Trump Memos

Harris for President

Vice President Harris is running for the future and to turn the page on the division of Donald Trump - and Americans are energized behind that message. Since Vice President Harris entered the race in late July, our campaign has seen record fundraising numbers, a surge in volunteer interest, and a spike in enthusiasm to participate in this November’s election.

However, make no mistake: we head into the final stretch of this race as the clear underdogs. Donald Trump has a motivated base of support, with more support and higher favorability than he has had at any point since 2020. In just a few short days, Vice President Harris will face Trump on the debate stage, where we expect him to be a formidable opponent. In 2020, the election came down to about 40,000 votes across the battleground states. This November, we anticipate margins to be similarly razor-thin.

The difference maker will be which campaign has the candidate, the infrastructure, and the grit capable of expanding their support to build the type of broad, diverse coalition that wins elections. Every day, Vice President Harris proves she is that candidate.

Vice President Harris is running on a popular agenda that matters to voters at the ballot box. Trump will have to answer for Project 2025.

Vice President Harris comes to the job of president as someone acutely focused on the issues that matter to voters most when they get home from work at night. She grew up in a middle-class household and her agenda reflects those values: a plan to cut taxes for the middle class, lower grocery costs, and make housing more affordable for every American. Her economic vision is both good for the country and popular with the voters who will decide this election: Vice President Harris’ plans are pragmatic and focused on solutions, while a clear majority of swing voters see Trump as more extreme. They also prefer a candidate who is “honest,” and “fights for the working class,” — key elements of Vice President Harris’ pitch to voters this fall.

Vice President Harris is also running on one of the most galvanizing issues in recent elections: restoring reproductive freedom. Voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections: In CNN’s 2022 pre-election poll, nearly three-quarters of voters called abortion very important to their vote, and a majority of voters called it extremely important. This trend continues in 2024, where 76% of voters have identified abortion as an important issue in this election, and nearly half of voters ranked it as very important. Vice President Harris’ steadfast support for reproductive rights and her clear-cut messaging on restoring the protections of Roe is a powerful piece of how this campaign will expand our coalition and path to victory.

Recent polls show Vice President Harris has room to expand her support with voters, as she makes significant inroads with voters and holds leads on core issues like crime (+1), democracy (+5), abortion (+17),health care (+7), gun violence (+5) and gaining and even leading (+1) on the economy, an issue where Republicans often hold large leads.

Meanwhile, Trump is burdened with defending the indefensible: Project 2025. New polling shows that voters are strongly aware of Trump’s extreme Project 2025 and the more they learn, the more they oppose it. And no matter how hard he tries to separate himself from Project 2025 and its litany of unpopular proposals (cutting Social Security, defunding K-12 education, and instituting a nationwide abortion ban to name a few), Trump won’t be able to shake his ties to Project 2025 thanks to our team’s aggressive efforts online and through paid media to cast a spotlight on Trump’s connection to Project 2025 for every day between now and Election Day.

Elections are a choice, and the choice between turning the page toward the future with Vice President Harris or going backwards with Trump will be on full display at the September 10 presidential debate. With hundreds of millions of dollars in paid media creative already lifting up Trump’s extreme and losing agenda, the debate will be another opportunity for us to break through and showcase the two very contrasting visions for the future of our country.

In an election that will be decided in the states, ground game matters more than ever.

Since Vice President Harris became the nominee, we have seen tremendous momentum and gains across every battleground. We maintain multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes, and are growing strength across the types of voters who decide elections in every battleground. However, the race remains very close, and will be decided by a small number of undecided voters. That universe of voters does not like Donald Trump, but needs to hear relentlessly from us about Vice President Harris and her vision for the country. That’s what makes our operational strength so critical.  

Heading into the final stretch, our operational strength matters more than ever. Since Vice President Harris entered the race, she’s raised more than $540 million - a historic sum. That money is going directly to a relentless battleground operation, with more than 312 coordinated offices and 2,000 coordinated staff in the states – a reflection of a campaign with presences in every corner of every battleground state and with the communities critical to victory. During a recent Weekend of Action, more than 10,000 volunteers made nearly 900,000 calls and knocked on 150,000 doors, contacting more than 1 million voters.

• In the battlegrounds, we are working to persuade moderate and Republican voters, and cut Trump’s margins in rural areas and red counties. We have offices in rural counties like Washington and Jenkins in Georgia, Union and Jefferson in Pennsylvania, Jackson and Wilson in North Carolina, and Waushara and Rusk in Wisconsin.

