must say and do is

is encourage voting early. Go and tell his voters, as he has said already, go and vote early. I think it's called too big to rig. In other words, make your, they call, they say, make it our victory so big that even those who want to do shenanigans or play around or count ballots past election day or after the postmark is election day, et cetera, et cetera.

that they're not going to be able to do that. I want David Plouffe. I want it to be easier to vote, harder to cheat. I came up with that phrase in a poll we had done for the RNC three years ago. I also want nonpartisan or bipartisan, maybe nonpartisan voters

election overseers. I don't want to see those pizza boxes in the window again where nobody can see what's going on. And you know how I feel about the 2020 election. I've been on the record for years about it. But let's not kid ourselves that

There aren't shenanigans in every single election. I think that if we have more people voting over more time in more ways than ever before, that we are inviting confusion and complexity, and we should all be of agreement that it may take longer to count all of the votes in a particular state or precinct. We may have to have people seeing when was that box of votes postmarked?

Why are we still opening them up when you have people in Pennsylvania counting ballots after Election Day, after the postmark? That shouldn't happen. Nobody should be saying, well, it's COVID. People were confused. Here are the rules. I pulled them up in preparation for our podcast. Anybody can follow the rules. Last point. I want Donald and Melania Trump to vote early for Donald Trump.

Whatever day is the first day of voting early in Florida, I would love to see the president and the first lady voting because seeing is the first step toward believing. And there's been such confusion. And I think in some cases, people being told, don't vote, hang on to your ballot and show up on election day. That happened in Nevada and Arizona down ballot in 2022 and the Republican candidates lost. Let's bank those votes early.

Well, it'd be smart if you did that. So just a few things. One, listen, when Republicans win states like Ohio and Florida that have early vote and have for a long time, like when Barack Obama won those two states in 08 and 12, massive percentages voted early in both those states. So it's like they win a state, they say everything's fine, they lose a state. And listen, I believe the only convictions or most of that have happened since the 20 election were Republicans

Republican officials who voted, voted multiple times, you know, for Donald Trump. So I just think at the end of the day, you have to embrace the rules and the Republican party used to do that. And I think they've paid a big price. Now, I think if Republicans listen to your advice and Donald Trump was your advice, I think two things, it'll probably make,

Because in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, the legislative law is you can't start counting absentee ballots till after the polls close, which to me makes no sense. When ballots come in, like a lot of states count them early. Florida does that. Ohio does that. Colorado does that. Iowa does that. But at the end of the day, as a campaign manager, I think what's important about early vote, every American, everybody listening to this podcast has a score from a political campaign. What does that mean? It goes zero to 100.

So if I'm a Democratic campaign manager and I'm running a campaign, let's Kelly and I assume you're a zero on support score. That means Kelly and we don't think there's any chance she's going to vote for us. But we also have her as 100, meaning she's definitely going to vote. So when you are a campaign manager, the swing voters are those that like are between 40 and 60. Right. They're truly undecided. How accurate is it? I found it to be pretty accurate. It's not perfect, but but it's really important. You model the entire American electorate.

But you've got a lot of people who might be 100 for you. So let's say the Biden campaign. This person is going to vote for me if they vote, but their turnout score is under 50. We're not sure they're going to vote based on past voting history. So when you look at early vote,

If you're just getting people who are sure to vote for you, 100, and sure to vote, 100, to vote early, it really is not adding anything. Other than, you know, it frees them up on election day, maybe they can volunteer. What you're really trying to do is get those people who are sure to vote for you if they vote, but you're worried they're not going to vote. So every campaign every day can see, you don't get to see the ballot, but you see who turned it in. You see David Plouffe and Kellyanne Conway turn on their ballot.

it. And their data says, okay, you know, David is somebody we weren't going to vote. We think he was going to vote for us. So you're getting infrequent or first time voters in. So when I was running campaigns, that's all you looked at. The top line numbers didn't matter. And what's fascinating, I think about this race is at least as it stands now,

Polls would suggest Biden does better in a lower turnout race. So Trump's the candidate actually who probably wants to have more pathways for first time voters or infrequent voters to vote for him. So what you said is really interesting because if that's true, it would seem like saying, hey, you can vote by mail, you can vote impersonally, you can vote election, whatever it is. But that's what you want to see is you're tracking, you're basically tracking the insides of the data.

