From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt:

Will Trump Surpass Romney’s 2012 Performance in Ohio?
When I wrote the piece contending there’s an excellent chance that Donald Trump will underperform Mitt Romney’s performance in almost every key swing state, a couple of Trump fans objected. They pointed to Maine’s 1st Congressional District, and there, they are correct. There’s one corner of the country where Trump is likely to beat Romney’s performance by a lot, gaining one electoral vote. Break out the party hats.
The other big argument pointed to Ohio, which is indeed, one of the most consequential swing states. And we should give credit where it is due: For a long stretch in September, it looked like Trump would not merely win Ohio but win it by a lot – and the argument that the GOP as a whole should adopt some parts of Trumpism looks a lot stronger if Trump can win Rust Belt states that Romney and John McCain could not.
But the last four polls are a tie, Trump ahead by 1, Trump ahead by 4, and Clinton by 2 points – hardly a lock. The final RealClearPolitics average in 2012 had Obama ahead by 2.9 percentage points. Obama won by 3 points.
A huge question is whether Trump’s entirely-volunteer get-out-the-vote operation will work:
Rather than the kind of operation that drove President Obama’s two victories and President George W. Bush’s successes before that, Trump appears to be relying largely on what has propelled his candidacy: supporters who are taking things into their own hands.
Melissa Mayne of Middletown, Ohio, said she registered 16 people before Tuesday’s deadline and is already planning to help numerous family members get to the polls.
Asked whether she’d coordinated with the Trump campaign, she shook her head: “I did it by myself.”
Let’s get the quote from The Godfather: Part II out of the way:
Michael Corleone: I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren’t.
Hyman Roth: What does that tell you?
Michael Corleone: They could win.
And granted, it looks like Ohio Senator Rob Portman is running a state-of-the-art get-out-the-vote operation, which should help Trump:
Portman campaign manager Corry Bliss said that by Sunday volunteers will have knocked on the doors of 4.5 million voters targeted by the campaign since their effort began 17 months ago.
The campaign’s database includes nearly 1 million supporters and more than 2.6 million swing voters, Bliss said. The campaign has divided those voters into 22 groups depending on their favorite issues, and is courting them with targeted on-line ads, door hangers and telephone contacts.
“It’s going to benefit all Republicans in Ohio, if you’re running for president or city council,” Bliss said.
If Trump does win Ohio, he will achieve something many thought was impossible, winning a hard-fought swing state without any long-standing major campaign get-out-the-vote operation. It will obliterate everything every campaign professional has ever taught or learned about the importance of preparation.
The Ohio branch of Americans for Prosperity, the independent group funded by the Koch brothers and other conservative donors, has made 1.8 million phone calls and knocked on 140,000 doors, according to state director Micah Derry. It is working to reelect Portman, but has taken a pass on the presidential contest.
“Given the size of our operation, we tend to get a little bit of a feel for what’s in the field and what’s not,” Derry said. “We have not run into any Trump folks.”
Others concurred.
“Anything that they have had has been minuscule and very, very late in coming,” said Chris Schrimpf, a Columbus-based political strategist who worked for Gov. John Kasich.
Keep in mind what it took to win the state last time:
But the numbers — Obama opened 131 offices, compared to Romney’s 40, and employed a small army of field staff members — speak for themselves. The Obama campaign was much more tight-lipped about its get-out-the-vote operation than the Romney camp until the final week of the race, when it began to share more information about its efforts. On Election Day, for instance, the president’s campaign said it had 32,854 volunteers scheduled for three-hour shifts in Ohio.
The campaign also turned out far more early voters than Romney’s, meaning the president had already banked a lead by the time Election Day arrived. And Obama’s team was augmented by a large-scale effort from organized labor, galvanized by GOP attacks on collective bargaining rights over the last two years.
In one telling indication of how effective Obama’s get-out-the-vote push was, African-American voters went from 11 percent of the electorate in 2008 to 15 percent in 2012, according to exit polls.