Former Congressman Zeldin says ‘low propensity’ voters need to be targeted most for early voting

Former gubernatorial candidate and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., emphasized the importance of not only the GOP taking on early voting for the 2024 election, but focusing on "low propensity" voters. Zeldin explained that high propensity voters are voters who vote in most elections no matter what while low propensity voters typically don't vote.

"It's a lot better if we spend our time and effort trying to bank low propensity voters to try to get these people to vote early," Zeldin said on a special on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. "And then we can focus our efforts on other people."

"Once those low propensity voters show up, then we don't have to spend resources knocking on their doors, making calls or spending money on mail and we focus on others," he said. 

Republicans used to be reluctant to pursue early voting but as of late they have been getting on board with the idea. It has been endorsed by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. 

The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee on Tuesday announced the debut of its “Swamp the Vote” program, aimed at mobilizing swing-state voters and encouraging the use of mail-in, absentee, and early voting.

"Republicans must win and we will use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats because they are destroying our country.  Whether you vote absentee, by mail, early in-person or on election day, we are going to protect the vote," Trump said in a statement. "We make sure your ballot is secure and your voice is heard.  We must swamp the radical Democrats with massive turnout. The way to win is to swamp them, if we swamp them with votes they can’t cheat. You need to make a plan, register, and vote any way possible. We have got to get your vote."

Zeldin said that whenever he sees polls saying that Trump is ahead in swing states such as Nevada and Pennsylvania, he doesn't believe it because the polls don't take early voting into account. 

"In some of these states, they have passed new election laws like in Pennsylvania with universal mail in balloting," he said. "In Nevada, they have more early voting. They've legalized the ballot harvesting."

He said that some Republicans are planning to start knocking doors and phone banking for Trump in August and encourage people to vote early.

America First Works Executive Director Ashley Hayek said different Republican groups have come together to map out a plan to get out the vote before November 2024.

"There's over 50 organizations that came together," she said. "They met at the historic Willard Hotel. And we basically mapped out exactly what this election cycle needs to look like."

She explained that they discussed who needed to be knocking doors where, made sure they had voter crucial information and discussed strategic decisions for a GOP victory. 

“What we did starting at the end of last year was go into the counties, county by county and evaluate what needs to be done and where are the deficiencies. Where do we need to recruit more poll watchers and poll workers? Who's doing ballot curing?” Hayek said. “And so we've been identifying county by county what issues we need to address.”

Brett Galaszewski, Enterprise Director at Turning Point USA, said that Turning Point Action is leading the charge to get Christians to vote. 

"We've developed the Turning Point Action Faith Coalition as a way to have believers knocking on the doors of other believers," he said. "From a relational approach, we think that that's going to be really effective at the door when it comes to messaging."

Trump recently spoke at a rally in Arizona where he emphasized the importance of getting low propensity voters to vote. 

"Gun owners for whatever reason don’t vote," said. "We have to get the Evangelicals, we have to get the gun owners. We have to get these people to vote."