US President Donald Trump's re-election campaign has reached more voters than Barack Obama's in 2012, the Republican Party chairwoman has boasted.
Ronna McDaniel told Fox News' Steve Doocey on Friday that her party had canvassed more than 160 million voters and was seeing high turnout by Republicans in early in-person voting - contradicting polls that give Democratic candidate Joe Biden an overwhelming lead ahead of next Tuesday's election.
"Every day we've been winning early vote. We're seeing very high turnout with Republicans," McDaniel said. "This is not unexpected, Steve. Republicans were waiting to vote in person. They didn't want to send in their absentee ballots, so now as early vote is starting across the country we're seeing strong, strong turnout for Republicans."
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 30, 2020
Doocey said a "jaw-dropping" nearly 80 million voters had already voted by mail or in person in the 2020 election. And he pointed out that while Republicans had registered hundreds of thousands of new voters since Trump's election in 2016, "you really need them to show up by Tuesday."
McDaniel countered that her party's grass-roots "ground game" was bigger than Democrat ex-president Obama's in 2012, with 3,000 staff and 2.5 million volunteers deployed across the USA - an average of 50,000 per state.
"That's going to be a huge difference-maker, and we're heading into this weekend where they'll be working non-strop to turn out those voters that we know we still need to win the election in these battleground states.
And she tweeted that the Trump campaign had canvassed more than 160 million voters either on the doorstep or by phone - more than the 139 million who voted in the 2016 presidential election out of 158 million who were registered.
Canvassing "doesn't really matter," Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told Politico back then. "Fundamentally, knocking on a door and not reaching anyone doesn't get you much except leaving a piece of lip behind. You might as well send a piece of mail."
Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller tweeted on Friday that an unnamed Democrat strategist had complained that the media's focus on the COVID-19 pandemic was scaring already-unenthusiastic Biden supporters away from voting in-person.
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 30, 2020
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 30, 2020
Trump has mounted a whirlwind tour of campaign rallies - up to three per day - with crowds up to 10,000 strong - since his recovery from the coronavirus in early October. But Biden and his running-mate Kamala Harris have struggled to attract audiences of more than a few hundred to their socially-distanced drive-in rallies.
— Jason Alexander Roberge (@JasonRobergeVA) October 27, 2020
— Vernon Jones (@RepVernonJones) October 17, 2020
Pollster Rasmussen Reports has seen popular support see-saw between Trump and Biden in the past week, with the two candidates stealing a narrow lead on each from day to day.
