Biden's strategy to reach tuned-out voters: Content over crowds
President Joe Biden’s recent battleground state campaign tour didn’t draw major crowds. But critically for the Biden campaign, it did produce a lot of content.
President Joe Biden’s recent battleground state campaign tour didn’t draw major crowds. But critically for the Biden campaign, it did produce a lot of content.
Biden paired a rally in the Philadelphia suburbs with a more intimate, at-home sit-down with a small-business owner at his home, generating social media posts and days of local media stories. A visit to a Milwaukee campaign office offered him a chance to connect with a young boy who’d written to him about dealing with a stutter, an unscripted interaction that made its way to TikTok. Backstage before a health care event, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris recorded a light video discussing their March Madness picks.
And Biden didn’t even hold a rally during his swing through Michigan — but he did have a private chat (and issued a playful golf challenge on an indoor putting green) with a local pastor and his son.
The Biden campaign says there will be a time when holding big public rallies with its most ardent supporters will be important, even as he’s unlikely to outdraw former President Donald Trump. But right now, rally turnout among the die-hards is less important to it than the disengaged voters who have soured on Biden’s presidency and could decide the election. And the campaign is focused on reaching them with digital content, especially content produced outside Washington that showcases personal connections and Biden’s empathetic side.
Biden’s campaign hopes to reach those people through their own social media and what is known as relational organizing. The strategy relies on an army of volunteers and paid campaign staffers not just to knock on doors and make other voter contacts but also to tap into their own personal networks, especially online, to share information — news articles, images and videos — that carry the campaign’s message to people otherwise tuning out political outreach.
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