• Recently, we launched the Latinos con Harris-Walz WhatsApp channel, a first-of-its-kind effort to reach Latinos on the election in a place where many get their news from.

• Team Harriz-Walz is bolstering its efforts to reach Black voters by continuing to partner with community and faith leaders across battleground states to host  events within the communities that will decide this election – including during the upcoming HBCU homecoming season.

• Last week, we announced a ramp up of efforts on hundreds of college campuses to engage students.

• And just this Tuesday, we will launch our “Fight for Our Reproductive Freedoms” bus tour – an effort that will last until Election Day to drive home the threat Trump poses to women’s reproductive rights.
  

On the airwaves, we are ceding no ground: through a landmark $370 million investment on digital and television advertising between Labor Day and Election Day, the Vice President will be making the case everywhere to battleground voters on the issues that matter most to them – all the while Team Trump has reserved virtually zero media reservations for the long-term.

In an election that will be decided on the margins, Trump’s campaign still lags far behind in the infrastructure needed to win in key battleground states. In Nevada, Team Harris has 14 offices and more than 100 full-time employees, while Trump has just five offices and about 24 staff. In Pennsylvania, we have 50 coordinated offices while Trump’s campaign trails and won’t say where they are located. In Georgia, we have 24 offices while the Trump team didn’t open their first until June. And while we go on offense to expand our map, the Trump team is on its back foot. In states like North Carolina and Georgia, Team Trump is being forced to spend in ways they did not plan to originally.

The Road Ahead:

While Donald Trump is a heavily defined candidate, voters do not know Vice President Harris or Governor Walz as well. While we continue to ramp up our organizing and paid efforts, over this final stretch, an aggressive campaigning schedule to introduce and define our ticket to the voters that will decide this election will be critical.

From Labor Day through November 5, Vice President Harris, Governor Walz, and our army of trusted, mobilizing surrogates are hitting the road to do the work to win every single vote. The campaign plans to ramp up our aggressive principal travel schedule to continue to build a presence in the communities and states we need to win on Election Day. On Labor Day alone, the Vice President will travel to Detroit, Michigan and then join President Biden in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, while Governor Walz and First Lady Gwen Walz will spend their Labor Day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Harris-Walz campaign also plans to send key surrogates including Governor JB Pritzker, Mitch Landrieu, and Tom Perez, and others to top battlegrounds including North Carolina, Nevada, and Georgia.

Key moments ahead, like the September 10 presidential debate and the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, will critical in activating supporters and surrogates to campaign in battleground states.

Labor Day also brings the start of voting season, with the first ballots of this election being mailed to voters later this week. As Americans begin to cast their votes, Team Harris-Walz and Democrats across the country are focused on making sure every eligible voter can cast a ballot and have that ballot counted.

With tools like IWillVote.com, Democrats are giving voters all the resources they need to make their voices heard in this election. Our campaign is also building the largest voter protection program in American presidential history. We have more than 100 voter protection staff across a dozen states, with thousands of volunteers nationally. We are continuing to recruit poll and count observers as well as volunteers for our hotline, which will bolster other state and national hotlines. And as more Americans begin early voting, we will work to make sure every single eligible voter has a plan to make their voices heard.

Bottom line: Make no mistake: the next 65 days will be very hard. This race will remain incredibly close, and the voters who will decide this election will require an extraordinary amount of work to win over. But we have the candidate, message, and operation that brings Americans together to chart a new way forward, so we can once again defeat Donald Trump.

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Harris for President

To: Interested Parties
From: Harris-Walz Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon
Date: August 25, 2024
Subject: Team Harris-Walz is Turning Convention Momentum Into Action

The enthusiasm and energy at the United Center this week was palpable – but that enthusiasm extended well beyond Chicago, spreading far and wide throughout the battleground states that will decide this election. 

The Convention marked our biggest week of organizing since the start of the campaign, with volunteers signing up for nearly 200,000 shifts since Monday. 

Headed into the Convention, our campaign hosted a weekend of action, and volunteers completed 10,000 shifts and contacted over 1 million voters. The convention itself helped build on that momentum, generating nearly 200,000 new volunteer shifts since the Monday of convention. On Thursday and Friday alone, volunteers signed up for 90,000 shifts, motivated by the extraordinary excitement around the Vice President’s speech. 

