It’s not often we look to PBS for actual news reporting, but its count of campaign offices for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is pretty sobering. It was fun to learn that a 12-year-old was so politically engaged that he decided to run a Trump campaign office in Colorado, but it looks like he could use a lot of help on the ground.
THIS. We obtained hard #s for how many campaign offices Clinton and Trump have in key states…. it's 3:1 https://t.co/C4jeqwSyxF @NewsHour
— Lisa Desjardins (@LisaDNews) August 30, 2016
So the ratio is 3-to-1, which doesn’t sound too bad for Trump, until you add in the complicating factor that PBS is counting “key” states. So what are the numbers, exactly?
# of state offices:
PA: Clinton 36, Trump 2
NC: Clinton 30, Trump 0
NH: Clinton 17, Trump 1
FL: Clinton 34, Trump 1https://t.co/NK5HyWkbdZ— Taniel (@Taniel) August 30, 2016
https://twitter.com/fastjohnny/status/770726968870383616
This is ridiculous. Does he not want to win, or is he incredibly stupid?
— (((David L. Ritter))) ن (@BlessedTex) August 30, 2016
PBS notes that the Trump campaign is planning to add another 132 offices in the coming weeks, but there just aren’t that many weeks left to mobilize people.
Take three make-or-break states. Pennsylvania has two Trump offices right now. North Carolina, one. Florida, the biggest swing state prize, also has just one – Trump’s Sarasota headquarters.
Those four Trump offices cover 165,000 square miles of critical election territory. Clinton has 100 offices in the same space.
Of course, the ground game isn’t everything in 2016. There are TV spots, for example, and we still have the debates to look forward to. Fans of the “new” Donald Trump, who has begun to stick closely to prepared marks during campaign events, might not be too happy to hear reports that he seems to want to wing it. Is that a fake-out from the new Trump campaign staff, or is he just going to be the same Trump who dominated the primary debates?
As Hillary Clinton does exhaustive debate research, Donald Trump scorns it to avoid sounding “scripted or phony." https://t.co/xbhGYmpukT
— NYT National News (@NYTNational) August 31, 2016
The Times reports that the Clinton campaign is putting together a personality profile of Trump with the help of psychology experts, while Trump is sticking to his belief that one can prepare too much and end up looking insincere. Maybe, just maybe, a little bit of extra prep couldn’t hurt?
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/770417036329684992
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