HOW TRUMP PLANS TO WIN WISCONSIN: The Badger State, for Trump and Biden, is ground zero for November's election.

• Author: Bybee, Roger
• Position: On Wisonsin

Mark Jefferson knows what he must do to deliver the state of Wisconsin to Donald Trump: energize and expand the President's base.

"The President has a lot of room to grow," Jefferson, executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, tells The Progressive. "We're going to get people in areas of heavy support even more enthusiastic and build those margins." He believes state Republicans can do "even better in base areas" than they did in 2016, when Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes.

Jefferson's "base voters" are far more diverse, at least economically, than the caricature of backward-looking blue-collar workers presented in the media. They include traditional, affluent free-market Republicans as well as workers and farmers who are feeling desperate as economic growth and hope for the future seem to be slipping away from them.

At the same time, the Republican Party must also shore up support in Milwaukee's staunchly Republican "WOW" suburbs--Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington Counties--which have reliably delivered massive turnouts and big margins for Republican candidates.

Less innocently, the Republican strategy includes an aggressive ballot-security program that aims to suppress the votes of people who tend to vote Democratic, building on efforts the state GOP has embraced for years.

Finally, the Republicans are deeply prepared for the large-scale manipulative use of social media to disseminate hundreds of thousands of "micro-targeted" messages to voters, especially in key swing states like Wisconsin. This micro-targeting allows the Trump campaign to inflame voters' "anger points" with individually tailored messages, including racially charged material and conspiracy theories.

Trump's teams will need all of these strategies to carry Wisconsin. Trump's 2016 margin of victory in the state--a mere 22,748 votes--was far too small to give the Republicans confidence about this years outcome. Both parties and most analysts see Wisconsin as the nation's "tipping-point" state in the upcoming November 3 election. That's why the Democratic Party picked Milwaukee to host its nominating convention, before COVID-19 confounded those plans.

Justin Clark, chief counsel for the Trump campaign, painted the situation starkly to his fellow Republicans: "If we win Wisconsin, Donald Trump is re-elected. If we don't win Wisconsin, [he won't be]. It is the tipping-point state."

The Democrats are equally convinced that any winning combination of states must include Wisconsin's ten electoral votes. The Badger State is ground zero in 2020.

Overall, the financial commitment of the Republicans to Wisconsin is certain to be much larger than it was in 2016. An estimated $67 million will likely be spent by both parties, according to Cross Screen Media and Advertising Analytics, with the GOP's bulging campaign coffers giving it a substantial advantage. This time around, the Republicans will have the money for staff on the ground, for training volunteers, buying up ad time on TV and radio, and legal resources whenever needed.

Back in 2016, the Wisconsin Trump operation was cobbled together quickly in a slap-dash fashion, gaining a cash transfusion only when the possibility of a Trump victory appeared brighter in the fall. Now, the state GOP has the tools for a much more solid operation. "Last time," Jefferson says, "we were a little late. But we [now] have more staff on the ground than what we've had in October in past cycles."

Wisconsin, Clark told The Guardian, will have 100 get-out-the-vote organizers operating for this election. With the Republicans ideologically committed to the notion that the coronavirus threat was overblown by liberals for political gain, the GOP has moved into door-to-door organizing much sooner and more aggressively this year. On a mid-June weekend, the same weekend Trump's seventy-fourth birthday was celebrated, Wisconsin Republicans and the Trump Victory organization set up sixty-six campaign events, more than any other state in the nation.

These "leadership-initiative" training events focused on teaching volunteers how to persuade their friends and...