We head into September with a virtual army of volunteers ready to do the hard work of talking to their neighbors, friends and colleagues. Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s battleground infrastructure remains incredibly sparse. 

In just over a month since we launched our campaign, Team Harris-Walz raised $540 million - a record for any campaign in history. 

Not only are our volunteers doing the work, but this week we saw unprecedented grassroots donations. Just before Vice President Harris’ acceptance speech Thursday night, we officially crossed the $500 million mark. Immediately after her speech, we saw our best fundraising hour since launch day. 

Even more encouraging than the total figure is where these donations are coming from: 

• A third of this week’s donations originated from first-time contributors. 
• Almost one-fifth of those first-time contributors were young voters and two-thirds of which were women — both of which are poised to be deciding constituencies in November. 
• Teachers and nurses also continue to be among the most common donor occupations. 

This fundraising reflects totals raised across Harris for President, the Democratic National Committee, and joint fundraising committees. 

This week, the diversity of our coalition was on display not only in Chicago, but throughout our campaign’s engagement across the country. 

• Women for Harris engaged over 10,000 women voters through its in-person and virtual programming, including phone banks and volunteer training. 
• We launched our Latinos con Biden Harris WhatsApp group on Sunday, heading into the Convention week, and saw nearly 4,000 supporters join.
• Several other coalitions groups also ran Convention programming this weeks - including AANHPIs for Harris-Walz, Educators for Harris-Walz, Military and Veterans for Harris-Walz, Young Voters for Harris-Walz, Seniors for Harris-Walz, Small Businesses for Harris-Walz and more. 

The Convention also supercharged our campaign’s outreach to conservative and independent voters: six Republican speakers were featured on stage and several more appeared in videos, including a number of former Trump administration officials - the most ever for a Democratic convention. In fact, our Convention was the most bipartisan national political event in recent American history. Also, this week, Judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative legal scholar and George H. W. Bush appointee, along with a dozen Republican lawyers who worked for Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush endorsed the Vice President. He joins the ranks of Congressman Joe Walsh, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, Congressman Adam Kinzinger, and many others who issued similar endorsements over the past few weeks. 

Following the Convention, our campaign isn’t taking our foot off the gas. 

In the states, organizers will be making a push this week with voters to talk about critical and mobilizing issues, including reproductive freedom, the cost of living, and protecting Social Security and Medicare. 

On Wednesday, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will kick off a bus tour in South Georgia - their first time campaigning together in the state. This part of the Peach State represents the diverse coalition that makes up the Harris-Walz coalition, including rural, suburban, and urban Georgians – with a large proportion of Black voters and working class families. On Thursday night, in Savannah, the Vice President will host a rally to speak directly to Georgians about the stakes of this election. These rallies also help to build the campaign’s volunteer efforts. In the last month, Vice President Harris’ rallies have helped generate thousands of volunteer sign ups across the battlegrounds. Following her Miluwakee rally on Tuesday night, Wisconsin volunteers signed up for 2,800 shifts. 

The campaign also continues its strong paid outreach program. On Friday, the Harris-Walz campaign released a new TV ad, airing across media markets in battleground states, reinforcing the Vice President’s economic vision and belief in building up the middle class, lowering costs, and creating an opportunity economy where everyone who works hard can get ahead. This ad will run as part of a $150 million television buy for August, and then, starting immediately after Labor Day, we already have $370 million in television and digital reservations through Election Day. This fall buy includes the largest digital reservation in the history of American politics, reflecting the campaign’s commitment to meet voters wherever they are. 

Bottom line: The Convention was a galvanizing moment for the Harris-Walz coalition throughout the country, energizing and mobilizing volunteer and grassroots donors alike. Headed into Labor Day, our campaign is using those resources and enthusiasm to build on our momentum, taking no voters for granted and communicating relentlessly with battleground voters every single day between now and Election Day – all the while Trump is focused on very little beyond online tantrums and attacking the voters critical to winning 270 electoral votes.

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Harris for President
August 10, 2024

Team Harris-Walz is Doing the Work to Win A Close Election

It’s been almost three weeks since Vice President Harris launched her presidential bid, and since then we’ve seen a groundswell of support — the type of grassroots support, organizing, and fundraising that wins elections.

