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.

Temperament

It says a lot about who and where you think you are...

In general:

Candidates who are behind go on the attack.  

Candidates who are ahead stay positive.

Mitt Romney took a surprisingly subdued tone during the final Presidential Debate that focused on foreign policy.  With discontent and criticism mounting on the Administration's actions and statements over the terrorist attack on September 11, 2012 in Libya, Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the Fast and Furious debacle in Mexico - there was plenty of ammunition for Romney.  Following acrimonious tenor and attacks of the previous debates after Denver's first debate - many were surprised when Romney declined to attack Obama as forcefully.  

The only Romney attack that resembled the previous debates came when the Governor explained his characterization of the Obama's trip overseas as an Apology Tour:

"Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to — to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to — to Turkey and Iraq. And — and by way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other nations. And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in those nations and on Arabic TV you said that America had been dismissive and derisive. You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations. Mr. President, America has not dictated to other nations. We have freed other nations from dictators."

Debate Performance I: A Report Card Checklist

How they do depends on eight factors

Entering into the final stretch of the 2012 Presidential Campaign, the debates are upon us.  Debates are common place in State and Federal elections at all levels.  Presidential Campaign Debates are an opportunity to see well-funded and well-prepared candidates bring on their A game in the most watched political debates of the year.  

The value of the debates derive from the format.  Two candidates meet in an unscripted, uncontrolled environment without tele-prompters, notes, or back up.  The debates often provide an insight into the candidate's temperament under pressure.  In truth we elect a candidate less because of their positions on past issues, but rather their character to handle unforeseen future issues.

Liar...Liar

It's typically not a good sign....

Following his universally panned first debate performance, Barack Obama's campaign shifted the tone and tenor of their attacks against challenger Mitt Romney.  Before the debate Romney was the out-of-touch millionaire with off-shore tax havens seeking to tax the middle class in order to give the top 1% a tax break.  Romney looked down upon the 47% hard working Americans who, according to Obama, paid their fair share of taxes while Romney paid only 14% of his income in taxes.

Now Romney is a liar.  

Lexicon: Spending Words

Some words about spending don't really mean what you think.

It goes beyond the eye-rolling the typical American did when confronted with Bill Clinton's legalistic parsing of the word "is."  When accused of lying to the Grand Jury when he said "There is nothing going on between us," Clinton later defended his statement as truthful saying, "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."  He was only continuing the frustrating tradition of lawyers and politicians to make words not mean what most people think they mean.

Two areas of government activity - taxing and spending - create an enormous amount of emotional responses both good and bad.  Today we will talk about words used about spending that don't necessarily mean what you think.

Spending Cuts - doesn't mean you are spending less.

According to National Public Radio, both President Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan have proposed alternative cuts in spending.  According to the news report, Obama " laid out a sweeping vision to cut government deficits by more than $4 trillion in 12 years through tax increases and spending cuts phased in over time."    At the same time, Rep. Paul Ryan, according to NPR proposed a "recent budget blueprint calls for more than $6.2 trillion in spending cuts — many unspecified — over the next decade."  

Neither man proposes a budget where the United States Federal Government spend less money ten years from now than it spends today.  Instead these proposals predict less spending compared to what would occur under the Congressional Budget Office's Baseline Projections.  This projection assumes all current laws stay in place.  So when you "cut" spending in Washington it doesn't mean you are spending less money this year compared to last year - it really means you assume you will spend much more in the future than your plan.

Investing - it sounds better than spending.

When Barack Obama signed the stimulus bill signed the 2009 stimulus bill, he used the word "invest" or  "investment" fifteen times in his speech.  Politicians  shy away from characterizing Government expenditures as "spending."  The word suggests a loss - that the money is spent, gone, with nothing to show for it.  An investment, on the other hand, suggests that we will obtain a return on that money - indeed we will get more money back than we spent.  

QUESTION:  What other words have you heard politicians use instead of the word "spending?"