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‘Untapped voters’: Experts explain how campaigns turn out vote in Michigan, other battlegrounds in final days

‘Untapped voters’: Experts explain how campaigns turn out vote in Michigan, other battlegrounds in final days

Election swing state Michigan will be decided by which campaigns can get the most voters out to the polls in the final week of the race, according to multiple experts. “The campaign’s No. 1 priority and the party’s priority right now is getting our people out to vote,” Jimmy Keady, the founder and president of Republican consulting firm JLK Political Strategies, told Fox News Digital. The comments come with just one week to go in a dramatic election season, with just a handful of battleground states in play that will decide the fate of the race. MICHIGAN CAMPAIGN STOPS FROM PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES ALREADY DOUBLE THAT OF 2020, 2016 Perhaps the most important of those states is Michigan, a swing state that narrowly went to Donald Trump in 2016 before flipping back to Joe Biden in another close race in the 2020 election. Polls indicate yet another tight race brewing in the state, with the RealClearPolitics polling average showing a razor-thin 0.1 point lead for Trump as of Monday. Meanwhile, the latest Fox News Power Rankings lists Michigan as a toss-up, and Trump is only a slight betting favorite in the state, with ElectionBettingOdds.com showing the former president with a 53.2% chance of carrying the state as of Monday. According to Keady, the part of the race in which candidates attempt to persuade voters is mostly over, with Michigan coming down to who has the ground game to get the numbers out between now and next Tuesday. Republicans will also be focused on turning out low propensity voters, Keady said, a demographic the party has targeted in the hopes the group could potentially push them over the top. “A lot of these campaigns are going to be focused a lot on low propensity voters … voters that are voting in like one out of four elections, making sure that they’re hit several times, making sure we’re dragging people out to the polls to vote,” Keady said. CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS POWER RANKINGS IN THE 2024 ELECTION Jason Roe, a GOP strategist working in Michigan, echoed a similar sentiment, telling Fox News Digital that the time to persuade undecided voters is mostly over. “There’s not a lot of undecided voters left, but there’s untapped voters who’ve never heard from a Republican campaign,” Roe said. “In addition to getting mail-in ballots returned and people to vote early, finding and mobilizing low propensity voters and getting them to the polls is everyone’s focus.” Keady also believes that such a strategy could help down-ballot Republicans in Michigan, where races such as the Senate campaign between former Republican Rep. Mike Rogers and Democrat Rep. Elissa Slotkin will help determine which party controls the Senate. “Michigan and Nevada are one of two of the seven swing states on the map that basically have straight ticket voting,” Keady said. “Getting low prop voters out to vote that are Republican and conservative means it’s going to help down-ballot.” POLITICAL ROCK STARS AND ENTERTAINMENT CELEBRITIES HIT THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL That optimism is shared by Rogers himself, who told Fox News Digital that issues such as the “open border, job-killing EV mandates and rising gas and grocery prices” will help motivate voters out to the polls in hopes of avoiding “more of the same.” “Over the next week, Team Rogers will be burning the shoe leather to earn every vote,” Rogers said. “We will be hosting numerous rallies and stops across Michigan sharing our message of getting America back on track.” Keady also noted another opportunity unique to Michigan in the battle to get blue-collar and union voters out to the polls with just a week to go. “We are seeing a lot of union members move to the Republican side because of their economic policies … particularly when it comes to manufacturing jobs,” Keady said. “The campaigns absolutely have to be moving through their microtargets and talking to these union voters.” Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.