This week, that momentum has only grown with the addition of Governor Tim Walz to the ticket. Team Harris-Walz has seen an extraordinary amount of enthusiasm for this new ticket, raising $36 million in the first 24 hours. Just a few days into joining the ticket, Governor Walz’s popularity is already surging — as JD Vance’s continues to tank.

Even with this momentum, as Vice President Harris continues to make clear, we are the underdogs in this race and we’re taking nothing for granted. We believe this will be a very close election, decided by a very small number of voters, in just a few states.

This week was a prime example of our theory of the case at work: we broke through, turned enthusiasm into action, and reached the voters who will decide this election. Let’s take a look:

• In the first 24 hours after Governor Walz was announced as Vice President Harris' running mate, Team Harris-Walz raised a grassroots-powered $36 million dollars on top of an enormous outpouring of support and praise from Democratic elected officials, Republicans, independents, and both business and labor leaders. This is the money that will go to talking to voters and building campaign presences in every community to elect Democrats up and down the ticket.

• Vice President Harris and Governor Walz drew historic crowds during our battleground states tour including 14,000+ in Philadelphia, 12,000+ in Eau Claire, and 15,000+ in both Detroit and Arizona. These events matter not only because they make Trump very, very mad, but because they get our message to voters, and expand our supporter network:

• Event coverage earns us consistent and at-scale earned media to amplify our message in places voters get their news: across evening news, front pages, and local media.

• The rallies also broke through online: On KamalaHQ across platforms, we saw 54 million impressions on both speeches (Eau Claire and Detroit) on Wednesday, and Vice President Harris’ channels across platforms saw 70 million impressions.

• They also serve as opportunities to recruit supporters and volunteers that will be critical to reaching the voters who will decide the election — in Arizona alone, we picked up 3,000 volunteer shifts. That’s 3,000 Harris-Walz supporters who will be making the case to their communities about voting this November.

• Launched a new TV ad and our first ad targeting Latino voters that highlights Kamala Harris’ middle class roots, along with an ad touting her fight to secure the border. Part of a historic $50 million paid media campaign ahead of the Democratic National Convention, this campaign helps define who Kamala Harris is for voters in a crowded, divided media environment.

• Demonstrated how the unprecedented labor support, including the recent endorsement by the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and Bartenders Union Local 16 along with the flurry of additional endorsements behind this ticket delivers not just words on a press release but tangible organizing prowess and hundreds of millions of dollars that will help us win a close election in November.

• Expanded the infrastructure and capacity needed to harness the enthusiasm we’re seeing to win this November. We now tout over 1,500 coordinated staff, over 265 coordinated offices, and this strong existing infrastructure is delivering by mobilizing the surge of enthusiasm into action across the country on the ground, talking to the voters who will decide this election.

This is a whole lot of work — and it’s a testament to a campaign, a party, and a ticket that knows how close this election will be.

Meanwhile, let’s look at how Donald Trump and his campaign are approaching this close election.

Last night in Montana, Donald Trump’s ranting and raving focused (well not so focused) on committing the RNC to subverting the 2024 election, spewing grotesque attacks against the media, and promising to gut funding for every public school in the country.

One month ago, the Trump campaign was “planning for a landslide win.” They boasted of all the paths they had to 270 they even “stopped counting.

Fast forward to this month. Trump isn’t just taking voters for granted with no real infrastructure to speak of, he’s doubling down on the same old angry, spiteful, and self-obsessed extremist views America rejected in 2020.

He’s not campaigning in swing states, is attacking popular Republican governors in states he needs to win and trashing his staff, engages in public meltdowns every several days, spews so many blatant lies we can’t keep up with them, said this week he would ban abortion medication, and was caught (again) completely intertwined in Project 2025.

This morning, The New York Times reports it’s even worse down in Mar-a-Lago. Trump is attacking donors, throwing his running mate under the bus, and lashing out at staff. He is unfocused, unprepared, and incapable of delivering any positive message for the American people.

The bottom line? While the Trump-Vance team is spiraling, Team Harris-Walz is riding a historic wave of earned media and translating the immense grassroots enthusiasm into winning a close election this November.


Kevin Munoz
Harris-Walz Senior Spokesperson

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Harris for President

To: Interested Parties
From: Dan Kanninen, Harris-Walz Battleground States Director
Date: August 9, 2024
Subject: Harris-Walz Heads to Southwest

Today, Vice President Harris and Governor Tim Walz will continue their tour across the battlegrounds with stops in Arizona and Nevada – two Sunbelt states where Vice President Harris has spent a lot of time while in office. As Vice President, Kamala Harris has made inroads with communities across the Southwest, and this will mark her seventh visit to Nevada and her fourth visit to Arizona just this year.

