Much has been written about the 2016 presidential campaigns’ “ground game” efforts — their work to knock on voters’ doors, call them at home, and otherwise directly convince people to vote for their candidates. We look at this from the perspective of the voters, who report on how much they were contacted by the various campaigns. Fewer voters, it seems, were contacted in 2016 than in other recent presidential campaigns, and there was no real advantage for one party over the other.
The 2016 ground game from the voters’ perspective
Ground game efforts were down from 2012, and voters were as likely to report a Republican contact as a Democratic one.
Allison Shelley/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Attention to the ground game has become a conspicuous feature of presidential campaigning in the 21st century. Realizing the importance of mobilizing their partisan base in the closely contested presidential elections, both parties have stepped up their ground games in battleground states. Ground game efforts always have had a prominent place in American election campaigns, especially for the iconic urban political machines, but they did not become a strategic priority at the presidential level until recent elections.
The strategic importance of ground game efforts, though, was challenged in the 2016 presidential race. The Trump campaign, enjoying an avalanche of free media and promoting large-audience rallies, appeared to be eschewing conventional ground game activities. As demonstrated in a recent post by Joshua Darr, the Clinton campaign seemed to place less emphasis on the ground game as well — opening considerably fewer field offices, the key coordinator of grassroots contacts, than the Obama campaign had done four and especially eight years before.
Our research complements the focus on field offices as key elements in the ground game by turning its lens to reports of campaign contacts by the electorate itself. It is based on responses to questions in 2012 and 2016 national surveys, as part of the Comparative National Election Project, asking respondents if they had been directly contacted by representatives of a political party or candidate during the campaign and if these contacts had been personal. [1]
We compare the results on the incidence of party contacts between the two presidential elections by party and for battleground versus non-battleground states. Not only might party strategies be expected to lead to different reports of contact, but also ground game efforts should be more extensive for both parties in the campaign’s presidential battleground states than in the less competitive remainder of the country.
Conventional wisdom that the Republicans were less assiduous in courting voters through direct contacts in 2016 was misplaced
Our results confirm the impressions that grassroots party contacting was less widespread in 2016 than it had been in 2012. Panels one and two of the chart below show a considerable downturn in contacting by both the Democratic and Republican campaigns, especially in the battleground states where it was most pronounced in both years, but also to a limited extent outside of the battlegrounds. [2]
What is surprising, though, is that Democratic contacts were no more likely to be reported than were Republican contacts in the battleground states. This suggests the conventional wisdom that the Republicans were less assiduous in courting voters through direct contacts in 2016 was misplaced. Even if the Trump campaign itself may not have been emphasizing the ground game, it seems likely that the Republican Party and its allies were filling the breach.
Less surprising, Democratic and Republican contacts reached equal percentages of the electorate also in 2012, when both parties in this very tight contest seemed to recognize the importance of an effective ground game even more than they did in 2016.
Because personal contacts are the most effective means of mobilizing voters, our survey interviews went on to ask whether the party contacts were made in person rather than in some other fashion, such as mail or literature drops. The results for this question appear in panels 3 and 4 of the chart. Not surprisingly, having received these more labor-intensive personal contacts was cited much less frequently. In contrast to the results for overall contacts, though, personal contacts were perceived as more frequent in 2016 than in 2012 — and were reported more for the Democratic campaign than the Republican campaign.
Despite the decline in ground game effort overall, therefore, both campaigns had at least doubled their efforts to reach out to voters personally, with the Democrats continuing to enjoy a distinct edge in 2016 as in 2012.
We also analyzed who were the recipients of the party contacts in 2016. As expected, the parties concentrated their efforts on their respective bases of loyal partisans, party activists, and voters in their party primaries. However, both parties were more likely to contact older, better-educated, higher-income, and regular voters as well. While mobilizing their bases is an important part of their strategy, so too is reaching out to potential voters regardless of partisan leanings who are known to turn out at high rates in elections.
Did the decline in reported party contacts affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest? How did the Republicans manage to narrow the much-talked-about Democratic ground game advantage? Did Democratic and Republican parity in contacts offset the putative Democratic edge? Was the contrasting increase in personal contacts in 2016 and their Democratic edge not widespread enough to matter? How much are both parties’ efforts focused on the same voters?
Even if it is not always clear what voters have in mind when they report a contact from a party or candidate, our focus on the perceptions of the ultimate targets of ground game activities raises important questions about party strategies in the 2016 presidential campaign.
[1] The surveys were conducted online as part of the multi-nation Comparative National Election Project (CNEP) by YouGov in 2016 and GfK Knowledge Networks in 2012 using identical party contacting questions.
[2] Similar results for overall contacting, by party and by battleground versus non-battleground, appear for party contacting in the American National Election Study’s 2012 and 2016 elections. This survey did not differentiate personal from other means of contacting.
Paul A. Beck is professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University and co-coordinator of the Comparative National Election Project.
Richard Gunther is professor emeritus of political science at Ohio State University and co-coordinator of the Comparative National Election Project.
Erik Nisbet is an associate professor of communication at Ohio State University.
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