republican donald trump, democrat hillary clinton and their surrogates fanned out across the battleground states on thursday with the same mission: to energize and turn out their voters in the presidential election. the gop vice-presidential candidate, indiana gov. mike pence, visited iowa and was joined on the campaign trail by texas sen. ted cruz, a onetime fierce rival to the republican nominee. mr. trump<u+2019>s wife, melania trump, made a rare campaign appearance in pennsylvania. mr. trump headlined events in florida and north carolina. virginia sen. tim kaine, the democratic vice-presidential candidate, headed to arizona, where he used his fluency in spanish to rally latino voters. mrs. clinton<u+2019>s primary rival, vermont sen. bernie sanders, revved up young voters in ohio, and her husband, former president bill clinton, headed for las vegas. mrs. clinton held events in north carolina. while volunteers collect voter information at mr. trump<u+2019>s rallies, the democrats are making their case in more explicit terms. <u+201c>plug this into your phones if you haven<u+2019>t voted,<u+201d> president barack obama said at a miami rally before rattling off the nearest early voting location. <u+201c>we<u+2019>re making this really simple for you.<u+201d> the intensity of the final push in the campaign reflects a tightening in the national and battleground-state polls. while such movement is typical at the end of a presidential campaign, both sides see a shot at victory<u+2014>if they can get their voters to show up. the turnout battle in ohio illustrates the ferocious competition between the two party<u+2019>s ground games. mrs. clinton has turned to such allies as the president and hip-hop artist jay z to nudge african-americans to the polls . early-voting data in ohio, as well as in north carolina and florida, show that they haven<u+2019>t been as engaged in casting ballots as they were four years ago. mr. obama campaigned for mrs. clinton on tuesday in columbus, and she is to appear with jay z at a concert on the predominantly black east side of cleveland on friday. she will return for another cleveland event on sunday. mrs. clinton needs black turnout to approach the levels mr. obama drew during his campaigns to win ohio in 2008 and 2012, and to some extent to prevail in florida, michigan and pennsylvania, according to democratic operatives. her struggles have helped mr. trump maintain what the real clear politics average of polls shows to be a 2.7-point lead in ohio, where republicans are fractured. gov. john kasich this week announced he wrote in arizona sen. john mccain for president instead of voting for the gop nominee. mr. trump almost certainly must win ohio and florida to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the white house, while mrs. clinton likely would block his path with a victory in either state. mrs. clinton<u+2019>s inability to energize african-americans to the same extent as mr. obama in 2012 reflects a combination of a dip in enthusiasm without the first black president on the ballot, and restrictions on early voting enacted by republicans who control ohio<u+2019>s state government. <u+201c>she<u+2019>s not barack obama,<u+201d> said nina turner, a black former state senator from cleveland and one of mr. sanders<u+2019>s chief surrogates. <u+201c>the same emotional historic connection that the african-american community felt toward the president i don<u+2019>t think can be shared by anybody.<u+201d> in cleveland, where there is just a single early-voting site in a county of 1.26 million people, the clinton campaign distributed tickets to its friday jay z concert across the street from the local board of elections<u+2014>the only place where supporters could vote now. in 2014, state republican lawmakers also eliminated a week from early voting and forbade counties from subsidizing return postage on absentee ballots. <u+201c>all this stuff gets viewed as an apples-to-apples comparison,<u+201d> said aaron pickrell, a senior ohio adviser to the clinton campaign who also worked on mr. obama<u+2019>s campaigns in ohio. <u+201c>we have different rules now and different amounts of early voting time.<u+201d> still, mrs. clinton<u+2019>s share of the black vote is pivotal, because she has other disadvantages in the state<u+2014>62% of adults in ohio are white and have no college degree, mr. trump<u+2019>s strongest demographic. in cuyahoga county, which includes cleveland and the state<u+2019>s largest concentration of african-americans, mr. obama won 69% of the 2012 vote, a margin of 256,581 votes that was 90,000 more than he won by statewide. but as of wednesday, 34% fewer democrats in cuyahoga county had cast ballots than had done so a week before the 2012 election, according to data from the cuyahoga county board of elections. the overall early-vote turnout in the county is down 18% from 2012. in lucas county, which includes toledo, democratic early voting is down 41%. mr. obama won 65% of the vote there in 2012, 67,000 more votes than gop nominee mitt romney took. gop early voting numbers are down, but not by nearly as much<u+2014>2% in cuyahoga county and 16% in lucas county. party registration in the state has tilted republican since 2012. mr. pickrell and other strategists argue that many of those voters were democrats who changed parties so they could back mr. kasich against mr. trump during the state<u+2019>s march primary. but many blue-collar democrats pulled gop ballots in march to vote for mr. trump, and ohio gop officials have been crowing about their voter registration edge for more than a year. <u+201c>we had 800,000 new republicans register this year who aren<u+2019>t going to vote for hillary clinton,<u+201d> said matt borges, the ohio republican party chairman. <u+201c>trump is going to win ohio.<u+201d> mr. trump<u+2019>s campaign, which, combined with the republican national committee, has a fraction of mrs. clinton<u+2019>s staff in ohio, said he has generated unprecedented excitement among white working-class voters. mike dawson, who was an aide to former ohio gop gov. george voinovich and now operates the website ohioelectionresults.com , said that if there is a 10% increase over 2012 in gop turnout in the 33 of ohio<u+2019>s 88 counties that mr. trump won in the march primary, he will net 177,000 new votes. mr. obama won ohio in 2012 by 166,214 votes. <u+201c>it depends on what trump loses in suburban areas as to whether he<u+2019>s going to win,<u+201d> mr. dawson said. write to reid j. epstein at reid.epstein@wsj.com , michael c. bender at mike.bender@wsj.com and peter nicholas at peter.nicholas@wsj.com
candidates sharpen focus on turnout as race tightens  - wsj
reid j. epstein michael c. bender peter nicholas