According to every recent major poll, Arizona and Nevada are extremely close and will be through election day. Thursday, Cook Political Report shifted these states in the Southwest from “lean Republican” to “toss up” states and Ipsos released a poll yesterday showing that Vice President Harris and Donald Trump are in a “statistical dead heat for the presidency.”

The visits come on the heels of key endorsements from leaders across these two states, from mayors representing Arizona’s border communities and dozens of prominent Arizona Republicans to organized labor representing hundreds of thousands of Nevada workers.

Voters in Nevada have a head start in getting to know Governor Tim Walz, who campaigned in northern Nevada at the end of June to fire up volunteers at a canvass launch. Even more voters across the Southwest and the country will soon be familiar with Governor Walz. As a governor, congressman, football coach, veteran, and high school teacher, Walz has championed working families his entire life – he worked to cut taxes for working families, lower the cost of insulin, and protect women’s right to choose. He is a historically popular leader who consistently outperformed national Democrats in his House district, including in rural areas and counties that have supported Trump, which will be important in the Southwest and across the country.

We’ve built a historic ground game advantage to win Nevada and Arizona:

Team Harris-Walz has more than 25 coordinated campaign offices throughout Arizona and Nevada, with more than 220 full-time staff.

In Nevada, we are running the largest in-state operation of any coordinated campaign ever, with 13 offices and nearly 100 staff on the ground. We have also seen unprecedented volunteer enthusiasm over the past few weeks: hours after Vice President Kamala Harris announced her presidential campaign, more than 600 volunteers signed up to support the campaign. Shortly after Vice President Harris announced her candidacy, the campaign held a weekend of action that saw more than 1,000 volunteers take action with the campaign, reaching nearly 50,000 voters across the state by knocking on doors and working the phones.

In Arizona, the campaign has 12 coordinated offices with six more to come—the most of any Arizona coordinated campaign in history. The campaign has hired more than 120 full-time staff, with offices in every corner of the state from border communities like Nogales to rural areas like Kingman. With a popular message and a strong record on the issues that matter most to voters, Vice President Harris has seen a groundswell of support in Arizona in the form of volunteer signups and endorsements. Since July 21, 20,899 Arizonans have signed up online to join the campaign. And during July’s weekend of action, the campaign and the Arizona Democratic coordinated campaign launched 26 canvasses and hosted a total of 67 events from rural Arizona to Midtown Phoenix.

Reaching and persuading diverse voters in two of the most diverse battlegrounds:

Our campaign infrastructure has allowed the campaign to meet communities across Nevada and Arizona and earn their vote. Unlike the Trump campaign, which has barely any ground presence and has shut down their efforts to reach voters of color in key communities in the Southwest, we have remained focused on reaching voters of color through programs like paid bilingual high school organizers, community events that have already brought in hundreds of voters, and field offices in rural counties that Trump won and in the heart of AANHPI, Latino, and Black communities.

Kamala Harris also has a well-documented ability to mobilize key constituencies, including young voters, Black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, and women. Nowhere is this more of an asset than in Nevada – where the electorate is younger and more diverse than any other battleground state, and where the Vice President recently launched the campaign’s national AANHPI coalition.

The first large survey of Latino voters with Harris as the presumptive nominee showed her strong support with Latino voters presents a “key weakness” for Donald Trump. Harris leads Trump with Latinos by 55-37 in the battleground states – and is viewed favorably by Latinos in Nevada by 44 points (69-25) – the highest of any battleground state. In Arizona, Vice President Harris is viewed favorably by Latinos by a margin of 14 points.

Highlighting reproductive freedom, which is on the ballot in Nevada and Arizona:

Nevada is one of the most pro-choice states in the country, with 76 percent of all voters and 81 percent of Latino voters believing abortion should be legal. Abortion will be directly on the ballot in the state this year, and Nevadans are mobilizing around the issue of choice. Vice President Harris has been a champion of protecting reproductive freedoms and has rallied with Nevadans on reproductive freedoms in April, highlighting the ballot initiative and thanking reproductive rights organizers, who were in attendance collecting signatures for the ballot initiative. The Nevada ballot initiative campaign ultimately submitted more than double the required signatures needed to qualify for the ballot.

