Excerpts: Robby Mook and Marlon Marshall Lay Out Early Vote State of Play and Strength of ‘Clinton Coalition’

Mook explained how, because of the field efforts of Hillary for America and the Democratic coordinated campaign, the campaign has built a durable lead in early voting in key states that will force Trump – and his already stretched-thin campaign organization – to significantly outperform Mitt Romney on Election Day to catch up and compete for victory.

• “Turnout has been setting record highs across the country and, in particular, early voting will be setting records this year. We anticipate, and so far we are absolutely seeing, that at least 40 percent if not more of voters in the battleground states will turn out to vote early.”

• “Our campaign has organized to leverage this early voting period to build a firewall in states with early voting to turn out supporters early and build up a lead that Donald Trump is incapable of overcoming.”

• “This firewall we’re building is being propelled by what we’re calling the ‘Clinton coalition.'”

• FLORIDA: “5.25 million Floridians have turned out already. That is a 52 percent increase over this point in 2012. And – just to put this in context, we believe that we are winning voting in Florida today by 170,000 votes. Obama, at this same time in 2012  – his campaign was actually estimating that they were losing by 15,000 votes and obviously pulled forward on Election Day. So, we’re feeling very strong  – feeling very good about what we’re building there.”

• NORTH CAROLINA: “In North Carolina, more than two and a half million people have already voted. That is a 16 percent increase over 2012.”

• NEVADA: “In Nevada, almost 700,000 people have already voted. And we believe they have passed the 40 percent mark in terms of registered voters who have already cast a ballot.”

• IOWA: “A quarter of the voters that we have turned out so far in Iowa didn’t vote in 2014.”

• NEVADA: “In Nevada, I mentioned about 40 percent of registered voters there have already turned out by our estimation – and I would say the same is true of Florida and North Carolina as well. Trump is going to need to outperform Romney on Election Day in all three of those states to be successful.”

• “As I mentioned, this historic turnout, and in particular the surge that we’re seeing in Democratic voters is coming from what we are calling the ‘Clinton coalition.’ 

• FLORIDA: “First and foremost, Latino voters have been turning out at dramatically higher rates than 2012 across the country. Let’s just look at Florida, which I think is a good example for all the different constituent parts of this Hillary Coalition. As of yesterday – 30 percent more Latinos had turned out than all of 2012 [in early voting].”

• “The second constituency in this coalition that hasn’t actually gotten a lot of attention so far are Asian Americans. We are seeing a 90 percent increase in their turnout [in Florida] versus 2012.” 

• “And the other one, and this is harder to measure, it’s harder to tack on a good statistic, are suburban women, particularly college-educated women. We’ve seen big increases across states among that cohort, as well. In addition, millennials.” 

• “And then, lastly, a lot of people have been talking about African Americans – and Marlon can address this more specifically. In Florida, we’re seeing 22 percent more African Americans turning out now than in 2012.”

• NEVADA: Just to illustrate this in Nevada, as well, we are seeing Asian American and Hispanic American turnout has surpassed what it was in 2012. And when we step back and think that Obama won Election Day in Nevada by 25,000 votes, we estimate that, with those that we’ve banked from Latinos, from Asian Americans, those suburban women, millennials, African Americans, that Trump will probably need to win Election Day by 10 points at this point to overtake and win the state of Nevada, which we think is a pretty high wall to climb for him.”
  

• Just to level-set for a second, you may remember back in the summer, we launched what we called ‘Three Million Stronger Together,’ where we would register or commit to vote 3 million folks. We have surpassed that mark, which we’re very excited about. And that did two things.” 

• “One, it helped expand the electorate, which Robby just talked about. So many of our coalition were able to get added to the rolls and our folks that were going out during our turnout program.”

• “But, two, it helped us build that volunteer infrastructure to be able to execute the program that we are now around early vote and in and around our GOTV weekend that we have coming up.”

• “Since the start of early voting in late September, we’ve been able to knock on 8.3 million doors, and have made 37.4 million phone calls, which is more than 45 million doors or phone calls in total and more than one million per day throughout the early voting period, which is incredible work by our organizing team out in the states and our volunteers, who are committed every single day. That voter contact has built our early vote advantages that Robby mentioned that we have in our key battleground states.”

• FLORIDA: “In Florida, 650,000 African Americans have cast a ballot, more at this point than 2012, and the last two days have been the largest African American turnout in Florida thus far. In fact also in Florida, as Robby said, more Latinos have voted in this election already than in the entire 2012 election [of early voting]. And as of this morning, more registered Democrats have voted early than registered Republicans, a big achievement that bucks historic trends that we’ve seen in the state. Looking at Florida actually compared to this same point in the early voting in 2012, the African American vote is up 22 percent, the Latino vote is up 120 percent, the AAPI vote is up 90 percent and the under 35 vote is up 70 percent, which is incredible in a state with a lot of electoral votes.”

• NORTH CAROLINA: “In North Carolina, turnout has been high in our largest and most supportive counties. Durham County is outpacing 2012 in early voting by 23 percent. Wade County, which is where Raleigh is, is up 21 percent compared to 2012, and Orange County, where President Obama just held a 16,000 person rally at the University of North Carolina, is up 29 percent from 2012. We are also seeing sharp increase in the African American voter turnout now that more polling locations have opened up across the state of North Carolina.”

• WISCONSIN: “In Wisconsin, the AP reported earlier this week that the Democratic strongholds of Dane and Milwaukee County were outvoting the Republican stronghold counties in suburban Milwaukee by two to one. The city of Milwaukee has surpassed its early voting record that was set back in 2012. Dane County, which is the home to Madison and the University of Wisconsin, has surpassed its 2012 early voting totals.”

• OHIO: “In Ohio, in Cuyahoga County, we saw an almost 50  – five zero – percent increase in voters on Saturday and Sunday last weekend compared to Thursday and Friday leading up to it. Daily turnout in Cuyahoga has nearly doubled in the last week, going from 827 in person votes per day two weeks ago to more than 1400 votes per day last week. In fact yesterday  – Cuyahoga’s biggest day of early voting so far was yesterday  – almost 2500 voters went to the polls and voted early.”

• IOWA: “In Iowa, Democratic turnout continues to outpace Republican turnout, and we are turning out more sporadic voters, the voters that, again, Robby mentioned at the beginning of this call, than Republicans are. Nearly one in four Democratic early voters did not cast a ballot in the 2014 midterm elections, which means our program is pushing those folks to vote early.”

• NEVADA: “And then lastly in Nevada almost 700,000 people have already voted in Nevada, which is on track to break records in early voting. That includes an 18 percent increase in early voting in Clark County, compared to this point in 2012. Over 40 percent of all registered voters have already cast a ballot, and Democrats continue to outpace Republicans with more than 38,000 Democrats casting a ballot than Republicans.”