Tuesday, September 27, 2016

How Much Does Campaign Ground Game Really Matter?

Trump’s organizational deficiencies might doom him . . . or they might not matter.
What percentage of Hillary Clinton supporters will actually cast ballots this year? What percentage of Donald Trump supporters?
Yesterday, Katie Packer, former deputy campaign manager for Mitt Romney, scoffed at the notion that Donald Trump could reach the necessary 270 electoral votes, suggesting that Trump would not win any state that he wasn’t leading by five points in the polls.
@jimgeraghty FL, CO, NC, OH. He will not win anyplace he isn’t leading by 5. His campaign has no turnout apparatus outside the party.                                                                                                   — Katie Packer (@katiepack) September 21, 2016
Will Trump underperform his polling numbers because his campaign’s get-out-the-vote operations aren’t as good as Clinton’s?
The entire political world is about to find out how much field offices and data analysis really matter. This year, Clinton’s campaign opened plenty of offices in every swing state — 65 in Florida, 54 in Ohio, 38 in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, 34 in Virginia, 33 in Iowa, 32 in Michigan, and 25 in Colorado and New Hampshire. They’re attempting to replicate and build upon a method that proved ruthlessly effective for the Obama campaign in 2008 and 2012. By comparison, the Trump campaign had just one campaign office open in Florida on September 1. Trump fans fervently believe their man will over-perform his final polling numbers, contending that there’s a “shy Tory” effect — that a significant number of voters support Trump but don’t want to reveal their support in surveys, and Trump inspires such passion in them that get-out-the-vote efforts won’t be as important as usual.
It’s unlikely that get-out-the-vote efforts will be meaningless, however. One analysis concluded that Romney’s voter-mobilization deficiencies ultimately cost him in 2012:
Read the rest from Jim Geraghty HERE.

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1 comment:

cimbri said...

It matters in caucuses - big time. It doesn't matter at all, in this GE.