Campaign toils to convince Republicans to vote early, crucial to winning the election, while ensuring they don’t annoy Trump

Donald Trump’s attacks on mail-in voting have increasingly caused heartburn for the Trump 2024 campaign as they attempt to undo the self-sabotage by ramping up operations in key battleground states encouraging Republicans to vote early and by mail ahead of the presidential election.

The former US president has continued his crusade in recent months: in December he called for the end of mail-in voting entirely, before claiming in an interview last month that “any time the mail is involved, you’re going to have cheating”.

Trump’s attacks are complicating efforts at the Trump campaign to convince Republicans to vote early, which advisers know is crucial to win the election given Democratic voters have no qualms about voting by mail or organizing ballot initiatives and have given their party a major advantage.

Just 28% of Republicans support allowing any voter to cast a ballot by mail, compared with 84% of Democrats, according to a study in February by the Pew Research Center. A large part of that thinking, sources close to Trump concede, has been driven by the former president’s criticism of early voting.