How Trump Can Win

(and how we will stop him)

This post will be a bit of a change of pace for me. If you’ve followed my work, you know that I generally post observational data around voter trends, generally not straying into the prescriptive in public (though my “day job” with our team at TargetSmart and The TARA Group is very much focused on actionable intelligence).

With 26 days remaining until Election Day, and what is likely to be a very close election, I’m doing something different. I have some data to share, and one powerful potential solution my team has recently rolled out. While I would normally share the action items in a more targeted fashion, alerting our clients, campaigns, and Democratic/progressive consultants, organizations, and activists, due to the intersection of urgency and opportunity, I’m broadcasting this information.

First - the analysis. I’ll make this as brief as possible. There are two common threads that distinguish the polls that show Trump winning and those that show Vice President Harris prevailing. First, and perhaps most obviously is the question of relative partisan intensity. Many people are talking about the Quinnipiac polls released today that show Trump with narrow leads in Wisconsin and Michigan. In both polls, their likely voter model assumes Republicans will make up a plurality of the electorate, which only happens if they have an intensity advantage.

As I’ve discussed repeatedly, I believe the indicators of intensity, including new voter registration and now early vote data, point towards a Democratic advantage. But there are still weeks to go, and we must do the work to get these voters out. Our early vote data is suggesting that younger voters are much more likely to wait until Election Day to vote, and nothing can be taken for granted. If young voters and voters of color don’t turn out at a higher rate, Trump can win.

This isn’t just a question of mobilization though, it is also one of persuasion. We’ve seen a curious divergence in public polls among many voting blocs, but perhaps most notably with young voters. At the risk of somewhat oversimplifying this trend, most of the polls showing Donald Trump leading show him running very well with younger voters. In those same Quinnipiac polls Trump was polling within the margin of error in the head to head among younger voters (with a slight lead in Michigan and slightly behind in Wisconsin). This same trend has been apparent in a range of public polls that have produced more favorable results for Donald Trump.

While I find these poll results dubious, and tend to put more stock in larger sample surveys conducted by area experts, such as the Harvard/IOP poll last month that showed Harris with a substantial lead among younger voters, I do see substantial value in this phenomena. We do know that younger men, especially, have been trending more Republican in recent years. Earlier this year I shared voter registration data showing unprecedented gender gaps among young white voters, fueled by a conservative turn among young white men.

https://x.com/tbonier/status/1724461031341101160/photo/1

There is reason to believe that these young (primarily white, but not exclusively) men have existed in and become somewhat radicalized by a media bubble, consuming content from the likes of Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan, primarily on YouTube, without being exposed to enough contrary messaging.

I don’t find much value in arguing about whether or not Trump is winning (though I don’t believe he is). I do find value in understanding how he could win, and ensuring that path is as unlikely as we can make it. Which brings me to the solution… if the potential path to victory for Trump is a mobilization advantage, and winning wider margins with young voters, how do we stop it?

I posed this question to my team, and they set to work on finding solutions. While many of our existing solutions are already being leveraged to help Democrats win, there was one new tool that they developed that stood out to me, and inspired me to write this post, to share the breakthrough as widely as possible with the hope of having a positive impact in the closing days of this critically important campaign.

First, some quick background - Google (and thereforeYouTube) recently made changes to their ad platforms so that campaigns could only target voters by very broad characteristics. This resulted in great decreases in efficiency AND efficacy of advertising efforts on these platforms. This is where our team came in - they have developed a process that will allow advertisers to serve targeted ads on YouTube (where studies have shown these voters primarily consume information) to these key voters in key states/races.

I won’t go into the technical details here, at least partially because I can’t claim to understand them at that level of technical specificity. But I do know that they have field tested this tool, and it works. And it will allow our side to break through these bubbles, and put our winning messages in front of the right people, where they are consuming information.

If your campaign or organization is interested in getting access to these tools, please reach out to me directly at tom@targetsmart.com - I’ll get you in touch with the right people immediately.

Let’s win this.