Ground Game: Blurred party lines, swing state Republicans, candidates’ Christianity
One presidential candidate is talking up gun ownership and promising tough border security measures. The other vows to cap credit card interest rates and force insurance companies to cover in vitro fertilization. Which one is the Democrat and the Republican?
Welcome to this week's edition of AP Ground Game.
The lines that have long defined each party's policy priorities are blurring as Kamala Harris and Donald Trump seek to expand their coalition in the final weeks of a fiercely competitive election. The contest may well hinge on how many disaffected suburban Republicans vote for Harris and how much of the Democrats' traditional base — African Americans, Latinos, young people and labor union members — migrates to Trump.
That's prompting both candidates to take stances that would have once been anathema to their bases, scrambling longtime assumptions about what each party stands for.
Trump has been testing the loyalty of social and small-government conservatives with an agenda that downplays his opposition to abortion and calls for significant government intervention in health care and the economy. Harris has embraced a much more muscular foreign policy, vowing to feature a Republican in her cabinet if elected and speaking more openly about owning a gun — and her willingness to use it. Read more .
Republican activists in swing states say they have seen little sign of the teams tasked with knocking on doors and turning out infrequent voters on behalf of Trump, raising concerns about the party's presidential nominee relying on outside groups for an important part of his campaign operations.
Trump and the Republican National Committee he controls opted to share get-out-the-vote duties in key parts of the most competitive states this year with groups like America PAC, the organization supported by billionaire Elon Musk.
It's difficult to demonstrate that something is not happening. But with fewer than 50 days until the Nov. 5 election, dozens of Republican officials, activists and operatives in Michigan, North Carolina and other battleground states say they have rarely or never witnessed the group's canvassers. In Arizona and Nevada, the Musk-backed political action committee replaced its door-knocking company just this past week. Read more.
Harris is a Baptist who was influenced by religious traditions in her mother's home country of India. Trump grew up a mainline Presbyterian but began identifying as a nondenominational Christian near the end of his presidency.
Despite that, few Americans see the presidential candidates as particularly Christian, according to a new survey conducted Sept. 12-16 by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs. Only 14% of U.S. adults say the word "Christian" describes Harris or Trump "extremely" or "very" well.
Strikingly, that appears to matter little to part of Trump's loyal base: white evangelical Protestants. About 7 in 10 members of this group view him favorably. But only about half say Trump best represents their beliefs — around 1 in 10 say this about Harris, and one-third say neither candidate represents their religious beliefs — and around 2 in 10 say "Christian" describes him extremely or very well. Read more.
Of note:
Neither candidate fared particularly well when Americans were asked if they'd use the words "honest" or "moral" to describe them. Around one-third say those words describe Harris extremely or very well, and about 15% say the same for Trump. Adding in those who say the words "somewhat" describe the candidates raises the levels to more than half for Harris and about one-third for Trump.
Harris will skip this year's Al Smith charity dinner in New York, breaking with presidential tradition so she can campaign instead in a battleground state less than three weeks before Election Day. Read more.
Trump said on Sunday that he doesn't "think" he'd run again for president in 2028 if he falls short in his bid to return to the White House in 2024. Read more.