And if you're a campaign and all you're seeing in your early vote is people would have voted on election day, you're not going to like the final outcome because it means you're not going to hit your turnout targets. So I think that's important for people to understand how a campaign thinks about early vote. Yes. If anybody should be able to avail themselves of it, maybe they are traveling, maybe they're working a double shift, whatever the case is. So they couldn't vote on election day, but you're really trying to get that person that you're not sure they're going to vote on election day to get that ballot in. The other thing I'd say is,

The more people that vote early as a campaign, then the smaller your election day GOTV universe is. It makes it easier to reach the amount of people, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, to say, hey,

Please go out and vote. Polls open till eight, et cetera, et cetera. The race is really close. You need to turn out. So there's a lot of really interesting mechanics that are part of this in terms of how a campaign thinks about this. And again, when I grew up in American politics, it was, you know, some states had very, you know, absentee ballots were kind of available to anybody. And the Republican Party used to kick our butt. The other thing about this is more Republican voters, in my experience, kind of live more of their life through the mailbox than Democratic voters.

So it is a medium that would seem to lend itself more to that base. So it'll be really interesting to see. When I said in 22, I think most Republicans were running for office.

Because they just did what you should do, which is here's the rules. Here's how people vote. I want to encourage my people to do that. Trump did not do that in 20. And I think he paid a price for that. If he really makes a hard turn here and he himself is saying he's going to vote early and he himself is saying, I want my supporters to vote early. You know, I don't know what kind of difference that makes, but it's clearly going to be, I think, effective for him.

So we should probably touch upon ballot harvesting because people do hear this phrase, ballot harvesting. What is it? I actually think the words don't really mean what it is. So, but where is it legal? As of January of this year, David, 24 states plus Washington, D.C.,

permits somebody who is chosen by the voter to return the mail ballot on his or her behalf in most cases. And then you've got 13 states where you specify who may return. Sometimes it's a household member, immediate family, caregiver, et cetera. And then one state,

Only the voter can return his or her ballot. 12 states don't specify. But I think this is obviously a growing trend. And those numbers are probably higher than people realize. They always give examples of California and ballot harvesting, for example. And I have heard people like Laura Trump and others connected to the Trump campaign and the RNC now say, we are going to do a better job with legal ballot harvesting. That would be terrific because it is legal in some places. I actually have returned votes

my mother's ballot, God rest her soul, when she was voting. And I noticed in New Jersey, it could be anybody. It happened to be her daughter. And I remember putting it in the box and taking a video just so we had proof that I had put it in the box.

Somehow, in case something was lost or she wondered what happened to her ballot. I think this chain of custody issue is very real for many Americans. They know one person, one vote under our Constitution is sacrosanct. And it means that our civic duty to participate, our constitutional right to exercise our franchise and vote is

is, is now we do it in so many different ways at so many different times through so many different methods. People just want to feel secure that their vote counts as much as the next person's. It is the most equalizing, democratizing facet, I would say, of our constitutional republic, which is that a billionaire's vote counts as many times and as much once every

as the person who drives him around or shines his shoes or tends to his garden. And that is such a beautiful feature that I know we both agree must be protected in the sacrosanct. So I think in those states where early voting has been a tradition for a long time, let's just mention states that President Obama won twice, President Trump won twice,

Ohio, Florida, for example, Iowa, perhaps. These are states that have a long tradition of early voting and they have a long tradition of something else, David. They count their votes.

I mean, Georgia does a really good job of it, too. I think Oregon was the other example, just to put a so-called blue state in there. Good Lord, why can't we tell everybody who won on Election Day? I mean, this is supposed to be one of the most important functions of our government. And yet we have states that are new to early voting that can't sort of process the early vote early, add that tally to what comes in day of and tell us who won the state or tell us it's too close to call. That's not good.

that it's within the margin of error, et cetera. But Ohio did it. Florida did it. Georgia did, I believe. Oregon. I'm sure there are other great example states. Send us your examples. But we have to get better at that, too, so that people don't feel like we're voting three weeks before Election Day and counting the ballots three weeks after Election Day.

Well, again, you know, the issue is in some of these Midwestern battlegrounds, the law. And so I'd love for Donald Trump or Laura Trump or somebody to tell Republican legislators, why don't we change the law so that we can count ballots like Iowa, like Florida? They're not making a decision not to do it. And so no matter what happens in this election.

in Pennsylvania and in Michigan, there's going to be a ton of absentee ballots counted by law, not until Tuesday night, which to me doesn't make any sense. We should start counting them as all the other states you mentioned. I will say this. I mean, ballot collection, we call it ballot collection where that's permitted. I just think at the end of the day, we got a lot of issues in this country. We've got a lot of problems in this country.

I think the security of our elections is not one of them. I think the issue is, you know, not all Republicans, but Donald Trump at the top of the list has told people not to trust elections. I mean, this goes back to when he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz. He said that was rigged.

