Votes in the November 2024, presidential election are still being counted, but it is clear that Democratic turnout was down. This raises a question about modern campaign strategies, given Kamala Harris’ investments in field offices and other traditional get-out-the-vote measures in key battleground states
Was relying on this approach a mistake? Joshua Darr and Sean Whyard are the authors of a new book that explores the effect of campaign field offices. I interviewed them about their research and what it can tell us about 2024.
Danny Hayes: First of all, let’s start with a basic question. What are field offices, and what do campaigns use them for?
Joshua Darr and Sean Whyard: Field offices are commercial office spaces that campaigns rent temporarily during an election season. These are often in locations that were once retail storefronts. Their main purpose is to serve as a hub for organizers to train volunteers – and a base for these volunteers to reach out to voters, whether that be phone banking or heading out to knock on doors. Field offices also host campaign events, and offer opportunities for interested passersby to pick up literature and yard signs, or sign up for a voter contact shift.
Do these investments in the ground game pay off? What does research find about the effect of field offices in previous presidential elections?
Estimates vary, but field offices have small but real effects on candidate vote share. Measured across multiple elections, our analysis finds that opening at least one field office in a given county increases partisan vote share by roughly 1 percentage point. For instance, in 2008, one study estimated that Barack Obama’s field offices increased his vote share by 0.8%. For Hillary Clinton, the effect on vote share was almost exactly 1 point, even though her campaign opened far fewer offices than did Obama in the previous cycles. We find similar results for Republican presidential campaigns.
In extremely close elections, it’s not unreasonable to think that a much larger investment in the field could push a candidate over the top in battleground states.
Just before the election, you posted maps on social media showing that the Harris campaign had more field offices than Trump in several battleground states. Given Trump’s victory and what appears to be a decline in Democratic turnout, does this mean that field organizing didn’t matter?
When a candidate loses, it’s tempting to say that anything the campaign did is worthless, but that’s not backed up by the evidence. For example, voter turnout rose in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, four of the only seven states where that occurred. Those field offices likely helped Harris, but just not enough.
Harris fared much better in battleground states where the campaign was hotly contested than in the safe states. Across the seven most important swing states, Trump gained roughly 2 points relative to 2020. But Trump’s gains were higher in states where neither party pursued much in the way of campaign activities, including New Jersey (4.9 percentage points), Massachusetts (4.4), and New York (6.4).
It is also worth noting that the total number of Harris offices was 200 fewer than even Hillary Clinton’s total in 2016, and roughly one-third as many as Obama opened in 2008. We have yet to see a repeat of the depth or breadth of investment in the field that Obama showed in his two wins.
In our book, we describe the positive impact that offices have on volunteer and staff morale. Offices and the preparatory work that occurs within them empower campaigns to conduct the sort of person-to-person organizing that benefits the person on the ticket and improves democratic participation. But obviously offices do not vote and a strong ground game does not guarantee electoral success. A campaign office cannot make up for low candidate approval ratings, negative economic conditions, or an unfavorable political climate facing the incumbent party.
In the digital media era, the idea of storefront campaign offices having an impact on presidential elections feels kind of quaint. Is there a sense that campaigns are moving away from this kind of organizing?
Biden won in 2020 without any physical offices, because of the pandemic. It seemed possible that Democrats would follow suit and abandon an office-based approach this time around. They clearly didn’t, even when Biden was the presumptive nominee.
But at the same time, Harris’ investments reflect a consistent downward trend for Democrats: nearly 1,000 field offices in the 2008 campaign, around 780 in 2012, 538 in 2016, and around 350 in 2024. Republicans have gone up and down on the number of campaign offices, from a real effort during Mitt Romney’s 2012 bid to Trump’s lackluster 2016 campaign, a strong Trump 2020 field program – consciously copying the Obama model – followed by yet another drop in 2024. As digital tools improve, it may be that presidential campaigns need fewer field offices.
Nonetheless, organizers, staff, and volunteers need places to connect, share, work, and train. We still think that physical offices give people the best chance to do that. Local-to-local outreach from party volunteers is still the most powerful and cost-effective way to turn out voters and win elections. And these activities are easier to coordinate and execute from physical spaces within strategically chosen communities.
Joshua P. Darr is an associate professor of communication at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship at Syracuse University.
Sean Whyard is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Louisiana State University.
