Though elite-based campaign mobilization was thought to be dead just a few election cycles ago, it has come roaring back in recent years. The vast majority of this direct voter outreach is coordinated through campaign field offices. Despite the increasing importance of such activities, little is known about where campaigns choose to locate these field offices and what effect campaign offices have on election outcomes. We develop a theoretical argument about where candidates will locate these offices, and test our argument using data from recent elections. We also show that these field offices increase county-level vote share by approximately 1%, netting Obama approximately 275,000 additional votes in the 2008 election. We conclude by discussing the normative implications of increased campaign investment in field operations.
AistrupJ. (2004). Constituency diversity and party competition: A county and state level analysis. Political Research Quarterly, 57, 276-281.
2.
AldrichJ. (1995). Why Parties?Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
3.
AllanN. (2012). Campaign, Inc: How presidential elections boost the economy. The Atlantic. Available from http://tinyurl.com/7qb8et5
4.
AlthausS.NardulliP.ShawD. (2002). Candidate appearances in presidential elections, 1972-2000. Political Communication, 19, 49-72.
5.
AlvarezR.HopkinsA.SinclairB. (2010). Mobilizing Pasadena democrats: Measuring the effects of partisan campaign contacts. Journal of Politics, 72, 31-44.
6.
BaiM. (2004, November21). Who lost Ohio?New York Times, p. 67.
7.
BartelsL. (1985). Resource allocation in a presidential campaign. Journal of Politics, 47, 928-936.
8.
CampbellJ. (2008). The American campaign. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
9.
ChenL.ReevesA. (2011). Turning out the base or appealing to the periphery? An analysis of county-level candidate appearances in the 2008 presidential campaign. American Politics Research, 39, 534-556.
10.
CoffeyD.CohenD.GreenJ.SchneiderM.TadlockB.CarnahanD.KingsburyD. (2011). The battle for Ohio in 2008. In MagelbyD. (Ed.), The change election (pp. 172-211). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
11.
ColantoniC.LevesqueT.OrdeshookP. (1975). Campaign resource allocation under the electoral college. American Political Science Review, 69, 141-154.
12.
CooperM. (2012, May6). 9 swing states, critical to presidential race, are mixed lot. The New York Times, p. A1.
13.
CoxG.McCubbinsM. (1986). Electoral politics as a redistributive game. Journal of Politics, 48, 370-389.
14.
D‘AprileS. (2013, April11). Movers and shakers: Jim Messina. Campaigns and Elections. Available from http://tinyurl.com/btvw8ze
15.
DemissieA. (2012, October26). A super-close look at Ohio, the state that could decide it all. The Grio. Available from http://tinyurl.com/cke8rm8
16.
ExleyZ. (2008, October8). The new organizers: What’s really behind Obama’s ground game. The Huffington Post. Available from http://tinyurl.com/48rq8s.
17.
FranzM.FreedmanP.GoldsteinK.RidoutT. (2007). Campaign advertising and American democracy. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
18.
FungA. (2003). Associations and democracy: Between theories, hopes, and realities. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 515-539.
19.
GerberA.GreenD. (2000). The effects of canvassing, direct mail, and telephone contact on voter turnout: A field experiment. American Political Science Review, 94, 653-663.
20.
GerberA.GreenD. (2004). Get out the vote! How to increase voter turnout. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.
21.
GimpelJ.KaufmannK.Pearson-MerkowitzS. (2007). Battleground states versus blackout states: The behavioral implications of modern presidential campaigns. Journal of Politics, 69, 786-797.
22.
HeberligE.FranciaP.GreeneS. (2010). The conditional party teams of the 2008 North Carolina federal elections. In MagelbyD. (Ed.), The change election (pp. 108-139). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
23.
HeilemannJ.HalperinM. (2010). Game change. New York, NY: Harper.
24.
HolbrookT.McClurgS. (2005). The mobilization of core supporters: Campaigns, turnout, and electoral composition in United States presidential elections. American Journal of Political Science, 49, 689-703.
25.
HuberG.ArceneauxK. (2007). Identifying the persuasive effects of presidential advertising. American Journal of Political Science, 51, 957-977.
26.
IssenbergS. (2012, December19). A more perfect union. MIT Technology Review. Available from http://tinyurl.com/bpykz7t
27.
KellyS. (1961). The presidential campaign. In DavidP. (Ed.), The presidential election in transition, 1960-1961. Washington: DC: The Brookings Institution Press.
28.
LevenduskyM.PopeJ.JackmanS. (2008). Measuring district-level partisanship with implications for the analysis of U.S. elections. Journal of Politics, 70, 736-753.
29.
MasketS. (2009). Did Obama’s ground game matter? The Influence of local field offices during the 2008 presidential election. Public Opinion Quarterly, 73, 1023-1039.
30.
MasketS.SidesJ.VavreckL. (2013). The impact of the ground game in the 2012 election. Unpublished manuscript, George Washington University, Washington, DC.
31.
McGheeE.SidesJ. (2011). Do campaigns drive partisan turnout?Political Behavior, 33, 313-333.
32.
MiddletonJ.GreenD. (2008). Do community-base voter mobilization campaigns work even in battleground states? Evaluating the effectiveness of Moveon’s 2004 outreach campaign. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 3, 63-82.
SinclairB.McConnellM.MichelsonM. (2013). Local canvassing: The efficacy of grassroots voter mobilization. Political Communication, 30, 42-57.
42.
SulzbergerA.BarbaroM. (2012, January1). Over phones and greasy pizza, a battle for Iowa. New York Times, p. A1.
43.
TumultyK. (2008, October12). In battleground Virginia, a tale of two ground games. Time. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/3v832m
44.
VerbaS.SchlozmanK.BradyH. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
45.
WestD. (1983). Constituencies and travel allocations in the 1980 presidential campaign. American Journal of Political Science, 27, 515-529.
46.
ZelenyJ. (2008, October12). Obama battle block by block to get voters to the polls. New York Times, p. A34.
47.
ZelenyJ. (2013a, January25). G.O.P mulls a strategy from Obama’s playbook. New York Times, p. A18.
48.
ZelenyJ. (2013b, January19). Obama to Turn Campaign Machinery to Promoting Policy. New York Times, p. A11.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
