Author Ryan Girdusky said a major reason why President Trump failed to gain increased support among non-college educated white voters is because he did not make enough of an effort to boost voter registration among his base.
Speaking to Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Girdusky said the president simply had to register 10 percent of the 44 million people in this demographic who were not registered to vote in 2016 in order to improve his showing at the polls.
Girdusky said even though Trump carried 22 of the 23 counties that he flipped in 2016 after they supported former President Obama four years earlier, there were 8,000 fewer registered voters in those counties.
“They had 90 percent turnout, he did everything he possibly could except register new voters,” Girdusky said.
Girdusky also pointed to the 2.6 million non-college educated white residents in Pennsylvania who are not registered to vote, as well as more than 2 million in Ohio and Michigan.
President-elect Joe Biden is the projected winner for Michigan and Pennsylvania, while Trump carried Ohio.
Girdusky said Trump could have made an effort to register voters like Stacey Abrams did in Georgia, a state that’s now headed to a recount. Abrams has received widespread praise for her efforts to register voters in the Peach State, where Biden holds a narrow lead.
“He did not sit there and try to register them like Stacey Abrams did in Atlanta. And I think that’s important,” Girdusky said.
He went on to say that Trump’s messaging was often targeted toward Black and Latino voters, where he improved his margins compared with 2016, and less geared toward white voters.
“I heard a lot about the Platinum Plan, the Black unemployment rate, the American Dream plan for Hispanics, all that stuff,” Girdusky said. “I did not hear about a Midwestern plan once. I did not hear about…how to help this entire category of voters not one time.”
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