The Republican Party is racing to build a presidential campaign for Donald Trump.

The presumptive GOP nominee enters the general election with an organization even thinner than Mitt Romney's four years ago. Trump won the primary by dominating media coverage. He didn't bother to develop a ground game or data analytics program, believing those modern tools overrated.

The Republican National Committee is filling the void.

The party invested more than $100 million, and counting, since 2012 to construct and refine cutting edge voter turnout and digital operations after being outclassed by President Obama. The plan was to create a turnkey operation for the 2016 nominee that could compete with the Democrats.

The GOP largely succeeded. Yet, despite their advances, the Republicans still find themselves where they didn't want to be (again) at this point in a presidential campaign: Behind.

That's in part because the Trump campaign brings little to the table in the way of field staff and data analysis — and because likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton started ramping up on both fronts more than a year ago.

Clinton is still bogged down by Bernie Sanders, causing myriad political headaches. But she is more organized than Trump in key battlegrounds. The RNC began deploying field staff to the swing states two years ago, a crucial improvement over party efforts in 2012. But the RNC still fell short of its hiring goals, although officials said the committee would reach capacity by mid to late July.

"I think sometimes we confuse the number of bodies with progress. It sounds sexy," RNC political director Chris Carr said in an interview. "Our goal has always been, even on staff, when we reach convention week and beyond, it's game time."

Trump, who minted the presumptive nominee just three weeks ago, employs only around 70 paid staff, compared to Clinton's more than 700. The New York businessman's unorthodox strategy has revolved around leveraging his celebrity to hold massive campaign rallies, drive the discussion on social media and overwhelm his opponents by dominating television news coverage.

The approach worked, allowing Trump to spend tens of millions less than his competition in the GOP primary, and some Democrats worry it could work against Clinton. But Republicans running down ticket are concerned that Trump's lack of traditional organizing could sink them in the fall, leading them to question the RNC's readiness.

RNC officials on Monday detailed for the Washington Examiner the pace of the party's integration with the Trump campaign, and the strength of its get-out-the-vote and data analytics programs. Both are modeled on the innovations of Obama's two presidential campaigns. In addition to the data overhaul begun in early 2013, Carr last year directed a transformation of the field program.

Currently, the RNC political team employs 287, including 223 on the ground in the states. Buttressing them are more than 3,200 trained volunteers in 31 states. Carr said that this capable group of RNC volunteers renders immaterial the Clinton campaign's so-called personnel advantage.

Including unpaid volunteers, the RNC's field program has deployed 1,614 neighborhood team leaders; 1,499 additional team members, plus another 2,624 that are active in some capacity at least once a week. The RNC data and digital department employs 44, including data directors employed to each battleground state. Five staff members are focused on technology.

"We've been maximizing the efficiency of each staff member," RNC deputy chief data officer Liam O'Rourke said, when asked if his team was ready for the general election.

Carr said he sympathized with the anxiety among some Republicans, but said the RNC continues to build out and would reach its original hiring goals, and be ready to compete with Clinton, by the time the GOP nominating convention begins in Cleveland on July 18.

Data and voter turnout operations aren't substitutes for a politically skilled nominee and a winning message. But in a close race, which Clinton vs. Trump looks like at the outset, the stronger grassroots and digital organization can be worth a couple of percentage points at the polls.

That puts Trump at a particular disadvantage, given that he made less use of data and field organizing than most of his Republican competitors. Where most of them would have had at least a skeleton digital and field staff to build on, combined with the RNC's considerable operations, Trump has nothing but the national party.

"The ground game is worth 2.5 points," said a Republican strategist who advised one of Trump's primary opponents. "In a presidential race, guess what the margin usually is?"

It doesn't help matters that making decisions are going to require constant communication and consensus between the nominee's Manhattan headquarters and RNC base camp in Washington, although it should help that Trump political director Rick Wiley held the same post at the RNC in 2012. The Clinton campaign is more likely to process decisions under one roof, at its headquarters in Brooklyn.

Clinton's weak point is her lack of skill as a candidate.

The former attorney, first lady, New York senator and secretary of state sports the more impressive resume. But her personal appeal and communication skills pale by comparison to Obama and the last Democratic president before him, Bill Clinton.

Democrats expect Clinton to be better organized than Trump and run the more technically proficient campaign. But they warn that that shouldn't be an excuse to get complacent, especially given Trump's skill at controlling the media narrative on a day-to-day basis and his asymmetrical approach to campaigning.

"Republicans cannot compete with the Clinton field team. However, Republicans are known to run strong air campaigns, and Donald Trump is a magnate for media coverage," said Ed Espinoza, a Democratic campaign operative. "It's going to be expensive to compete with that kind of coverage, and that more than anything else is something that Democrats should not underestimate."