Racist talk at rally mars Trump’s message, but he scores on Joe Rogan podcast

Racist talk at rally mars Trump’s message, but he scores on Joe Rogan podcast

It was a revealing moment for Donald Trump. “When I say ‘the enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy,” he said Sunday.  He’s right about that. I raised the subject in our Trump Tower interview last weekend, saying that phrase seemed ominous, and his response – that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are indeed enemies, not just opponents, was picked up across the media universe. But driving the other side nuts is a Trump specialty. When he told the rally at Madison Square Garden that the media are “the real enemy, the enemy of the people,” there were loud cheers from a party that already despises and distrusts the press. BAD BUNNY ENDORSES HARRIS AFTER TRUMP RALLY COMEDIAN JOKES PUERTO RICO IS ‘FLOATING ISLAND OF GARBAGE’ A slight digression: The argument that Trump shouldn’t have been at the Garden because the Nazis held a rally there in 1939 is ludicrous. FDR held an event there two years later, and the Democrats have held nominating conventions there. It’s the place where I’ve watched many Knicks games and a George Harrison concert. And Billy Joel has been selling out the arena for years.) Trump knows how to rile up the media, rekindling the debate over whether they must cover his more over-the-top rhetoric or are just normalizing him.   In our Mar-a-Lago interview a few months ago, the former president acknowledged to me that at times he deliberately uses incendiary language to drive news coverage. Remember, even negative coverage helps him dominate the headlines. And if you think media companies aren’t intimidated by him, look at the disingenuous decisions by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrrick Soon-Shiong to kill Kamala Harris endorsements in favor of a no-endorsement stance that obviously helps Trump. Two columnists, including Michelle Norris, have resigned from the Post, three top editors have quit the Times, and thousands of subscriptions have been canceled at both papers. Trump’s speech at the Garden was almost completely overshadowed by what came before it. A comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, called Puerto Rico “a floating pile of garbage.” He joked about Jewish people being cheap, and he and a Black buddy folks “carving watermelons.” “These Latinos, they love making babies, too. Just know that they do,” Hinchcliffe said. “There’s no pulling out. They don’t do that. They come inside, just like they did to our country.” CNN PUNDITS ADMIT THEY WEREN’T IMPRESSED WITH KAMALA HARRIS’ TOWN HALL: ‘WORD SALAD CITY’ It reached the point that Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox yesterday morning: “Look, it was a comedian who made a joke in poor taste. Obviously, that joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign.” The Trump camp soon put out word that it hadn’t vetted what Hinchcliffe was going to say. That, if true, was a big mistake. But it wasn’t just the comedian. Conservative New York radio host Sid Rosenberg told the rally about “f****** illegals, and also called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch” and a “Jew hater.” A friend of Trump called Kamala Harris “the anti-Christ.” Now Trump didn’t say any of this, but made no attempt to distance himself by saying, for instance, that he didn’t agree with everything that had been said. A New York Times news story was headlined “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.” PLAYING THE HITLER CARD: WILL TRUMP BACKERS DISMISS JOHN KELLY’S ATTACK? And that gave Kamala Harris an opening. She said the rally “highlighted a point I’ve been making…He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, and himself and on dividing our country.” Meanwhile, Trump scored an absolute coup with a three-hour sitdown with Joe Rogan. Sure, he rambled at times, talking about whales and extraterrestrial aliens. But the podcast racked up 33 million views, with an audience of mostly men, and mainly young men. That’s far more than a candidate would reach going on several top-rated cable news shows. Many believe the sitdown helped humanize Trump, and Rogan told him he gets endless publicity because he says “weird s***.” It was a clearly sympathetic conversation, and Rogan said the media are “the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.” Harris was also in talks to do Rogan’s Spotify podcast, and he said she was welcome there, but if he wanted her, she’d be taping the show today. To save face, she then announced that she had scheduling issues. Instead, Harris did Brene Brown’s prodcast, who obviously appeals to women. The vice president needs to improve her gender gap among men. With one week till the election, every message and misstep counts. And every day you’re playing defense is a lost opportunity.

26 Republican attorneys general join Virginia in petitioning Supreme Court to rule on voter roll

26 Republican attorneys general join Virginia in petitioning Supreme Court to rule on voter roll

FIRST ON FOX: Twenty-six Republican attorneys general joined Virginia on Monday in urging the Supreme Court to halt a lower court decision that restored the voting rights of 1,600 residents. The amicus brief backs Virginia’s contention that the ruling is overly broad and lacks standing under a provision of the National Voter Registration Act (NRVA), which orders states to halt all “systematic” voter roll maintenance 90 days before an election. It now has the support of every Republican-led U.S. state, giving it outsize attention in the final stretch before the election. In the amicus brief, attorneys general urged the court to grant Virginia’s emergency motion and “restore the status quo,” noting that doing so “would comply with the law and enable Virginia to ensure that noncitizens do not vote in the upcoming election.” The states also sided with Virginia in objecting to the Justice Department’s reading of NVRA protections, which they said was overly broad. Moreover, they said, the law in place in Virginia was not designed to “systematically” remove residents from the voter rolls, as Justice Department officials cited in their lawsuit earlier this month. The Justice Department had argued the removals were conducted too close to the Nov. 5 elections and violated the “quiet period” provision under NVRA. That contention was backed by a federal judge in Alexandria, which ordered the affected voters back on the rolls, and upheld by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. SWING-STATE’S SUPREME COURT ISSUES PIVOTAL RULING ON MAIL-IN BALLOTS SENT WITHOUT POSTMARK In the amicus brief, lawyers describe the ruling as a “sweeping interpretation of the NVRA” that “converts a procedural statute into a substantive federal regulation of voter qualifications in elections—an interpretation that would raise serious questions about the constitutionality of the NVRA itself.” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has insisted the voters were removed legally and that the removal process is based on precedent from a 2006 state law enacted by then-Gov. Tim Kaine, a Democrat.  That process compared the state Department of Motor Vehicles’ noncitizens list to its list of registered voters. Those without citizenship were then informed that their voter registration would be canceled unless they could prove their citizenship in 14 days. Youngkin and Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares have argued the lower court rulings are “individualized” and not systematic, as the Justice Department alleged earlier this month.  They argued that restoring them just days before an election is likely to inject new chaos into the voting process – an argument backed by the group of Republican states in the Monday filing. WHY TRUMP IS MAKING LAST-MINUTE STOPS AHEAD OF ELECTION DAY IN TWO BLUE-LEANING STATES YOUNGKIN VOWS TO APPEAL ‘TO SCOTUS’ AFTER US JUDGE ORDERS 1,600 VOTERS BACK ON BALLOT “This Court should reject Respondents’ effort to change the rules in the middle of the game and restore the status quo ante,” they wrote. “The Constitution leaves decisions about voter qualifications to the people of Virginia. And the people of Virginia have decided that noncitizens are not permitted to vote.” Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub. 

