As we come down the homestretch of Election Season 2024 and look at the impressive absentee ballot and early voting numbers for Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in battleground states, it’s worth taking a look back at how we got here on the eve of Election Day.

Let’s go back to the depression of the midterms in 2022. There was no real red wave. We eked out a slim majority in the House, but overall, the results were well short of expectations. After I picked myself up off the floor, literally, and started sifting through the rubble, it became very apparent that outside of Florida, there was no real absentee ballot chase, no early vote push, especially with mid-to-low prop voters in key states like Arizona. A basic rule of thumb for a successful AB chase is an 80% return of that universe, yet in Arizona, it was 65% in 2022. I immediately began talking about this problem for the right with Matthew Boyle of Breitbart and my good friends Buck Sexton and Jesse Kelly, and also wrote about it on November 21, 2022, at American Greatness.

I believe that action is the soul of restoration—not talk, not white papers, but actually personally, as best I can, initiating meaningful, purposeful action. I began laying plans in December of 2022 as to how we would never ever let the midterms happen again. I pitched donors the plan in January of 2023, proposing that we do two pilot programs that year as we also prioritized and emphasized a Ballot Out, Ballot In training initiative with American Majority immediately in 2023 to prepare the grassroots for the real fight in 2024.

The pilot programs in 2023 were nothing crazy; a few million dollars total between four key parishes in Louisiana (there’s a reason Jeff Landry avoided a run-off) and seven key state senate races in Virginia. Both were successful and demonstrated that this would work in 2024 in battleground states. While others talked about insane plans for something they’d never even done before, some of us quietly put the pieces in place for absentee ballot generation and chase in Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. With the help of a few trusted allies, but really with American Majority Action driving the plan, we looked at Arizona and realized that the permanent ballot universe in Arizona only had about a 15,000 or so ballot advantage for Republicans over Democrats. Starting in March through October of this year, we determined to grow that advantage as best we could with limited resources for AB generation. We were able to drive that 15,000 advantage to 80,000 while emphasizing mid-to-low props with that push because we knew that if those types of voters would request a ballot, we could get roughly 80% of them to vote. There’s a reason that in some places where we are working, low-prop Republicans are beating out their counterpart low-prop Dems by eight points.

We built out our teams in these states to about 1,600 total door knockers and phone callers, with handfuls of texters, although that number doesn’t include some auxiliary phone banks and other aspects that I used in targeted pushes on important dates (ABs dropping, early in-person starting, etc.). Once the ballots started dropping, i.e., mailing, we began our series of targeted harassments from as many angles as possible: door knocks with an emphasis on survey completion (a good rule of thumb for door work is a 20% “connect rate.”) We are currently at 19.5% nationally; to be honest, places like Arizona are tough to get to 20% and have pulled the average down, while in Wisconsin our rates are several points above 20%. But on top of doorknocks, live calls, peer-to-peer texting, and reminder postcards were layered in to ballot holders, encouraging them to return their ballots. In addition, some allied groups were doing targeted digital ads and ”addressables” to the ballot households as well as other materials being sent to reinforce the message of return your ballot or, if you don’t have one, go vote early in person.

For some insights into what the work in one of the states looks like, we have over 300 people in Clark County, Nevada, and have had so non-stop for months. They’ve knocked on 577,017 doors and made 757,236 live phone calls in Clark County alone. We’ve layered in the postcards, texts, and digital ads along with some other components, so it’s no real mystery as to why the Clark County “blue firewall” is almost non-existent and Republicans won all 14 days of early voting in Nevada.

The AB/EV push in the field is a grinding numbers game. Unlike some who talk about a “Moneyball” approach but aren’t actually doing it in the field, it is a very data-driven approach to refining on a daily basis door and phone lists so door knocks or phone calls are not wasted on people who have already voted weeks before.

None of this is easy. If you haven’t done it before, it’s very hard to do so for the very first time, especially if all you’ve really done in the past is event planning. There are lots of moving parts, lots of coordination, and also lots of stress and demands on folks in the field that they not lose focus and that they continue to do the targeted work expected of them. Have we performed at an A level with American Majority Action? No, but a solid B to B+ level with lots of room for growth and perfecting this plan for 2026 and 2028.

Also, unlike others who like to crow on social media about how they’re single-handedly saving a state (which is absurd), I need to point out the good work of others, like Turnout for America and, of course, Elon Musk’s America PAC. While I have not spoken with them as they are coordinating with the Trump campaign on pure canvassing (door knocking) due to an FEC ruling from earlier this year, I’m sure they would also tell you that massive steps have been made in the right direction in 2024 with work to be done on perfecting this plan for the future.

Let’s be very clear on something else as well. The success of AB/EV programs and their actually working is in many ways due to Donald J. Trump. I told my donors that 50% of the success of these programs in 2024 will be based on whether Trump enthusiastically embraced these ideas or not. To his credit, and I strongly suspect due to some encouragement by senior-level campaign folks out of Florida like Susie Wiles and James Blair, he has constantly reinforced this approach via videos and posts on Truth and X.

Let me close by saying this: This is just the end of the beginning in my mind. The next four years must be about year in and year out doing what the Florida GOP committed to after 2018: investing seven figures every year in absentee ballot generation, voter registration, and cleaning voter rolls. You’ll note that Florida is no longer a battleground state. My hope is that by 2028, if we put our hands to the plow and the right people are empowered, we can turn Arizona into Florida, North Carolina into Florida, etc. until the Electoral College battleground states are relatively few if any at all.

In the meantime, tomorrow, to all those who haven’t yet voted, show up and vote like your future depends on it because it does. We have a Republic to save. Do not stop getting people to the polls until they close tomorrow: all gas, no brake, full send.