President Donald Trump needed to pick up a combination of key battleground states to win the 2024 election. He won all seven. 

No doubt his victory had something to do with a very unpopular opponent, Democratic Party stand-in candidate Kamala Harris. But Trump’s sweeping win was in large part driven by turning traditional Election Day Republicans out early, particularly voters suspicious of absentee and early voting. Convincing 2020-scarred Republicans to use the principal method Democrats used to beat Donald Trump was no easy feat. Convincing the former president to get on board with early voting may go down as one of the greatest sales jobs of all time. 

But that’s exactly what happened. The numbers don’t lie. 

‘Early Turnout is Breaking Records’

A U.S. Election Assistance Commission report to Congress reviewed the 2024 election, including information from election offices in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories. The Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) 2024 Comprehensive Report tracks “data about the ways Americans vote and how elections are administered.”

As the report shows, swing states recorded significant gains in early in-person voting in November’s presidential election compared to 2020. 

Corporate media outlets sounded surprised by the change of direction by the Trump campaign and MAGA voters. 

“With former President Donald Trump’s encouragement, Republicans are voting early again, flocking to the polls for in-person voting ahead of Election Day and helping push the national number to nearly 19 million,” The Associated Press reported on Oct. 22. “The early turnout is breaking records in swing states such as Georgia and North Carolina.”

Indeed. The EAVS report shows early in-person voting in Georgia topped 3.76 million ballots, a surge of 71 percent from the 2020 presidential election in which Democrat Joe Biden claimed victory by winning all but one of the battleground states. 

North Carolina saw a 73.4 percent increase, with more than 4.22 million voters casting ballots at polling sites before the election. 

Wisconsin posted a 28.5 percent uptick in the category, Michigan saw 31.3 percent, and Nevada was up 36.6 percent. The Pennsylvania Department of State could not provide data because “in-person return of mail ballots is not explicitly tracked by the voter registration system,” the federal report notes. 

‘The Rules of the Game’

While Covid, fear, and power-grabbing government officials forced more voters to cast unprecedented numbers of ballots by mail in the rigged 2020 election, conservative grassroots organizers who spoke to The Federalist say the spike in early in-person voting in 2024 was the result of Republicans opting to vote before Election Day. 

Ned Ryun, founder and CEO of American Majority and American Majority Action, said his conservative grassroots organization began banging the drum on absentee and early voting in early 2023. The heartbreak of the 2022 midterm elections in which Democrats successfully staunched the expected “red wave” brought disappointment — and an epiphany, Ryun said. 

“We realized we had a serious problem, not only on focus but on funding,” he said. 

So groups like American Majority Action pitched and pushed a “targeted harassment” campaign to connect with low- to mid-propensity voters, Republicans and independents who vote infrequently or not at all. The bigger challenge in reaching these disconnected voters was to convince them that voting early was actually a good thing. 

Conservative activists and the Republican Party got on the same page — at least when it came to expanded get-out-the-vote initiatives. They saw how successful the left had been in collecting and counting on early ballots. The Republican National Committee in early 2024 launched the “Bank Your Vote” campaign, a nationwide effort to encourage voters, including those that don’t typically cast ballots for Republicans, to vote early by mail or in-person. The idea was to build up a solid count of ballots going into Election Day as opposed to waiting for traditionally dominant Election Day turnout by Republicans. 

The critical piece in changing hearts and minds was convincing Trump that the party needed to play the same ballot-chasing game as Democrats, who gamed the mail ballot system in 2020 to stop Trump’s reelection bid. Trump came around and urged his supporters to vote early. 

“The rules of the game are this: You have to play by the rules to win the game,” Ryun said. “We had been handicapping ourselves for sure, fighting with one hand behind our backs. We don’t have to do that anymore.” 

‘Didn’t Have to Rob Peter to Pay Paul’

American Majority Action and its partners blanketed swing states Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, making constant contacts with low-participation voters in the months before the election. The sustained effort helped give Republicans a decided ballot advantage heading into Election Day in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina, while dramatically closing the gap built by liberal activists and the Democratic Party in Wisconsin.  

Scot Mussi, a veteran of Arizona conservative grassroots causes for more than 20 years, said there was a pretty robust GOTV effort in 2024 by conservative organizations in a state that has long offered mail-in voting and early in-person voting. He said conservatives learned some important lessons from a disastrous 2022. 

“There was a significant underperforming of turnout in Republican precincts in the 2022 midterms compared to 2018,” Mussi told The Federalist in a phone interview. “You can’t say that was the result of voter fraud. It was just people not showing up to vote.” 

Arizona Republicans didn’t run much of a GOTV campaign in 2022, Mussi said, adding that the message was “Show up on Election Day and vote.”  What a difference two years made. 