So at the end of the day, people are told to fear things. But again, I just think it doesn't make the logic doesn't hold together because when Republicans win elections these days, they don't complain about the process. When they lose, they do. And that to me is undermining faith in election. And again, they are winning elections in a lot of states where over 50% of the people vote early. Yeah. So I think what we can both agree on is, you know, elections are administered by states. You're never going to have complete uniformity, but it'd be great

If in all the states we said, we're going to make sure we are counting ballots as they come in. So the soonest we can, like California and Arizona, you know, sometimes you don't know for a month who's won some of these races. California obviously doesn't matter presidentially, but it does at the congressional level. Now, some of that's resources, a lot of votes, not enough people to count, but we have to get better about this. And I do think in those Midwestern states, I was hoping after 2020,

there would be changes. And I think those Democratic governors tried to change the law to allow them to count absentee ballots as the other states do as they come in. But once again, we're going to have a rerun of 20 where the only thing that's going to be available on election night is in-person voting in some of those states. Yes. And I just wanted to say one more thing about early voting. As this becomes the new normal in places where it hasn't been

normal and it isn't new in some of these states like Pennsylvania, for example. We have to recall that famous statistic after the 2020 elections that 17% of Americans said they would have switched their vote from Biden had they known the laptop and its contents were real. So you vote early. If you vote early and you're missing the debates, you're missing the last minute ads, you don't have the fullness of the

October surprise, let alone the November surprise or September surprise, David, then I think you're missing out on the ability to fully suss out

Where these candidates stand on the things you care about or what you learn about them, even to people as defined and described and known as Joe Biden, Donald Trump. So voting really is a convenience is one thing, but you can't take that vote back. I mean, I read an article where one of the top Google searches after the Fetterman Oz debate.

in the fall of 2022 was how do I switch my vote? The answer is you don't, but people had already voted. Many people had voted. John Fetterman waltzed into that first and only debate between Fetterman and Oz and

when he was still, by all objective accounts, was recovering from his stroke. And thank God he did. I hope he lives another 50 years, no question. But they had one debate and so many votes, over 700,000 votes had already been cast in Pennsylvania. So we also have to balance this. What are we, the convenience we're providing people by encouraging them to vote early versus the

information under load were allowing to persist if they in fact vote early before all these other major milestones in a campaign. So I think it's a conversation we'll continue to have. Well, there's no question early voting affects the rhythm of your campaign. I'll give you a primary story back in 08. This is a primary, not a general. We were getting clobbered in all the Super Tuesday states, but we, you know, win Iowa, win South Carolina. And

And we won election day vote in states like California, but Hillary had dominated us in early vote because she was dominating the race. So in the states that had a huge early vote, we weren't able to make up the lead in most of those. But I think the key thing now, if you're running a campaign in a state with a lot of early vote, a lot of absentee vote, most ours, you've got to basically...

You know, you've got to back out from when are people going to start voting, right? Election day is almost immaterial everywhere now. You have a huge chunk of vote that comes on election day and you want to know who that is, but you really got to make sure you have your crescendo, you know, when those ballots start going out. So that's, you know, one of the things that makes this so complicated is,

You know, you have like a depending on the rules of the state, you know, 15, 20, sometimes even 30 day period where, you know, you kind of want to have your closing arguments done because that's when people are voting. So it's such an important issue. And again, I think Donald Trump is doing really well right now in polls with people who are not considered the most reliable voters. So this is a critical thing to watch.

how he himself adjusts, because that, in my experience, is the best way to turn unreliable vote into vote is to leverage things like early vote. Well, it was a great episode this week talking about ads, talking about social media, both from an ads and organic content standpoint and going deep in early vote, which I think will be a critical piece of who our next president is. So stay tuned for next week as we discuss the importance of the VP pick.

Kelly Ann helped lead that process for Donald Trump in 16. He's got to make another decision in 24. I did the same for Barack Obama when he picked Joe Biden way back when. We'll also talk about the importance of some of the speakers at the conventions and, as always, talk about battleground states, including Wisconsin, which is, I think, behaving a little bit differently, at least in polls today.

than many experts thought. So look forward to diving into that next week with Kellyanne. So be sure to like and subscribe so that you can easily get our episodes every week and leave us a good review. And please tell us what you'd like us to focus on so we can dive into the topics that are of most interest to you. And so for myself, David Plouffe. And for me, Kellyanne Conway, thank you so much for joining us for this edition of the Campaign Managers. And remember, it's easy to be enraged. It's essential to be engaged.

Have a great week, everyone. Have a great week, everyone. Talk to you next episode.