Primaries become test run for campaigning during coronavirus

Tuesday's primaries in eight states are the biggest test to date of campaigning during the coronavirus era, a way for parties to test-drive new ways of getting out the vote during a time when it can be dangerous to leave your home. Voters from Pennsylvania to Iowa to New Mexico will cast ballots in both the Democratic presidential contest, where former Vice President Joe Biden is the only contender with an active campaign and a host of down-ballot primaries for everything from governors to state representatives. Many states postponed elections scheduled between mid-March and May to the date because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Unable to send candidates out to barnstorm the states or volunteers to knock on voters' doors, campaigns have had to improvise. One Pennsylvania Republican congressional campaign recruited 100 people, including its candidate's large extended family, to hand-write thousands of letters to voters urging support. Another organized "pop-up food banks" for the needy. Others moved up television advertising to capitalize on a captive audience locked down at home. Democrats have created a phone banking model almost along the lines of a technology support hub, where knowledgeable volunteers and staffers can guide confused voters, step by step, through the process of voting by mail. "Any plan you had three months ago is out the window," said Brock Lowrance, a Republican strategist working on two Montana races Sen. Steve Daines' reelection bid and Rep. Greg Gianforte's bid for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. "Campaigns are having to adapt in the ways they're talking to voters but also in the ways voters are going to vote." Some voting experts predict half or more of all ballots cast in the November election will be sent through the mail, as the Centers for Disease Control recommends as a way to lessen the risk of exposure to the virus at polling stations. States have scrambled to adjust to the new reality with some sending every voter an absentee ballot request.

In Iowa, the traditional frenzy of pre-primary barbecues and rallies has shifted to twice-a-week Zoom training of volunteers for Democratic Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield, who then start dialing voters to ensure they've requested and returned their mail ballots. "Just because we're staying home doesn't mean we're standing still," said Sam Newton, communication director for Democratic Iowa Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield.

In Montana, where the populace is more accustomed to voting by mail, the outbreak has still altered the rhythm of the political season. Lowrance says he's noticed far more down-ballot races advertising on television, a reflection of how campaigns have fewer ways to reach voters and also more eyeballs glued to the screen during the quarantine. Lowrance said campaigns, including his own, have had to watch their budgets as the pandemic and economic crash have crimped fundraising and refrained from hiring the legion of door-knockers that usually hit the streets before elections. And now they are having to plan for two possibilities that November will resemble the intense lockdowns of the past two months or the more mixed reality of reopened states.

"It's really trying to build two different plans and execute them," Lowrance said. The greatest attention is in Pennsylvania, however. It's simultaneously the biggest state voting on Tuesday, the only one that is likely to be a presidential battleground in November and the state that's seen the biggest shift in voting in the COVID-19 era.

That's because this is the first statewide election under a new, more permissive mail voting law passed last year. In 2016, only 4.6% of the state's voters cast a ballot by mail. Now 21% of all the state's 8.5 million voters have already requested absentee ballots. Democrats are overwhelmingly the ones asking to vote by mail 1.3 million have filed requests, compared to only 525,000 Republicans, according to state records. That's partly a reflection of GOP distrust of mail voting that's been stoked by President Donald Trump, who has claimed without evidence it will lead to widespread fraud. Even the Trump campaign, recognizing that getting supporters to mail ballots in is key to winning elections, has been pushing Republicans to use the technique.

Some Pennsylvania Republicans have worried Trump is hobbling the party by making its voters distrust the easiest method of voting during the pandemic. Others argue the gap will close in the fall when Democrats aren't the only ones to have a presidential candidate on the ballot. "They had that Bernie and Biden's thing going, and it drove some enthusiasm, as it naturally would," said Dave Feidt, the party chairman in Dauphin County, home to the state capital of Harrisburg.