Less than two weeks from Election Day, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley is expressing “cautious optimism” about the GOP’s chances.
“The president is absolutely hitting his marks right now on the messaging front,” Whatley said, while adding that Republicans have been encouraged by polling averages, early returns and voter enthusiasm.
“Voter enthusiasm is through the roof,” Whatley said.
In a nearly 20-minute phone interview with NOTUS on Wednesday, the first-year RNC chairman addressed concerns about the GOP’s ground game, heaped praise on Donald Trump and Elon Musk and expressed confidence that Republicans are going to win.
“I really like where we’re at,” he said.
Although Trump has resorted to his quintessential self in the closing weeks of the campaign — on Saturday, he went on an extended rant about legendary golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia, and on Sunday, he referred to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff as the “enemy within” — Whatley was emphatic that Trump and Trump alone was driving the GOP optimism.
“Donald Trump is the only candidate right now that could go up against the Democratic machine and be able to deliver consistent messaging that the American people support,” Whatley told NOTUS.
When Whatley took over the RNC, a top priority for him was rebuilding the ground game for Republicans in swing states.
Despite some questions and criticism — Semafor reported last month that former RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had “grumbled” to allies that the RNC’s ground game is “lacking” — Whatley said Republicans “absolutely” have as good of a ground game as Democrats.
He emphasized that, for the first time, the RNC has been able to coordinate get-out-the-vote efforts with outside groups such as Turning Point USA, the National Rifle Association and Americans for Prosperity. “They’re being very effective and hitting their programs at the same time that we’re hitting our programs, and we’ve actually knocked on twice as many doors for low-propensity voters as we did in 2020,” Whatley said.
“We feel like, all in all, this thing is hitting at the right time,” he told NOTUS.
On top of partnering with GOP-friendly groups, Republicans have also gotten a big boost from Musk. In addition to donating $75 million to America PAC, Musk has boosted Republican messages on his social media platform, X, given $1 million a day to a random person in an effort to register more Republican voters and has cheered questionable tactics like pitting Arab American and Jewish voters against each other with opposing messages.
Asked if the RNC should be engaging the same tactics that Musk is promoting, Whatley simply applauded the world’s richest man.
“The fact that we’ve got Elon Musk on board is absolutely huge,” Whatley said. “And I think from an operational standpoint, what he’s doing through America PAC? Very, very helpful.”
“He is the tip of the spear on so many different aspects of where this country needs to go,” Whatley added. “And him supporting Donald Trump and being out as aggressively as he is, really is helping the rest of that tech community, the entrepreneurial community, to kind of stand up and say, ‘Hey, it’s OK to be there.’”
He said what Musk was doing “complements” what the RNC is doing as the group targets low-propensity and high-propensity voters.
But if you ask Whatley about the race, Trump doesn’t actually need much help.
“The guy is a one-person turnout machine,” the RNC chair said of Trump.
“He is absolutely driving turnout like we’ve never seen before, which is great because we need it, and I think that this election cycle is going to be a turnout election cycle,” he said.
Asked if there were any challenges with a candidate like Trump, Whatley insisted there were “none at all.”
Although Whatley wasn’t exactly declaring victory just yet, it was clear he thinks Republicans are in command of the election.
“We have always historically seen some sort of an undervote when it comes to polling Donald Trump, and sometimes that’s a point or two, sometimes it’s more significant,” Whatley said.
He said the thing Republicans were watching right now is that Trump has been trending better with polls than he did four and eight years ago. And he said poll aggregators for the swing states showed a “small but durable lead” for Trump.
“That matches what we’re seeing with our internals, and we feel like we’re in a much better position going into these last two weeks than we were either in 2016 or 2020,” he said.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.