The mobilization of U.S. military veterans to support President-elect Donald Trump's candidacy was the key piece of a 10-point plan by Trump and the Republican National Committee to address veterans' issues during the campaign, the Washington Examiner reported.
"The key to Trump's appeal with veterans was that, first and foremost, this was a candidate who made veterans issues a center point of his campaign," Bob Carey, RNC director of military and veteran engagement, told the Examiner.
Veterans voted for Trump in record numbers, 61 percent to 31 percent for Clinton, according to CNN exit polls, setting a record dating back to 1976 when the data started being tracked.
Mitt Romney topped President Barack Obama by 20 percent in 2012, while war hero John McCain won by just 10 percent over Obama in 2008, per the Examiner.
"Using data analytics and modeling we were able to identify 1.1 million new veteran voters," Carey said. "We assigned each veteran a score of how likely they were to vote Republican."
The RNC also had full-time staffers focus on veteran voter turnout since fall of 2014, per the report. In 2016, the staff had 50 full-timers, 350 field operatives and 27,000 veteran volunteers knocking on doors or calling likely veteran voters to the total of 1.35 million interactions in battleground states during the campaign, the Examiner reported.
"Veterans are among the most trusted groups in the country," Carey said. "On average, veteran engagements with voters were twice as long as non-veteran initiated engagements. Voters contacted by a veteran are also twice as likely to answer their questions."
The strategy worked, as 78 percent of veterans voted in the election, Carey told the Examiner.
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