In Arizona, voters are already living under an abortion ban and will also vote on a ballot measure to add a right to an abortion to the state constitution, which is supported by 65 percent of Arizona voters. Earlier this year, after MAGA Republicans in Arizona enacted a near-total ban on abortion, the Harris campaign witnessed a groundswell of support around the measure – thanks in part to Vice President Harris, who visited the state in April specifically to highlight the 1864 ban.. At her most recent stop in Arizona, Vice President Harris joined Latina actress Francia Raisa and Arizona Corporation Commissioner Anna Tovar to highlight the threat a second Trump presidency would pose to reproductive freedom nationwide, particularly for Latinas and the women of Arizona.

Team Harris-Walz is running to fix our broken immigration system:

Arizonans and Nevadans want leaders who will take tough, smart action to fix our broken immigration system, strengthen border security, and expand pathways to citizenship. Vice President Harris has a record of standing up for border security throughout her career, while also fighting for DREAMers, and expanding pathways to citizenship, as the Biden-Harris Administration did this June.

On the campaign trail, Vice President Harris has put a spotlight on Trump for tanking the toughest set of border security measures in decades that was widely supported and would have provided critical resources to secure the border. She and Governor Walz are campaigning on a promise to bring back the deal if elected. To double down on their message, our campaign is highlighting her fight to secure the border in a new ad running in both states.

Last month, border mayors in Arizona endorsed Vice President Harris because they trust her to keep their communities safe. As a former border-state prosecutor, Harris went after transnational gangs that smuggled weapons and drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border as California Attorney General. As Vice President, she supported some of the toughest reforms to our border in decades, and because of the tough actions she supported, border crossings in June reached the lowest level in years.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Trump will have to explain why he killed the bipartisan bill endorsed by the Border Patrol union to improve border security, and defend his legacy of ripping mothers from their children – a record Arizonans and Nevadans reject soundly election after election.

Trump and MAGA Republicans are alienating the independent voters needed to win the Southwest:

Donald Trump and the least popular VP pick of all time are playing catchup, while campaigning on a toxic Project 2025 agenda to ban abortion nationwide, raise costs on families, and allow Trump to rule as a dictator on ‘day one.’

Thanks to Trump, Nevada and Arizona have become the epicenter of MAGA extremism. Seventeen people were recently indicted in connection with an alleged scheme to overturn the 2020 election, including 11 alleged fake electors. Heading into November, Arizona Republicans continue to push the Big Lie, so much so that conservative Republicans—such as former Governor Jan Brewer—have called out the current Republican Party for embracing election denialism. Trump’s Nevada campaign is being run by top Trump loyalists including Michael McDonald, Vice Chair Jim Hindle III, and Trump-endorsed Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, who have all been indicted by a grand jury for conduct connected to their roles in a 2020 fake elector scheme.

In 2022, the MAGA Republicans embrace of Trump’s election denialism lost them major races across the Southwest, costing Republicans the U.S. Senate majority and the Governor’s mansion in Arizona. Trump and Vance have proven that they will continue to alienate moderate Republicans and independent voters by campaigning like Kari Lake instead of John McCain.


The bottom line: Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz’s momentum across the battlegrounds is real and will be on full display in Arizona and Nevada, where we’ve built massive coordinated campaigns as Trump has almost no presence whatsoever. Our campaign will continue our work to reach the diverse voters who power our victories in the Southwest, highlighting the stakes of the race for reproductive rights and the Vice President’s leadership to secure the border. During this Southwest swing, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will highlight their positive vision for the future and Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda to drag voters in the past, and they will continue to show we are fighting to earn every vote and reach communities all across the Southwest.

Harris for President

TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Harris for President Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon
DATE: July 24, 2024
SUBJECT: The Path to Victory for Kamala Harris

This week, Vice President Kamala Harris filed her candidacy for president of the United States. Following a groundswell of support from across the country, she is now the presumptive Democratic nominee – and she’s in a strong position to win.

Yesterday, the Vice President campaigned in Milwaukee, marking her fifth visit to Wisconsin so far this year. In front of a crowd of over 3,500 – the campaign’s largest event yet – Vice President Harris laid out the choice in this election between two very different visions. She is fighting for a future that strengthens our democracy, protects reproductive freedom and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead. Donald Trump is a convicted criminal running to enact his extreme and dangerous Project 2025 agenda that would roll back Americans’ rights and freedoms, hurt the middle class, and threaten our democracy.

