Republican Voters Against Trump, the group of disaffected Republicans devoted to stopping Donald Trump from returning to the White House, is stepping up its efforts with an $11.5m ad buy in critical battleground states.
The group is rolling out a new advert featuring former Trump voters vowing never again to back him. They give a range of reasons for their decision, ranging from Trump’s role in instigating the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January 2021, his demeaning of women and his 34 felony convictions.
The ads are being focused on the three so-called “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which Joe Biden won in 2020 and which Kamala Harris, Biden’s vice-president and the Democratic presidential candidate, must retain in November. The group will be investing $4.5m in Pennsylvania, $3m in Michigan and $2.2m in Wisconsin, the Hill reported.
Ads will also be placed in Arizona and Nebraska, along with about 80 billboards strategically located in swing states that promote former Trump voters who now intend to vote for Harris.
The executive director of Republican Voters Against Trump, Sarah Longwell, told MSNBC that the thinking behind the ad buy was to give former Trump voters who are thinking about switching to Harris a “permission structure”. She said that focus groups had shown a “tremendous openness” among some Trump voters to backing the vice-president.
“We are taking Trump-voting voices and elevating them so it sends a signal to other Trump voters who are Kamala-curious,” Longwell said. “They are interested in voting for her either because Donald Trump presents such a threat, or because people are bored by Trump – they are bored with all the drama and tired of the insults.”
The Guardian’s poll tracker underlines how painfully close the presidential race is within the seven or so key battleground states that are likely to decide the outcome of the 5 November election. Harris is now up on Trump in all the blue wall states – by 0.5% in Pennsylvania, 1.1% in Michigan and 1.4% in Wisconsin – but those figures are well within the margin of error, meaning the contest is essentially neck-and-neck.
The launch of the new adverts tallies with a push by the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign to highlight former Republicans who have endorsed the Democratic ticket.
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At last month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago, several Republican speakers were invited on to the main stage, including Trump’s former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and Adam Kinzinger, a former Congress member from Illinois who sat on the January 6 House committee.