Ground Game: Orcas versus Narwhals

What we do hasn't changed - only how we do it.

Increasingly the basic strategy of identifying your supporters and getting them to the polls has been augmented by internet smart phone technologies.  Not so long ago campaigns identified supports two ways: (1) same-party voter registration rolls; and (2) canvassing voters by knocking on their doors or calling their telephones.   Then on election day, political party poll watcher would cross of a voters name at the precinct vote station when he or she arrived to cast their ballot.  Throughout the day party workers would collect these sheets, and campaign offices would call those supporters who had not yet voted to urge, remind, and in some cases, drive them down to the polls.

Ground Game: Field Offices

Field Offices Make the Difference

Ohio Map from Daily Beast showing Obama (Blue) Field
Offices compared to Romney (Red) Offices.

DEFINED:  Ground Game are campaign efforts to personally connect to supporters with the goals of identifying, communicating and motivating supporters to vote.    

After the votes are counted, inevitably the wave of stories about how Romney lost and why Obama won came flooding through the news - often with a smug "It-was-all-so-apparant" told-you-so tone.  

The 2012 Election Post-Mortem developed a number themes that have consequences for later elections.  The most important is the enduring critical importance of having a ground campaign.

Campaigns use a variety of methods to communicate with voters.  The most expensive, probably least efficient, and most annoying are the indiscriminate television commercial advertisements.  On the other end of the spectrum is having a supporter contact a personal friend.  The former is easy but massively expensive and inefficient.  The latter is harder to put into place and just as expensive but vastly more effective.

Obama confounded two pre-election predictions with his ground game:  The election would be so close that recounts were likely and his supporters would not run out in the same numbers as they did in 2008.  He did this with a superior ground game with campaign field offices as the base building block.

Obama had more Campaign Field Offices.  These field offices are boots-on-the-ground contacts to the retail voter.  Obama never closed many of his field offices in battleground states.  The number of field offices reflected critical disadvantage for Romney who only secured the nomination (arguably) in April of 2012.  

STATE                          OBAMA FIELD OFFICES              ROMNEY FIELD OFFICES

Ohio                                          131                                                40

Florida                                       106                                               47

Virginia                                       61                                                30

Such was the lag that even if Romney wanted to open up as many offices - he did not have the time.

Obama's Field Offices had one Job: Re-Elect Obama

According to the Atlantic's Molly Ball all of the Obama offices had one thing in common: they were almost exclusively devoted to Barack Obama.  Republican Field Offices typically were sponsored by the local or national GOP party and were devoted primarily to local candidates.  This may reflect, according to Ms. Ball, the fact that Romney campaign - to a larger degree - left much of the ground campaign to the National Republican party.

Voter Turnout: Where the Rubber meets the Road

The Only Poll that Matters is the one on Election Day

Abraham Lincoln did not invent get-out-the-vote efforts in 1840 but he explained it in his report to the then Whig Political Party.  It summed up as follows:  (1)  Divide the electorate into small Districts; (2) In each District maintain a "perfect" list of each registered voter; (3) Ascertain with certainty for whom each voter will support; and (4) Get all Whig-supporters to the polls.

Elections are decided not by the public at-large but by those who bother to vote.  Lincoln's checklist has remained unchanged over the following one hundred twenty eight years.  Although early voting, absentee voting, and mail in ballots have added opportunities and challenges - the maxims have remained the same:  Whoever can get more supporters to the polls wins the election.  Period.