In the days and weeks to come, she’ll take that message across the battlegrounds, capitalizing on the historic infrastructure the campaign has spent the last year building to reach voters where they are to ensure they understand the choice in this election.

With a popular message, a strong record on the issues that matter most to swing voters, multiple pathways to 270 electoral voters, and unprecedented enthusiasm on her side, the Vice President is in a strong position to take on Donald Trump and win in 104 days.

Building a winning coalition of voters and multiple pathways to 270

Vice President Harris enters the presidential race with clear advantages among voters critical to victory.

First, Vice President Harris has well-documented support from the Biden-Harris coalition of voters that delivered victory in 2020. She has significant advantages with key parts of the Democratic base: Black voters, Latino voters, AANHPI voters, women, and young voters.

•     Black voters: The Vice President has a +44 net approval rating and runs 54 points ahead of Trump. 61% of Black voters think that Vice President Harris cares about the needs and problems of people like them, as compared to just 20% of Black voters who think the same of Trump.

•     Latino voters: Harris is more popular than Trump among undecided, independent, and third-party Latinos. Early polling from Nevada shows that the Vice President makes up ground with Latino voters and does “exceedingly well” with Latino voters who are skeptical of both Biden and Trump.

•     AANHPI voters: Vice President Harris has a positive approval rating among AANHPI voters, 30 points higher than Trump’s net approval rating.

•     Women voters: The Vice President’s net favorability is 21 points better than Trump’s among women.

•     Young voters: Vice President Harris leads Donald Trump by 25 points with young voters, and a preliminary survey of college students conducted by Flytedesk found that intent-to-vote increased to its highest rate of the cycle after President Biden’s endorsement of Vice President Harris, with 83% of students indicating that they would vote in November. 

Second, the Vice President is also well-positioned to expand support from 2020, drawing the support of voters who have moved towards Democrats since the 2020 election. In many cases, these voters did not vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, but came out in support of Democrats in 2022 as Donald Trump’s Republican Party grew more and more extreme. These voters supported Democrats in battleground states in 2022, and they will be critical to hold onto in 2024. Notably, the Vice President already holds significant favorability advantages among the key demographic groups that have moved toward Democrats since 2020: Her net favorability is 19 points higher than Trump’s among white, college-educated voters, and 18 points higher than Trump’s among voters over 65.

The Vice President has been at the forefront on the very issues that are most important to these voters – restoring women’s reproductive rights, upholding the rule of law following January 6, Donald Trump’s criminal convictions, and the Supreme Court’s immunity decision.

Voters identified reproductive rights as a top issue influencing their vote in the 2022 midterm elections: In CNN’s 2022 pre-election poll, nearly three quarters of voters called abortion very important to their vote, and a majority of voters called it extremely important. This trend continues in 2024, where 76% of voters have identified abortion as an important issue in this election, and nearly half of voters ranked it as very important. 57% of young people ages 18-29 identify abortion as a “major” factor in their vote, as do 55% of women.

Vice President Harris has been a champion for reproductive freedom even before the Dobbs decision. As a Senator, she grilled now-Justice Kavanaugh and fought for legislation to improve women’s health. As Vice President, she is leading the Biden-Harris Administration’s response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, including implementing three executive orders on reproductive health care access, and traveling the country to galvanize leaders in the fight for reproductive freedom. She has spoken to more than 15,000 students about the fight for our fundamental rights, including our reproductive freedom. And on her “Fight for Our Freedoms” tour, she became the first Vice President in history to visit a reproductive health care clinic. A KFF survey found that eight in ten (82%) Democratic and Democratic-leaning women voters say they trust Vice President Harris to speak about abortion policy, including large majorities of White Democratic women voters (85%), Black Democratic women voters (76%), and Hispanic Democratic women voters (72%).

These expansion voters are also deeply troubled by Donald Trump’s criminal convictions. 32% of independents said that the conviction made them less likely to support Trump, and 21% said this would be an important factor in their vote. As a former prosecutor who has never shied away from taking on those who harm the American people, Vice President Harris is uniquely positioned to hold him accountable over the course of the campaign.

