in tuesday night<u+2019>s vice-presidential debate, sen. tim kaine was rude, boorish and hectoring. gov. mike pence dominated with his humble, polite demeanor, command of facts and midwestern common sense. donald trump needs to match that performance in his debate sunday with hillary clinton. mr. trump needs a win in part to offset his disadvantage in one of the election<u+2019>s most important activities: get-out-the-vote efforts. democrats have opened more field offices, deployed far more organizers, and coordinated between hillary clinton <u+2019>s campaign and the party. mr. trump has shown little interest in this, content to leave the turnout operation to the republican national committee. the rnc is doing great things, but its work would have been more effective if mr. trump had made this a campaign priority. all of those new faces at mr. trump<u+2019>s many rallies during the past 16 months should have been systematically recruited, trained and deployed into a massive gop ground game. if democrats have a bigger and better-organized effort, it could prove decisive. consider 2012. the day before the election, president obama was ahead of mitt romney by only 0.7% in the real clear politics average of polls. yet mr. obama won the popular vote by 3.9%. not a single reputable poll had predicted a margin that big. it<u+2019>s likely that mr. obama outperformed because of a superior ground game. mr. romney, in combination with state and local republican party committees, also mounted an extensive get-out-the-vote effort. exit polls reported that the romney campaign personally contacted 31% of voters, and mr. obama<u+2019>s campaign 30%. but team obama emphasized the quality of its outreach. the democrats mapped the social networks of millions of donors and volunteers so that swing voters could be contacted by someone they knew. if no volunteer knew the target voter, then the obama campaign would assign someone who lived nearby and whose personal profile was similar. the precision with which the democratic campaign matched volunteers and target voters helps explain why mr. obama carried the last-minute deciders. on the republican side, the phone-bank volunteer or canvasser probably didn<u+2019>t know the target voter or necessarily have the same profile. something similar happened in 2004. the day before that election, president george w. bush led sen. john kerry by 1.5% in the real clear politics average. yet mr. bush won the popular vote by 2.4%. although mr. kerry benefited from his campaign<u+2019>s extensive work turning out the vote and a huge ground game financed by george soros called <u+201c>america coming together,<u+201d> the bush-cheney campaign had spent two years building the largest volunteer get-out-the-vote effort in the nation<u+2019>s history. neighbors and peers were enlisted to talk to undecided voters, which bent turnout in the gop<u+2019>s direction. mrs. clinton, for all her mechanical advantages, does face a substantial challenge: her supporters haven<u+2019>t been enthusiastic about voting, and it shows. by last thursday nearly 67,000 iowa democrats had requested absentee ballots, down from more than 119,000 four years before, according to iowa starting line , a state politics blog. that same morning, mrs. clinton flew to des moines to rally democrats as the state<u+2019>s early voting period opened. at day<u+2019>s end, 526 early votes had been cast in polk county (which includes des moines), only one more than in 2012. and mr. obama didn<u+2019>t need to appear to spark turnout back then. mr. trump has enjoyed an enthusiasm advantage in surveys for the past year. his backers have consistently been more eager to vote and more positive about their support. if it persists, this could compensate somewhat for his lack of organization. but mrs. clinton<u+2019>s strong performance in the first presidential debate may have changed things. a cbs news poll this week found 46% of her supporters were <u+201c>very enthusiastic<u+201d> about voting, up from 39% last month. forty-six percent of mr. trump<u+2019>s voters were <u+201c>very enthusiastic,<u+201d> down from 48% last month. a fox news poll of likely voters late last week found 69% of clinton voters <u+201c>strongly<u+201d> support her while only 64% of trump voters <u+201c>strongly<u+201d> support him<u+2014>a reversal of past trends. apparently the first debate fired up democrats and discouraged republicans. if democrats have a bigger turnout machine, mr. trump must re-energize his supporters to counter it. that means after failing in the first debate, there<u+2019>s enormous pressure on him to win the second. mr. rove helped organize the political-action committee american crossroads and is the author of <u+201c>the triumph of william mckinley <u+201d> (simon & schuster, 2015).
trump sorely needs a debate win - wsj
karl rove