As noted on the website of Mussi’s Arizona Free Enterprise Club, Trump won a  landslide victory in the Grand Canyon State and Republicans expanded their majorities in the state House and Senate. And the numbers continue to look up for a state turning redder by the election, despite far-left Democrats controlling the offices of governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. Through July, Republicans continued to expand their registration advantage over Democrats, with the margin more than doubling from about 166,000 in the 2022 general election to just shy of 330,000, according to the Arizona secretary of state’s office. 

A Republican voter-engagement expert whose grassroots organization helped drive higher early-voting numbers in high-stakes congressional elections said the expanded initiatives proved conservatives “didn’t have to rob Peter to pay Paul.” 

“That was a worry, that we would be stealing Election Day voters [for early voting] and pushing them backwards. We didn’t,” the grassroots activist, who asked not to be identified, said in a recent interview with The Federalist. “That puts us in a unique position this cycle. We don’t have to convince people to early vote.” 

‘Golden Question’

The bigger test ahead for Republicans will be whether they can draw Trump voters, particularly lower-propensity voters used to sitting out non-presidential elections, without the president on the midterm ballot.  

“That’s the golden question,” the grassroots activist said. “We think there’s a path.” 

While Trump may not be on the 2026 ballot, his policies are. The voter-engagement specialist said focus groups in several battle ground states fear what will happen to Trump’s agenda — and the president — should Democrats take back the House. Midterms are generally tough elections for the party in control of the White House, but Republican voters like what they have seen in the first six months-plus of Trump 2.0. They know that successes on border security, dealing with illegal immigration, an improving economy, exorcising DEI, stronger foreign policy, all would be in peril should Dems take back the razor-thin majority Republicans currently hold in the House. And a Democrat-controlled House would quickly take America down the impeachment road once again. At least those are big worries for Republican voters, and the expected messaging from the GOP and conservative GOTV groups. 

A Little Help From the Enemy

The Democratic Party is doing just about all it can to help Republicans keep control of Congress, pushing wildly unpopular policies and pulling voter-alienating political stunts. A Wall Street Journal poll released late last month found the Democratic Party’s favorability rating plummeting, with 67 percent of voters holding an unfavorable view of the party. Just 8 percent of voters view the left-lurching Democratic Party “very favorably.”

Former Democratic campaign operative Zach Kennedy in a column for The Hill cited a laundry list of problems facing Democrats, not the least of which is a dearth of quality candidates.  

“And to say Democrats aren’t recruiting candidates strong enough to seize political opportunities is an understatement — they’re struggling to recruit candidates all together,” Kennedy wrote. 

The RacetotheWH Senate Forecast gives Republicans a nearly 66 percent chance of holding control of the upper chamber; Democrats are at 34 percent. 

‘Hemorrhaging Voters’

Ballot chasers who spoke to The Federalist say they like what they’re seeing so far, but much is subject to change over the next 14 months. 

“There is tremendous energy to make sure that turnout is overwhelming and that the left is overwhelmed in the midterm elections. Conservative groups are all aligned and committed on this to make sure no stone is left unturned,” Mussi said of the ground game in Arizona. 

The numbers are looking good for Republicans in a swing state growing increasingly red, the conservative activist said. 

“It’s not just getting better for Republicans. Now there are fewer Democrats than registered in 2022. They are hemorrhaging voters,” Mussi said. 

The Democratic Party is facing similar problems nationwide, bleeding an alarming number of minority and blue collar voters in the 2024 election. The Republican Party closed 2024 with a slight edge over its chief rival, the third straight year that more Americans identified or leaned toward the Republican Party, according to Gallup. The Democratic Party took back the advantage in the second quarter, the pollster reported. 

But Republicans continue to make significant gains in key states, including New Jersey and Nevada. As Newsweek reported Monday, the gap has closed in Pennsylvania, where Democrats have far outpaced Republicans on the voter rolls. Once holding a nearly one-million-voter advantage, there were just 59,000 more Democrats than Republicans in the Keystone State in July. 

‘Maximize Opportunities’

Ryun said the uptick in voter registration numbers underscore a broader commitment from grassroots organizations like American Majority Action to “focus time and efforts on the right things, numbers leading to numbers.” Building the universe of registered voters and making lasting connections takes time and money, he said. The conservative activist says he wants to build on the success of Florida, which has become a Republican bastion in recent years. 

“My goal is to make Arizona into Florida. Nevada into Florida. Wisconsin into Florida,” Ryun said. “You have to do it year in and year out to maximize opportunities.” 

“I’m confident that if we do the right work between now and 2026… I think we have a legitimate shot to hold on to the House.”