While the Vice President is poised to build on the 2020 Biden-Harris coalition, Trump, on the other hand, has not expanded his support. This has become even more clear in the last month, where he largely failed to win over new voters following the debate and the RNC convention. Now, even Trump’s closest allies have started to indicate that he made a mistake by choosing JD Vance, his most extreme option, as running mate. Trump’s, and now Vance’s, far-right positions on women’s reproductive rights and democracy put these key voters even further out of reach.

Third, in a highly polarized electoral environment, this shift in the race opens up additional persuadable voters who our campaign can work to win the support of. This race is more fluid now – the Vice President is well-known but less well-known than both Trump and President Biden, particularly among Dem-leaning constituencies.

This expanded universe of winnable voters is highly accessible to Vice President Harris: We have a clear advantage on issues, they have been supportive of Democrats in the past, and many are supportive of Democrats down-ballot. It is the job of the Harris campaign to win these voters, but the pathway to do so is clear.

About 7% of voters remain undecided in this race, and these voters are disproportionately Black, Latino, and under 30. They are more likely to have supported the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020, and are two times more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. These voters also disproportionately support Democratic candidates down-ballot and we have a clear issue and character advantage.

While we know that we cannot take these voters for granted, we have a significant opportunity to consolidate their support once they hear from our campaign.

Finally, the map. Winning the presidential election still requires winning 270 electoral votes, and that means our pathways to victory runs through the states. Vice President Harris enters a tight race, but it is clear that she can bring together a coalition of voters to keep a wide set of states in play. We continue to focus on the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — and the Sun Belt states of North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, where the Vice President’s advantages with young voters, Black voters, and Latino voters will be important to our multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes.

We intend to play offense in each of these states, and have the resources and campaign infrastructure to do so.

Grassroots enthusiasm

Where Vice President Harris goes, grassroots enthusiasm follows. This was the case in 2020, when the Biden-Harris campaign had its best 24 hours of grassroots fundraising of the entire race following then Vice President Biden’s selection of Harris as his running mate, and it has certainly been the case over the past 36 hours since receiving the endorsement of President Biden. A few facts and figures here:

•     In the first 24 hours after receiving President Biden’s endorsement, Team Harris raised over $81 million – the most in a 24 hour period in the history of presidential politics. As of Tuesday evening, Team Harris has raised $126 million since the endorsement.

•     Over 1.4 million grassroots donors made donations since Sunday afternoon, 64% of whom made their first contribution of the 2024 cycle.

•     Since Sunday afternoon, Team Harris has added 74,000 new recurring donors, with two-thirds of these recurring donors signing up for weekly donations.

We also know that it takes more than money to win the presidential election — it takes an army of supporters and volunteers to spread our message. In the last two days, we have seen unprecedented volunteer signups.

•     Since Sunday afternoon, over 100,000 volunteers have signed up to join the campaign.

•     In Nevada, volunteers literally showed up at field offices on Sunday asking to help and 2,500 Pennsylvanians signed up to volunteer, 4x our previous biggest day.

•     In Wisconsin, we held our biggest rally ever on Tuesday, with more than 3,500 fired up supporters who organizers will now engage to volunteer with the campaign.

•     Nearly 2,000 people applied to work on the campaign in the 24 hours after Vice President Harris announced her campaign – more than 3x our previous record.

Campaign infrastructure firing on all cylinders

From day one, the Biden-Harris campaign has not only been prepared to win a close election, it has been designed to win a close election. Vice President Harris will now inherit that robust campaign operation.

Since last fall, we have been building deep relationships in communities across the battlegrounds, creating a blended organizing model designed to register, persuade, mobilize and turn out voters when it matters most. Using both in person events and activities as well as engaging voters online, we are having conversations with voters to cut through media silos and political narratives. At the same time, we made early investments in a staff presence across the battlegrounds that has grown over time, with more than 250 coordinated offices in the states. We are presently at over 1,300 coordinated staff in battlegrounds, will be over 1,500 by the end of the month, and well over 2,000 before the summer is out. They are building an army of tens of thousands of volunteers who will talk to millions of voters. And all of this comes alongside an organizing program that will hit more than 3 million doors across the months of July and August.

We know, both from election results and from research, that when the choice is between Donald Trump’s extremism and the Biden-Harris Administration’s record of delivering for the American people – and when Democrats have an operation capable of persuading and mobilizing voters on the ground – we win.

Bottom line: This campaign will be close, it will be hard fought, but Vice President Harris is in a position of strength – and she’s going to win.