{"id":787,"date":"2024-11-11T17:30:27","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T17:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=787"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:31:52","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:31:52","slug":"who-won-the-ground-wars-trump-and-harris-field-office-strategies-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-4-candidates-and-the-campaign\/who-won-the-ground-wars-trump-and-harris-field-office-strategies-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\n\n\n

Sean Whyard<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. He studies campaigns and elections. He is the co-author of Storefront Campaigning<\/em> (2024, Cambridge University Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: swhyar1@lsu.edu<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Joshua P. Darr<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Associate Professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and Senior Researcher in the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship at Syracuse University. He is the co-author of Storefront Campaigning<\/em> (2024, Cambridge University Press).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: jpdarr@syr.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

36. The tilted playing field, and a bygone conclusion<\/a> (Dr David Karpf)
37. Looking forwards and looking back: Competing visions of America in the 2024 presidential campaign<\/a> (Prof John Rennie Short)
38. Brat went splat: Or the emotional sticky brand won again<\/a> (Prof Ken Cosgrove)
39. Election 2024: Does money matter anymore?<\/a> (Prof Cayce Myers)
40. Advertising trends in the 2024 presidential race<\/a> (Prof Travis N. Ridout, Prof Michael M. Franz, Prof Erika Franklin Fowler)
41. Who won the ground wars? Trump and Harris field office strategies in 2024<\/a> (Sean Whyard, Dr Joshua P. Darr)
42. Kamala Harris: Idealisation and persecution<\/a> (Dr Amy Tatum)
43. Kamala Harris campaign failed to keep Democratic social coalition together<\/a> (Prof Anup Kumar)
44. Revisiting Indian-American identity in the 2024 U.S. presidential election<\/a> (Dr Madhavi Reddi)
45. Harris missed an opportunity to sway swing voters by not morally reframing her message<\/a> (Prof John H. Parmelee)
46. In pursuit of the true populist at the dawn of America\u2019s golden age<\/a> (Dr Carl Senior)
47. Language and the floor in the 2024 Harris vs Trump televised presidential debate<\/a> (Dr Sylvia Shaw)
48. Nullifying the noise of a racialized claim: Nonverbal communication and the 2024 Harris-Trump debate<\/a> (Prof Erik P. Bucy)
49. A pseudo-scientific revolution? The puzzling relationship between science deference and denial<\/a> (Dr Matt Motta)
50. Amidst recent lows for women congressional candidates, women at the state level thrive<\/a> (Dr Jordan Butcher)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Just four years ago, while the world was grappling with a devastating pandemic, the two U.S. presidential campaigns could not have looked more different in the field. Donald Trump, who invested minimally in field operations in 2016, opened over 300 field offices while Joe Biden had none. While ceding the field to Trump, because of public health concerns, the Biden campaign pivoted to innovative digital organizing strategies, utilizing platforms like Slack to organize and mobilize voters. Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) meanwhile, utilized their field office dominance to hold in-person volunteer trainings and canvass neighborhoods. Questions emerged following Biden\u2019s victory in 2020 about whether in-person field organizing would be cut back in favor of digital organizing that is far less costly. Fast forward four years later and we can confidently state that answer was an emphatic \u201cno.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there is uncertainty on the exact number of field offices for Harris and the Democratic Coordinated Campaign this cycle due to a lack of centralized data and conflicting media reports, reports suggest upwards of 350 offices directly managed by the campaign (The New York Times<\/em><\/a>, 2024). The Trump campaign, meanwhile, invested far less in field offices this cycle than they did in 2020, with an estimate of only 120 offices opened nationwide. Instead, Trump and the RNC outsourced much of the field operations that are typically kept in-house to outside vendors, such as Elon Musk\u2019s “America PAC” and “Turning Point Action PAC.” Clearly, the two camps took wildly different approaches to the ground game this cycle. No longer did Trump have the field to himself. Harris\u2019 campaign dominated the ground game, establishing hundreds of more offices than Trump. So, where exactly did the campaigns invest in field offices this time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, both Harris and Trump focused their ground-game efforts in the seven pivotal battleground states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. We focus here on two Midwestern states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, as well as the southern swing state of Georgia. The map below illustrates where the candidates opened offices in these states, using an original dataset of field office locations collected from the campaign websites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to our data, Harris opened ninety offices in the pivotal rust-belt states of Pennsylvania and Michigan combined, while Trump only opened thirty-eight offices. In Pennsylvania, the prize of the seven battleground states, Harris invested heavily in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, the most populous cities in the state, while also opening offices in ruby-red counties that Trump carried comfortably in 2020. There was far less office investment from Trump in the state, but his strategy mirrored Harris\u2019 in most respects, particularly in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh suburbs. In Michigan, Harris flooded the Detroit metro area with twenty-one offices compared to just Trump\u2019s five. Similarly to Harris\u2019 strategy in Pennsylvania of trying to chip away at Trump\u2019s rural advantage, she opened offices in several Michigan counties that Trump won by 60%+ in 2020. Trump countered with offices in urban areas throughout the state such as Kalmazoo, Ingham (Lansing), and Wayne County (Detroit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Figure 1. 2024 campaign field office locations in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After President Biden\u2019s successful flip of Georgia in 2020, Harris and the Democrats poured extensive resources into trying to hold the state in 2024. Harris opened thirty-one offices statewide compared to Trump\u2019s sixteen. With Atlanta and its neighboring suburbs being the most populous region in the state, both campaigns placed a majority of their offices here. Harris needed to maintain her margins in the greater Atlanta region, while Trump sought to cut into them, attempting to make inroads with black voters. As in the other Midwest swing states, the Harris campaign deliberately invested offices in rural Trump stronghold counties in an attempt to cut into his margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the office placement strategy in these three battleground states did not appear to be exclusive to either \u2018base\u2019 or \u2018swing\u2019 counties. Rather, both campaigns placed offices in counties their party won comfortably in 2020 and in counties they performed poorly in as a way to \u201close by less.\u201d Of particular significance was the Harris campaign\u2019s strategy to establish offices in Trump\u2019s stronghold of rural, white-majority counties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Harris lost, some might view this as an indictment on either her office placement strategy or the broader notion that opening offices is not a recipe for electoral success. We believe a word of caution is warranted before assigning that sort of blame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Offices do not vote: they provide a space for activists and volunteers to coordinate efforts, engage with voters, and organize activities to build support. They are not a substitute for remedying a candidate\u2019s approval ratings, poor economic sentiment among the electorate, or the broader political environment that could be detrimental to an incumbent party\u2019s electoral fortunes, though in the waning days of campaigns it can tempting to think of them that way as anecdotes about excited volunteers and millions of door knocks are promoted by the campaigns. 2024 marked a return to the field for Democrats and a retreat for Republicans, and while that didn\u2019t correlate with victory this year, campaigns will likely be back out in the field renting storefronts and filling them with enthusiastic volunteers in 2028.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Whyard PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University. He studies campaigns and elections. He is the co-author of Storefront Campaigning (2024, Cambridge University Press). Email: swhyar1@lsu.edu  Dr. Joshua P. Darr Associate Professor in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and Senior Researcher in the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1012,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-787","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWho won the ground wars? 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