Size Matters: How The Harris Campaign Is Turning Crowds Into Volunteers

Crowd size has become a talking point for both presidential candidates.

Crowd size has become a talking point for both presidential candidates. Former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the crowds at Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent campaign rally in Michigan were AI-generated.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’D” it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” the former president said on his social media platform, Truth Social.

The Harris campaign shut down the claims by replying with a video of the vice president with her running mate, Tim Walz, cheering the crowd of reportedly 15,000 people as the two got off of Air Force 2.

As Trump continues to criticize Harris’s crowd sizes, her campaign team is focusing on turning the sudden burst of enthusiasm within the Democratic party as a way to mobilize volunteers in key swing states.

“We have this very organic, very real, very palpable energy from people that want to support the ticket,” Dan Kanninen, the Harris campaign’s battleground states director, told NBC News. “We are turning that energy and that enthusiasm into action.”

Added Kanninen, “And at all of these events, because we’re organized, because there is a large campaign presence across the battleground states—more than 1,500 staff, more than 260 offices—those teams are able to effectively marshal that enthusiasm into volunteer shifts that mean a direct line into additional volunteer recruitment, into voter contact, knocking doors, making phone calls and driving that forward in a way that actually appreciably changes the margins in these very, very close states.”

Harris’s campaign said volunteers had more than 13,000 conversations with voters in Wisconsin while she campaigned there last weekend. Also, more than 1,100 people signed up to volunteer during a Detroit rally.

Kanninen confirmed with NBC News that the campaign is investing a lot of resources in organizing in the “big seven” swing states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.

Recent polls show a tight race between Harris and Trump in the national polling average, according to the Decision Desk HQ/The Hill. According to its polling, Harris held a narrow 0.3 point lead as of Aug. 12.

Real Clear Polling shows Harris up 3 points in Michigan and Wisconsin, 2 points in Arizona, and a point in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. It’s currently a tie in Georgia, while Trump is up 3 points in Nevada as of Aug. 14.