Harris caught on hot mic admitting her campaign is struggling with male voters

Harris caught on hot mic admitting her campaign is struggling with male voters

Vice President Harris was surprised to find out a microphone was homing in on her conversation with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer as she admitted her campaign was struggling with male voters. Harris and Whitmer were sitting at a bar in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on Saturday and having what appeared to be a serious conversation – so serious that on a video making the rounds online, the Democratic presidential nominee seemed to forget the two of them were surrounded by cameras and microphones. “So, my thing is we need to move ground among men,” Harris was heard telling Whitmer at the Trak Houz Bar and Grill. Harris then immediately noticed the microphones were picking up on her conversation with the Democratic governor. KAMALA HARRIS DOWNPLAYS DIMINISHING SUPPORT FROM MALE VOTERS: ‘IT’S NOT THE EXPERIENCE I’M HAVING’ “Oh, we have microphones in here just listening to everything,” Harris says, looking flustered. “I didn’t realize that!” Fox News has reached out to the campaign for clarification on the comment. Fox News’ Julian Turner reported that it was both former President Trump’s and Harris’ last chance to close the gender gap that has been widening since Harris became the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. CNN DATA REPORTER PREDICTS TRUMP WILL WIN ‘HISTORIC’ NUMBER OF BLACK AND HISPANIC VOTERS The latest polls from the New York Times show Harris leading Trump with women voters, 54 percent to 42 percent, while Trump leads Harris among men voters, 55 percent to 41 percent, respectively. Last week, Harris dismissed her diminishing support among male voters during an interview with NBC’s Peter Alexander, who asked why she thought there was a disconnect between her and men. At first, Harris dodged the question, pointing to the live audience consisting of people from all backgrounds and genders who continue to show up to her events. She also said she was campaigning to earn the vote of every American. TRUMP SUPPORT AMONG YOUNG BLACK AND LATINO MEN SPIKES IN NEW POLL Alexander pressed Harris even more, asking what might explain the gap in support from men, and the vice president said it was not her experience. In contrast, the GenForward poll from the University of Chicago that was released last Wednesday revealed that 26 percent of Black men between the ages of 18 and 40 said they would vote for Trump, while only 12 percent of Black women said the same. This is a significant gain since Black voters overall supported Biden over Trump by a nine to one ratio in the 2020 presidential election. Trump also improved with young Latino men, 44 percent of whom said they would support him compared to about 38 percent who voted for him in 2020. Even so, Harris leads Trump overall 47-35 in the poll, which includes large samples of young voters of color. Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo, Danielle Wallace, Hanna Panreck and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

Obama slams pro-Trump men at Philadelphia rally; Springsteen warns GOP nominee is ‘an American tyrant’

Obama slams pro-Trump men at Philadelphia rally; Springsteen warns GOP nominee is ‘an American tyrant’

