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Turning Point Action devoted much of its attention to less reliable voters. New data in Arizona showing a sizable Republican edge among them suggests that the strategy succeeded.
Dec. 23, 2024, 11:11 a.m. ET
Heading into the 2024 election, the conservative group Turning Point Action made a risky and expensive bet as it tried to fix Republicans’ early-voting problem: It zeroed in on infrequent voters who seemed to lean to the right.
Calling its effort “Chase the Vote,” the group focused heavily on Arizona, where it is based and says it spent tens of millions of dollars to help elect Donald J. Trump. Hundreds of paid staff members worked to build enduring relationships with Arizonans whom Turning Point saw as friendly to Republicans, targeting a smaller universe of voters than traditional canvassing operations.
Turning Point’s gamble appears to have paid off, at least in Arizona.
Newly released voting data compiled by TargetSmart, a Democratic polling firm, shows a distinct G.O.P. advantage among infrequent voters: About 30,000 registered Republicans in Arizona who had not voted since at least 2018 cast a ballot this year. Democrats turned out just 20,000 of the same types of voters.
Among slightly more reliable voters — those who skipped the 2022 midterm elections but voted in other recent elections — Republicans still held an edge in Arizona, turning out 185,000 compared with 157,000 for Democrats. And the G.O.P. had an even greater advantage among first-time voters, with 202,000 such Republicans casting a ballot and just 145,000 such Democrats doing the same.
One of the many unorthodox elements of Mr. Trump’s campaign was how it partnered its ground game with allied groups like Turning Point and America PAC, the super PAC funded by Elon Musk. These groups, called “coordinated canvassing partners,” both shared data with and received it from the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign.
While these groups carried out parallel efforts in battleground states like Wisconsin, Turning Point had the largest footprint in Arizona, and its staff members there kept up frequent contact with targeted voters in an effort to build deeper personal relationships.
