Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign
President Donald Trump, a member of the Republican Party, unsuccessfully sought reelection in the 2020 United States presidential election. He had been inaugurated for his first term as president of the United States on January 20, 2017, and officially announced his re-election campaign on June 18, 2019.
Donald Trump for President 2020
- Donald Trump
45th President of the United States (2017–2021) - Mike Pence
48th Vice President of the United States (2017–2021)
- Bill Stepien (campaign manager)
- Michael Glassner (campaign committee manager)[4]
- Tim Murtaugh (communications director)[5]
- Kayleigh McEnany (national press secretary, 2019–2020; senior adviser, Oct 2020-2021)[5]
- Hogan Gidley (national press secretary)[6]
- Lara Trump (senior consultant)[7]
- Brad Parscale (senior advisor, digital/data strategies, until 2020)
- Kimberly Guilfoyle (senior adviser)[8]
- Jenna Ellis (senior legal adviser)[9]
- Harmeet Dhillon (legal adviser)[10]
- Katrina Pierson (senior adviser)[11]
- Bill Shine (senior adviser)[12]
- John McEntee (senior adviser)[13]
- Jason Miller (senior adviser)[14]
- Marc Lotter (strategic communications director)[5]
- Steven Cheung (communications consultant)[15]
- Boris Epshteyn (strategic advisor)[16]
- John Pence (campaign committee deputy executive director)[4]
- Bradley Crate (campaign treasurer)[17]
Cole Blocker (finance director)[5] - Megan Powers (administrative operations director)[5]
- Chris Carr (political director)[5]
- Justin Clark (senior political adviser)[5]
- Cliff Sims (speechwriter)[18]
US$811,898,514.36[19] (October 14, 2020)
"Y.M.C.A." by Village People
Trump began his re-election campaign unusually early for an incumbent president. He began spending money on his reelection effort within weeks of his election and officially filed his campaign with the Federal Election Commission on the day of his inauguration. From February 2017 onward, Trump held more than 150 rallies and fundraisers for this campaign, visiting key electoral states. The campaign also raised funds and ran two nationwide advertising campaigns. Trump said in several stump speeches that the slogans for the 2020 race would be "Keep America Great" and "Promises Made, Promises Kept".[23][24][25] On November 7, 2018, Trump confirmed that Mike Pence would be his vice presidential running mate in 2020.[26] Trump's re-election bid was ultimately unsuccessful; the 2020 election was won by the Democratic Party ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This marked the first time since 1992 that an incumbent president lost reelection.
Trump refused to accept the results; he and his allies made false and disproven claims of fraud, pressured elections officials, filed several unsuccessful lawsuits,[27][28][29] and directly attempted to overturn the results at the county, state, and federal level. This culminated in the attack on the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, for which Trump was impeached a second time. The day after the attack, Trump stated that a "new administration" would be succeeding his, without mentioning president-elect Biden by name, in a video posted on Twitter.[30][31][32]
2019 campaign developments[edit]
January–March 2019[edit]
In January, in a unanimous vote, the Republican National Committee informally endorsed the president's campaign and coordination between the two entities formally began.[194]
In February, a state-by-state effort was launched by Trump's campaign team to oppose any presidential challenges from within the Republican Party. The campaign has used endorsements, lobbying and state-party rule changes to ensure Trump does not face opposition during the Republican nominating convention, with a senior campaign adviser calling it a "process of ensuring that the national convention is a television commercial for the president for an audience of 300 million and not an internal fight".[195][196]
Polling[edit]
Opinion polls conducted in 2020 almost always showed Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading Trump nationally in general election matchups, with the former vice president's advantage usually extending beyond the margin of sampling error.[406][407][408] The Trump campaign dismissed polls throughout the election season, noting how they erroneously predicted a Hillary Clinton victory in the 2016 presidential election.[409][410][411] The sentiment has reflected a greater public distrust of polls in general, with several studies including one by the Pew Research Center showing that even when Biden lead Trump by a significant margin nationally, a majority of people still believed that Trump would win the election.[412]