Former President Barack Obama headlined a Monday stump speech in support of Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, spending most of his remarks criticizing former President Trump and at one point appearing to admonish men who, as a voting bloc, are more favorable to him than the Democratic nominee. Speaking at the Liacouras Center, home of the Temple Owls in North Philadelphia, Obama followed a slew of speakers and performers, including Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Philadelphia Democratic Mayor Cherelle Parker and Sen. Robert P. Casey, Jr., D-Pa. “Do not dilly or dally… get out there,” Obama said, addressing Pennsylvanians yet to cast a ballot on the penultimate day of early voting. Obama slammed Trump for what he called the “Muslim ban” and claims the Republican denies that he had once referred to fallen American soldiers as “losers and suckers.” TRUMP’S PERSONAL MESSAGE MOMENTS BEFORE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT SPURRED ME TO ACTION: BUTLER-AREA MAYOR “I’ve noticed this, especially with some men who seem to think Trump’s behavior is somehow a sign of strength. You know, sort of the macho; fake-macho thing – I’m here to tell you that’s not what real strength is,” Obama said near the close of his speech, after criticizing Trump’s New York City rally for featuring crude comic Kill Tony, who referred to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.” “How can you tell yourself that it’s OK [to vote for Trump] as long as our side wins?” he said, later adding, “Real strength is about working hard. Real strength is about taking responsible and real strength is about telling the truth even when it’s inconvenient. Real strength is about being comfortable enough to treat everybody with dignity and respect. Real strength is about helping people who need it, and standing up for those who can’t always stand up for themselves.” Obama also made fun of Trump for hawking “Trump Bibles” reportedly manufactured in China. “He wants you to follow the Word of God; Donald Trump edition,” quipping the Trump name essentially appears there “next to Matthew and Luke.” “You’re a tough guy on China except when you can make few bucks,” he said, comparing what he saw as Trump’s foibles to an “SNL” skit. OCTOBER FESTS: POTPOURRI OF LATE ELECTION YEAR SURPRISES SHAKE-UP MOST RACES, HISTORY SHOWS “The man holds this big rally at Madison Square Garden, and the warmup speakers were saying – trotting out and peddling the most racist, sexist, bigoted stereotypes,” he said, at which point he went on to describe Kill Tony’s widely-criticized set. As the crowd often jeered references to Trump or his surrogates, Obama repeatedly mock-criticized the crowd for the response. “Nobody can hear your boos, but they can hear your vote,” he said, repeating the theme at various points. Obama also utilized Harris’ running mate to take shots at his longtime political nemesis. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, he said, has the skills to “take a vintage truck apart and put it together again.” “Do you think Donald Trump could do that?” he quipped. “Do you think Donald Trump has ever changed a flat tire in his life? He calls over his chauffeur, ‘Jeeves’.” Obama also accused Trump of taking credit for what he claimed was “his” economy, which he suggested he took his entire administration to build following the financial crisis under former President George W. Bush. At one point, the former president struck a more personal tone, saying that growing up his father was not present in his home. Obama, the child of Barack Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunham, grew up mostly with Dunham, who went by her middle name. “[But] I did have people around me; my stepfather, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and most of all, my mom who who taught me the difference between right and wrong; who showed me what it meant to be honest and to be responsible and to work hard and to treat other people the way I wanted to be treated. And I did not always live up to those values,” he said. “When I was a teenager, I partied all too much … but over time, I internalized that and I tried to live up to them. And I suspect most of you grew up the same way.” CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Obama had been preceded by an introducer named John Solomon, and previously by Springsteen – who performed solo versions of “Land of Hope and Dreams” and “Dancing in the Dark.” Springsteen, who also notably performed on Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway for then-Illinois Sen. Obama during the 2008 cycle, ripped into Trump during his breaks. At one point, the septuagenarian Jersey rocker declared “Donald Trump is running to be an American tyrant.” “This election is about a group of folks who want to fundamentally undermine an American way of life. Donald Trump doesn’t understand this country, its history or what it means to be deeply American,” “The Boss” added. Prior to Springsteen, Casey spoke about the importance of women’s rights, and was preceded by Legend, who claimed “freedom is at stake in this election.” “Donald Trump had four years… you saw what he did with those four years…” said Legend, whose real name is John Stephens. Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes are seen as the proverbial key to the White House. A spokesman for Team Trump suggested after the rally that Democrats’ decision to have Obama back on the campaign circuit is a sign of desperation in the Commonwealth. “Democrats’ continued reliance on celebrities and Barack Obama, a president from over 10 years ago, to make the case for their party’s presidential candidate is another indication that Kamala’s pitch for another four years of unlimited illegal immigration, inflation, and wars abroad is falling flat with Pennsylvanians,” said PA Team Trump spokesman Kush Desai. “Glitzy celebrities and presidents of yesteryear aren’t going to make up for a mediocre message, disastrous record, and less-than-appealing candidate,” he added. Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and