JESSICA ANDERSON
This week, the New York Times released a new battleground poll that has triggered Democrat campaign consultants and caused legacy media like CNN to melt down. But before Republicans high-five each other, we should look much deeper into what this poll really means and what we need to do next.
The poll generally shows that black and Hispanic voters are shifting towards former President Donald Trump, and also that his topline approval is ahead in key battleground states like Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania — in some cases by sizable margins or even double-digits. This is good news and great early progress.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating lives in the basement, at a historically low level. From the economy to immigration, he is underwater on the issues that matter most to voters. Now add the depressed enthusiasm from the loud, drum-banging far-Left over issues like Gaza, and Biden’s team appears to be sensing big trouble.
But while this poll shows that Biden voter fatigue is real and spreading, it does not show that the Republicans’ work is done yet.
In fact, it would be fatal to mistake the Biden fatigue with Republican enthusiasm and then expect the same turnout enthusiasm — at least not yet. In some areas, former President Trump’s strong performance is directly related to Biden’s under-performance with core constituencies of the Democrat Party — black voters, Hispanic voters and some groups of women.
Conservatives will need to turn Biden fatigue and failure into voter enthusiasm; it won’t happen automatically.
With only 25 weeks to go before the November election, the Republican Party must take advantage of Biden’s trouble and weld it to a robust get-out-the-vote program that includes turning out absentee and early voters. Adding this with massive rallies like we saw in New Jersey over the weekend will create the winning combination for Republicans to win in November.
Between the New York Times poll and the 100,000 people showing up in deep-blue New Jersey, things look good for Republicans, but now is not the time to be overconfident. As we all learned in 2020 and again in 2022, the Left has a history of using polls and the media to sell false realities and amp up their base with anxiety while suppressing Republicans’ energy.
In both of these cycles we also learned that we should not underestimate the Left’s ability to use various tactics and dirty tricks to turn out voters. (Spoiler alert: They will still do that.)
There is too much at stake to allow ourselves to sit on the sidelines or repeat the mistakes of the past. By looking at various polls and talking to voters on the ground, it is clear Republicans are winning on the issues.
We have solutions to the top issues facing the country and we have conservative champions up and down the ballot prepared to fight in Washington and protect our American way of life. But that is not enough, we must run an effective and efficient get out the vote and ballot-chase operation.
The Sentinel Action Fund has already started this work to turn out Republican voters in Senate battlegrounds across the country. In Pennsylvania, a key focus of the New York Times poll, we have already started to see productive returns. Along with the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) and Keystone Renewal PAC, we launched SkipTheLinePA.vote to provide information and encourage voters to join the mail-in ballot lists.
Ahead of the Pennsylvania primary, over 24,000 Republicans joined the annual mail-in ballot list. During the same period, Democrats only added 13,000 new mail-in voters, meaning Republicans are outpacing the Left and beginning to close the absentee ballot gap.
When you take initiatives like this and think about the New York Times poll results, Republicans’ pathway to November becomes a lot more clear.
Republicans must continue to drive home our strengths on the policy issues and use all legally available tools and tactics to reach and turn out voters. The key to winning the next election is to use a robust ground game to take advantage of Biden’s fatigue and failure, and to build enthusiasm for conservative candidates.
Jessica Anderson is President of the Sentinel Action Fund.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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