After keeping pace with Biden and even leading him in some key states throughout the spring, Trump's approval rating significantly weakened in June and July, causing him to fall behind in most of those battleground states as well as states that historically vote Republican such as Georgia, Texas and Kansas.[71][72][73] By July 4, 2020, Politico reported that Trump was "trailing [Biden] by double digits in recent polls".[413] A mid-July Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Biden's double-digit lead holding.[414]
Trump however began to bounce back in early August. A national poll conducted then showed Biden leading by just three percent nationally.[415] Trump also began to improve in state polls, such as in Iowa, where a poll showed Trump leading Biden by 48% to 45%, six percentage points less than Trump won the state with in 2016, but an improvement from where Trump's popularity was in the few months prior.[416] Internal polls commissioned by the campaign showed Trump tied with or ahead of Biden in 17 key states,[417] while a CNN poll showed Biden up by just one percentage point in 15 battleground states.[418] Towards the end of the month though, Biden's advantage began to grow again, as Trump found himself down several points nationally in three highly rated polls: Fox News who had Biden leading 49% to 42%,[419] the NBC/Wall Street Journal who had Biden leading 50% to 41%,[420] and The Washington Post/ABC News who had Biden up 53% to 41%.[421]
Trump got a slight bounce following the 2020 Republican National Convention, after which a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden's national lead reduced to seven points.[412] By the end of August, Trump was polling ahead of Biden in key states such as Ohio where he led 50% to 45%, and was polling neck-and-neck with the Democratic candidate in other battleground states such as Florida.[422][423]
Trump's national polling numbers fell heavily again following his performance at the first presidential debate and his COVID-19 diagnosis at the end of September and beginning of October, as Biden's lead returned to double digits regularly. A Washington Post/ABC News poll taken around this period showed Biden's lead to be 53% to 43%.[424] Trump however still managed to keep pace with Biden in the battleground states, thus giving him an outside chance of retaining the Presidency via the Electoral College as Election Day approached.
Groups supporting Trump[edit]
Super PACs[edit]
Super PACs supporting Trump's reelection campaign include Committee to Defend the President,[17] Great America PAC,[17] and Great America Committee.[460][461] The Great America PAC received donations from, among others, former racer Walker Evans[462] and Insperity executive Jay Mincks.[463] The Committee to Defend the President PAC received contributions from, among others, Enterprise Products executive Ralph S. Cunningham.[464]
The Center for Public Integrity published an analysis of 2017 first-quarter federal campaign spending records which revealed that two Super PACs supporting Trump, Great America PAC and Committee to Defend the President, had spent a combined $1.32 million on the 2020 election campaign.[17] Ted Harvey serves as the chairman of the Committee to Defend the President. Eric Beach and Ed Rollins serve as co-chairmen of Great America PAC.[17] Both PACs have previously been accused by the FEC of poorly maintaining financial records and had been threatened with penalties.[17] The Center for Public Integrity also found that several other pro-Trump PACs had already been founded in 2017, but most of them had yet to be very active. One such PAC was America First Action, which was founded by the CEO of a political consulting firm for which Trump's 2020 campaign treasurer is the senior vice president.[17]
On May 17, 2017, Mike Pence filed FEC paperwork to form Great America Committee, a PAC that would be headed by his former campaign staffers Nick Ayers and Marty Obst.[460][461] This is the first time in U.S. history a sitting vice president has founded such a political organization.[460]
On August 7, Marc Lotter, a spokesperson for Mike Pence, confirmed to MSNBC's Hallie Jackson that the vice president had hosted Republican donors, including mega-donors Charles and David Koch, at Number One Observatory Circle.[157]
At the end of the third quarter, the FEC calculated that in 2017 super PACS and other outside groups supporting Trump had spent more than $2 million.[465]
Technology[edit]
The Trump campaign used "geofencing". This technology detects when a smartphone is within a narrow geographic area like a church or a sports stadium, and it captures identifying information from that device. This allowed political marketers to gather names, addresses, and voter registration status of the people who were present at the event and who presumably share some ideological, religious, or other demographic affinities. In January 2020, The New York Times reported that "the Trump campaign is far ahead of the Democratic Party in the use of this technology."[555]