Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are virtually tied in Ohio, according to RealClear Politics, but Trump's campaign offices in the state are "nearly empty," The Los Angeles Times reports.
The Clinton campaign employs hundreds of staffers in Ohio, who coordinate with thousands of volunteers to conduct phone banks, canvasses, and other ground-level strategies.
Trump supporters, on the other hand, must organize themselves without assistance from his campaign.
Incumbent Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican challenged by former Gov. Ted Strickland, holds a double-digit lead over his opponent, and is much more active with volunteers. Portman's campaign manager Corry Bliss told the Times that by next week volunteers will have knocked on 4.5 million voters' doors since the campaign began 17 months ago.
Portman's campaign database holds information on almost 1 million supporters and 2.6 million swing voters, who are divided into 22 groups based on their preferred issues, to be targeted with ads, door hangers and phone calls.
"It's going to benefit all Republicans in Ohio, if you're running for president or city council," Bliss told the Times.
"Anything that they have had has been minuscule and very, very late in coming," said Chris Schrimpf, a political strategist who worked for Gov. John Kasich, told the Times.
"To the extent that Trump does well or okay in Ohio, he's really riding the coattails of Rob Portman's effort and the Ohio Republican Party's."
Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges has yet to announce that he will vote for Trump in the upcoming election, and according to The Cincinnati Enquirer, his wife refused to allow a Trump sign on their lawn.
"The governor of the state says openly that he does not support Trump, and the party is led by the governor," David Pepper, state Democratic Party chairman, told the Times.
"There's no trust on which they could build a ground game."
Pepper has gone to empty Trump campaign offices and uploaded pictures of them to social media.
"The empty office is the perfect metaphor," he added. "It's a hollow effort."
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