Clinton’s firewall in early voting could be the key to winning. Follow the campaign action here.
Friday afternoon I took my place on the final press call of for the Hillary Clinton’s campaign and campaign manager Robby Mook talked about a firewall that should help her win in Florida. Mook also felt that his over one million person strong ground game that will help his team win on Tuesday.
Mook knows the importance of both a firewall and the ground game, something that has been over two years in the making.
Both team Clinton and team Trump are focused on winning in Florida and North Carolina, two must-win states. The very well organized firewall has Mook, guardedly optimistic about both states.
Good Read: Clinton has a plan to win Florida
“Our campaign has organized to leverage this early voting period to build a firewall in states,” said Mook, “and build out a lead that Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming.”
You have to look at campaigns in 2016 is more about the “Geek Squad,” that is all about data and creating firewalls to win elections. The difference between Hillary Clinton winning the election and Donald Trump wining could be about the data mining, ground game and firewall building that has been in the works since Barack Obama won the election in 2012.
Mook told me that he is encouraged by the more than 129% Hispanic voters who took part of realy voting in Florida. Hispanic turnout in early voting has almost tripled compared to 2008, according to CNN.
Florida’s 29 votes are among the most important that are up for grabs this year. According to the New York Times it will be virtually impossible for Trump to win the election if he loses Florida.
Early voting in Florida has been key to building a firewall for Clinton and as of Saturday the Democrats had their first lead of the cycle, a little more than 7,000 votes out of 5.7 million cast so far. More than a million voters are not registered to either of the major parties.
Mook also felt good that their number of Republicans educated women, maybe splitting their ballots. Voting for Clinton for president while then checking the box for Sen. Marco Rubio, the man who challenged Trump for the Republican nomination.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Democrats are ahead in vote totals, having cast 42% of absentee ballots compared with 32% for Republicans, according to the state’s data. Clinton campaign director of states Marlon Marshall said that early vote totals were up 16% overall in the state.
In Nevada, Democrats have a lead in early voting as well, Marshall said. “Trump will need to win election day by 10 points at this point to overtake and win the state of Nevada,” he said.
The Clinton team understand that they are not going to leave anything to chance and that means hoping those early voting states have built firewalls to help along with Tuesday election push.
