Donald Trump won more than 74 million votes in 2020 – more than any Republican presidential candidate in history, but not enough to win the popular vote or the Electoral College.
The loss remains an obsession for the former president and many of his supporters, whose refusal to accept defeat led to a riot at the Capitol and fueled four years of political debate.
Only recently did Trump acknowledge that he lost “by a hair” to President Joe Biden, though he quickly returned to repeated claims of voter fraud that were debunked at every turn.
Now, instead of the rematch he had sought with Biden, who dropped his bid for a second term in July after a disastrous debate raised concerns about his health, Trump has a fight with Vice President Kamala Harris.
If the race is as close as the polls suggest, the country may not know the outcome on election night. Here are five keys to a Trump victory.
Gambling on the ground game pays off
Some of the most intense Republican hand-wringing comes from jitters over Trump’s voting machine, which has largely outsourced the campaign to groups like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action and the Elon Musk-affiliated America PAC. It’s not hard to find a GOP consultant eager to have a quiet but panicked conversation about the lack of field offices — once a data point spun around as a sign of dominant force in battleground states.
There is precision in identifying and mobilizing the voters a campaign must win, with bounties for low-propensity voters who can tip an election. And while Kirk and Musk are staunch Trump allies, neither has experience running the kind of sophisticated turnout operation that can win the White House. Musk’s PAC has attracted professionals, including veterans of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ failed bid for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
Here are five keys to a Harris victory
A sloppy attempt at door knocking could cost Trump the election. In that regard, a blazing warning signal for Trump emerged this week. Nine people affiliated with the Musk PAC described to NBC News an operation so beset by problems — including faulty data — that it could hurt the former president’s chances in battleground states where margins were slim.
The blue wall cracks
Speaking of those crucial battleground states, it seems so long ago now, but there was a time when Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were solidly Democratic, or at least leaning Democratic, in presidential elections.
All three supported Trump in 2016 — the first time since the 1980s that they favored a Republican for the White House. Trump’s demolition of the Democrats’ blue wall was key to his victory that year. And Biden fixing it four years later, when he won all three back, was key to Trump’s 2020 loss.
These three states are once again among the top battleground states, with polls showing a dead heat overall. And while Trump and Harris are also targeting Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, it’s hard to imagine them being elected without at least one, if not two, blue wall states.
Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, have been a constant presence in the “big three,” and Vance was picked in part because of his roots in a Midwestern manufacturing town similar to those in neighboring Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump, meanwhile, is ending his campaign as he did in 2016 and 2020: with a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
But Trump has also deviated from the well-trodden battlefield path in recent days, pushing into trips to New Mexico and Virginia, neither of which is believed to be a factor. Those decisions could come back to haunt him if it turns out the time could have been better spent in, say, Wisconsin.
Nikki Haley voters stick with Trump
Independent and moderate Republicans who responded to Haley’s failed campaign for the White House make up a not insignificant portion of the electorate: She received between 10% and 22% of the vote in various Republican primaries even after her campaign ended.
Harris has heavily courted voters in the middle, with endorsements from the likes of former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo.; former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; and former Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich.
Trump has apparently done little to keep those voters in the Republican tent. His rallies are still accompanied by inflammatory rhetoric that energizes the party’s right wing. At an event Thursday evening in Arizona, Trump spoke in particularly violent terms about Liz Cheney, telling the audience that the former congresswoman wouldn’t be a “war hawk” if “guns were pointed in her face.”
Although Haley has made her support for Trump clear while campaigning for other Republicans, as of late, there appear to be no plans for her and the former president to campaign together. Without a last-minute push, some Haley voters could stay home, vote for Harris or a third-party candidate, or write in someone else.
In a close race, that is not ideal for Trump.
Young men are showing up
In a race that will likely be won on the margins — and in a race where a significant gender gap already exists — 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 percentage points.
Trump’s team is aware of this possibility and has prioritized alternative media platforms popular with young men. In the final days of the campaign, Trump and Vance each interrupted their swing-state schedules to land in Austin, Texas, and participate in separate three-hour interviews with Joe Rogan, whose podcast has more than 17 million YouTube subscribers has.
Although Texas is hardly a battleground, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” which launched in 2009, is one of the most popular podcasts in the U.S., especially among young men. Rogan normally attracts guests from a range of industries, including entertainment, sports, technology and politics.
The special focus on a demographic group that could bring in new voters could pay off for Trump.
The margins are narrowing with black and Latino voters
“What the hell have you got to lose?” Trump cited poverty, high unemployment and struggling schools and asked it in a pitch to black voters during his campaign in Michigan eight years ago.
He further predicted that he would win more than 95% of the black vote in his 2020 re-election campaign. Exit polls that year showed him winning only 12%. Latino voters preferred Biden over Trump, 65% to 32%.
Trump and his advisers have talked about shrinking Democrats’ winning margins against voters of color. There were signs of promise — especially as polls showed Harris underperforming Biden with Latinos. But Trump’s rhetoric, as well as the rhetoric around his campaign, continues to risk offending many of these voters.
He compared Detroit, a majority-black city, to a developing country and called it a “mess” as he campaigned there this month. And at his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York this week, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe warmed up the crowd with racist jokes.
Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” talked to a black friend about cutting up watermelons and, speaking of Latinos in general, roughly said that they “like making babies” because “you can’t pull them out.” .
“They’re coming in,” Hinchcliffe said, “just like they did to our country.”
Arizona and Nevada have significant Latino populations. And Pennsylvania, the state that could decide the election, is home to the nation’s third-largest Puerto Rican diaspora.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
