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Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Liberal super PAC launches $50 million social media campaign to reduce Trump's margins in battleground states

If you're a rural voter in a swing state, you may see ads popping up in your Facebook feed trying to persuade you to vote for a Democrat for president. American Bridge, a "super" political action committee aligned with the party, has launched a $50 million campaign to sway rural voters away from Trump in 2020 with "hyper-local" social media ads, Alex Roarty reports for McClatchy.

"Already, officials with the group said they have raised $21 million for the effort while deploying staffers to three of presidential race’s most critical battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan," Roarty reports. "They plan to send staffers to another swing state, Florida, and said they have done extensive research on the most effective arguments to persuade rural voters."

Apparently, the most effective argument is one from a neighbor. The ads will feature personal testimonies from real voters, ideally in the white working class, who share how they have been hurt by Trump's policies, Roarty reports. American Bridge deployed door-to-door canvassers this summer to find people for the ads who had stories that could resonate with other rural voters.

The ads seek to capitalize on polling American Bridge commissioned in June, which showed that Republican-leaning voters in small towns and rural areas of battleground states approved of Trump overall, but were much less approving on key issues such as health care and tax cuts. And 53 percent of those surveyed do not identify Trump as "honest and trustworthy," according to the polling.

American Bridge doesn't believe the effort will flip rural areas to the Democratic column, but hopes to reduce support for Trump in the areas where he did best and wher eit mattered most to the outcome of the 2016 election. American Bridge Vice President Shripal Shah told Roarty, "If we don’t cut these margins, we don’t win."

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