A lot of apparently-odd behavior during campaigns makes a lot more sense when you realize that GOTV (get out the vote), or suppressing your opponents' vote, can

A lot of apparently-odd behavior during campaigns makes a lot more sense when you realize that GOTV (get out the vote), or suppressing your opponents' vote, can be a more effective use of time and resources than actually trying to sway undecideds, in a (de facto) two-party system like ours. This is also why Hillary's nomination was alarming to anyone with a sense of how almost all Republicans and a lot of blue-collar Dems viewed her (rightly or wrongly—doesn't matter). Her nomination was a huge, free boost to R GOTV and gave the Ds an uphill battle for GOTV on their own side (again, doesn't matter whether that was "fair", it just was).