Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which has faced doubts about its ability to translate enthusiasm into votes, in the past few weeks quietly signed an agreement allowing it to use the Republican National Committee’s massive voter file, POLITICO has learned.

The list-sharing agreement, which reveals a new level of cooperation between the GOP and its surprise front-runner, could be highly beneficial to both sides.


For the Trump campaign, it means access to a database containing a trove of information on more than 200 million Americans, which can be used to power a get-out-the-vote effort. And for the RNC, it means that any information Trump collects from his supporters, many of whom are not traditional Republicans, will be fed back into the database for future use by the party and its candidates.

The agreement, which was confirmed by multiple sources, is similar to one signed by the campaigns of most of the candidates for the GOP nomination.

But it is more notable for Trump, both because the billionaire real estate showman continues to spar with the party and because critics have increasingly questioned whether his campaign has assembled the infrastructure considered necessary to capitalize on his strong poll numbers in key early states.

Part of the skepticism stems from Trump’s apparent reluctance to spend as much as his competitors on television advertising, voter outreach, polling, research and other traditional campaign expenses.

The list-sharing agreement doesn’t require Trump’s campaign to pay for access to the voter data, but it does suggest that Trump’s campaign has invested at least some cash in a data operation. That’s because the RNC requires campaigns to demonstrate a certain level of technical aptitude before such deals are executed. The RNC also requires candidates seeking to enter list-sharing agreements to vow to support the party's eventual nominee.

The RNC initially offered its file to Trump not long after he declared his candidacy in June, and it's unclear what caused the delay in executing the agreement. For the past few months, though, Trump and party leaders have been engaged in an uneasy dance in which the rookie candidate repeatedly hinted he might launch a third-party campaign, even after signing an RNC loyalty pledge separate from the list-sharing agreement. While he recently seemed to rule out the prospect of an independent run, he has continued antagonizing party leaders fearful that his inflammatory rhetoric could undermine their 2016 prospects.

Neither the RNC nor the Trump campaign would comment on the list-sharing agreement. But Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski pointed out that the campaign in the coming weeks will be required to detail its finances for the last three months of the year to the Federal Election Commission “and all will be disclosed at that time.”

But a file-sharing agreement would not necessarily have to be disclosed on an FEC report, since it doesn’t require any money to change hands.

While Trump's campaign has boasted of the reams of contact information it's harvested from supporters who attend rallies and visit his campaign website, that's not the same as a major voter file like the RNC's, which contains years of information on voting histories, supplemented by various forms of consumer data. That level of data is considered critical for identifying and mobilizing persuadable voters.

And sources tell POLITICO that Trump's campaign has reached out to multiple voter data vendors, including a firm called Cambridge Analytica, which is owned by a major donor to Trump rival Ted Cruz, and another called i360, which is owned by the Koch brothers' network. The sources said the Trump campaign didn't pursue a deal with Cambridge Analytica, which offers pricey services, while the Koch operation spurned Trump.

Trump has boasted of his willingness to spend “whatever it takes” from his own fortune to win the White House. But so far, Trump has relied mostly on waves of free publicity, and there’s little evidence his campaign has spent anywhere near as much as those of his rivals.

Through the end of September, the period covered by his most recent FEC report, Trump’s campaign had brought in $5.8 million, mostly from donors, rather than from the candidate’s own pocket. It had spent $5.5 million, and some of its biggest expenses were for T-shirts and hats, rather than TV ads and mailers.

Since then, the campaign has spent a relatively paltry $200,000 on radio ads. A Fox News report on Monday indicated that Trump intends to launch a $2-million-a-week television campaign, though some people close to him privately doubt his willingness to spend significant amounts of his own cash on his campaign.

“If the RNC is offering the file for free, then I am sure that the campaign is using it,” said one source close to Trump, who did not want to be identified questioning Trump’s public proclamations. “List or no list, data or no data, analytics or no analytics, without paid advertising in the final stretch, the campaign will not be able to deliver all the supporters Mr. Trump has persuaded.”