Hillary Clinton is focusing on firing up her base as the election draws near. | Getty Clinton launches final-stage turnout plan The Democrat shifts from courting conservatives to a pure base strategy for the final full month of the 2016 contest.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — As the last full month of this presidential contest begins, Hillary Clinton is shifting toward a pure base-turnout strategy, inching away from her all-out effort to lure disaffected Republicans in favor of a traditional get-Democrats-to-the-polls effort that mirrors Barack Obama’s 2012 game-plan.

Gone are Clinton’s regular references to winning over moderate conservatives and her sly allusions to GOP leaders meant to give defecting Republicans a framework for abandoning their nominee. With 39 days to go, Brooklyn headquarters and battleground state operatives are activating the massive surrogate machinery, a heavy early voting push, and a large-scale registration offensive they think they need to secure a win in November.


Never mind, they insist, that Donald Trump lacks anything close to an equivalent turnout infrastructure.

"The thing about this election is — as unconventional as it is — what’s remarkable is how conventional it is,” said Steve Schale, a Florida Democratic strategist who ran Obama’s state teams. "You go back to 1976, there have been a billion votes cast for president, and there’s less than five million votes separating the Republican and Democratic candidates. Why would this be different?"

Trump’s team has also turned more fully to agitating the real estate developer’s base of white men, as campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and campaign chief Steve Bannon calculate that such a push — matched with a solidifying of the Republican base that could see him hang onto suburban white women — should be enough to edge him over the line in November.

The Democrat’s team won’t abandon all efforts to reach center-right voters – especially not after the last week of September saw her opponent revert to an insult-driven campaign by body-shaming a Latina pageant queen and dredging up Bill Clinton’s infidelities as a means to tar Hillary Clinton. Indeed, the campaign this week unveiled radio ads highlighting Republican voters backing her in seven swing states, while it touted the endorsement of former Virginia Sen. John Warner. But the push is no longer a Tier One priority, as resources shift to energizing the young and minority voters Clinton will need on her side.

Clinton’s targets almost universally echo Obama’s from four years ago in the individual states where the election will be won and lost.

In Ohio, for example, local organizers who are canvassing and registering party members are explicitly aiming to replicate Obama’s support — which itself looked different in 2008 and 2012 than any previous winning combination there, thanks to its heavier reliance on African American and Latino voters. They are, therefore, shuffling back from the earlier attempt to broaden Clinton’s backing into the right side of the aisle.

“The clearest path to winning a state like Ohio is to re-energize the Obama coalition, which means making sure people are registered — which we’ve been doing for months — and then spending the next 39 days making sure the base that delivered Obama the presidency is energized to show up,” explained Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper. “That is clearly Step One to winning."

Zeroing in on low-propensity voters who don’t reliably get out to the polls every two years, Clinton’s team has circulated a wide array of surrogates, from actors to pols, to catch voters' eyes in new ways — the Ohio team was especially enthused to get the cast of the West Wing in the state last week.

The Clinton-backing celebrities have also been tasked with pointing citizens to the campaign’s voter registration website as the nominee aims to get 3 million new Americans on the voting rolls before November 8, and her highest-profile surrogates are each now significantly ratcheting up their trail time. Michelle Obama is expected to announce new campaign stops soon, while Barack Obama and Joe Biden will both hit Florida for Clinton next week, Bernie Sanders will visit Iowa and Minnesota, Bill Clinton will barnstorm Ohio, and Elizabeth Warren will stop through Nevada after she appeared at a Boston fundraiser for Clinton this week.

“We had a Democratic convention on Saturday in Ohio and I said to that group, ‘Listen, forget all the polling. Forget the plus-five, minus-five. At some point, even forget the debates. Ohio is Ohio, it’s going to be close to the very end, and the better ground game wins.' And that’s that,” said Pepper, acknowledging how familiar that sounds to any Democrat who followed 2012's base-focused race.

Meanwhile, the campaign's activity has stepped up even further in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in recent days as those states begin their in-person early voting, and in North Carolina and Florida as their mail-in ballot programs kick off.

The hallmarks of yet another Democratic turnout-focused campaign roll on: Clinton's Iowa rally on Thursday was pegged to the beginning of early voting, and her campaign staff walked voters to the polls down the street immediately as it ended. Sanders' two appearances next week, meanwhile, are also in states where early voting's begun.

Those efforts are starting to pay off. An Associated Press analysis of early ballot requests this week showed apparent gains for the Democrat in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia, even while Trump looked to be ahead of Romney's pace in Iowa, though still behind Clinton.

“Early votes allow us to start banking votes, and once we do that we can, for lack of a better word, redline those voters — cross them off our list. Bring more efficiency to our resources and broaden the number of conversations we’re having,” explained Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. "The more we bank now the more people we can reach out to later."

And back in Clinton’s state offices, her organizers are planning mobilization events with surrogates and volunteers pegged to impending registration deadlines in states where there’s no same-day registration provision. Battlegrounds like Pennsylvania and Michigan have deadlines in early October — as does Ohio, where Bill Clinton’s bus tour next week will be focused on registration and early voting.

Such activities, recognize Democrats, are hardly the marks of a campaign veering into uncharted territory.

“There’s going to be 1.5 to 2 million people who’re going to get a ballot to vote in ten days, and the deadline to register here in Florida is in 11 days. I go back to ’08 and ’12, and in both cycles right now we were in the midst of trips around Florida registration,” said Schale, just before Clinton returned to south Florida for a two-stop swing on Friday.

“They don’t have to do anything unconventional at this point to win."

