Does Obama Have the Stronger Ground Game in Ohio?
Last week National Review reported some rather unsettling campaign numbers out of Ohio:
Obama has 120 campaign offices in the state, while Romney has 40. The Obama campaign has spent $52 million on advertising in Ohio, while the Romney campaign has spent $30 million (as of October 5). However, the Republican National Committee has spent $4.4 million to the DNC’s zero, and there have been $15.3 million in ads from right-leaning outside groups and super PACs against $11.6 million from left-leaning outside groups.
Looking at these raw numbers, it would appear that the Romney campaign is operating a lean Ohio operation in the face of a towering Obama opposition, but it’s not quite that simple.
On its face, the disparate number of campaign offices and dollars spent may seem troubling, but it’s not necessarily symptomatic of a floundering Romney campaign. First, let’s consider the campaign offices. A look at the 2008 map from the presidential campaign shows that the vast majority of the state’s counties voted for Sen. John McCain that year.
In 2010, when Republicans swept both houses of the General Assembly, all statewide offices, and the open Senate seat, most counties in the state voted Republican, with large swaths of the state voting with a 20%+ GOP advantage.
These counties are solidly, historically in the Republican camp. If you compare these maps with the places Romney has campaign offices, you can see that he is targeting areas that Democrats won in 2008 and 2010, hoping to gain ground. There’s not necessarily a good reason to have a campaign office on every street corner in every red-voting county. That said, we can’t discount the fact that the winner of Ohio’s important 18 electoral votes will be decided by the popular vote and not by winning individual counties, so we won’t know until Election Day if Obama’s strategy to have more campaign offices than counties in Ohio will pay off.
Regardless of the number of offices, the efficiency and effectiveness of staff and volunteers can multiply the efforts of a single campaign office and that’s where the GOP may be gaining an advantage. The Romney campaign offices are combining their efforts with those of other GOP candidates, so Romney Victory Centers are also Ohio GOP Victory Centers. It’s an efficient use of real estate, equipment, and volunteers who can campaign for multiple candidates during the same shift and even during the same phone call.
In addition, Fox News’ Carl Cameron reported last Tuesday that the Republicans are experimenting with new data mining and computer methodology to find what they call “new persuadable voters.” Have we reached the point where sophisticated digital technology has replaced the need for 120 field offices? We will find out on November 6.
Last week the Romney campaign released a report of their Ohio efforts with some impressive numbers about the ground game:
On Saturday alone, the campaign knocked on 123,348 doors, concluding a week in which 247,385 doors were knocked statewide. That brings our total doors knocks since May to 1,463,156, in addition to the 3,738,469 phone calls we’ve made since then. The last four weeks have shown steady growth in our door knocking program, and our Victory Centers are booming with volunteer activity. On Saturday, in Lebanon (Warren County), in advance of Governor Romney’s speech before 10,000 Ohioans, over 188 volunteers knocked on 15,032 doors out of our Victory Center there. It was an amazing display of voter contact in a county that the Romney-Ryan ticket will return to a margin of victory comparable to 2004.
I voted Republican in this year’s primary, so I am on the official GOP phone list. Any time there is a campaign event in the area I get a call from the Romney folks. They also called (more than once) to suggest that I request an absentee ballot. On the first day of early voting, they called to let me know I could utilize that option. I’m not kidding when I say I hear from Romney’s people more than I hear from my mother. Their ground game has been largely focused on turning out absentee and early voters and “banking” their votes early so they can reduce the number of voters they need to contact as Election Day approaches.
After the final debate, Greta Van Susteren asked GOP Chairman Reince Priebus about the ground game in Ohio. He emphasized the importance of banking early absentee ballots:
I think we’ve got the best technology in the world. We’ve got our GOP Universe that we’re tracking every day with absentee ballots. We’re tracking them with municipal clerks in every county and every municipality in Ohio…where the ballots are, where the request forms are at, whether the ballots have been returned, whether the request forms have been returned. It’s just like Abraham Lincoln said many years ago, “Find every Whig and get them to the polls,” except for today, we’ve got better technology, bigger groups of people, more Victory Centers.
In addition to the official Romney campaign efforts, there are outside groups working under the radar to make sure he is elected. (Or, more accurately, to make sure Obama is not re-elected.)
The conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC), led by Ralph Reed, is micro-targeting socially conservative Catholic and evangelical Christians in Ohio. Reed claims to have millions of swing state voters in his database:
We have built a file, working with third-party organizations, with voter registration information as well as church membership and conservative and Christian book buyer data and other consumer data, a voter file of faithful Catholics and evangelical Christians that has 17.1 million voters in the roughly 15 or 20 states that will decide the outcome of this election. We’re going to be contacting every one of those households a minimum of seven times, including three pieces of mail, two phone calls. We have over 13 million cellphone numbers for these voters.
My 21-year-old son, away at college, is on Reed’s list, so I am also treated to those calls and mailings. We have received at least two pieces of mail from his group (it’s hard to keep them all straight) and a couple of phone calls. Though the official Romney campaign is playing to the moderates on social issues, FFC is making sure their targeted voters know that “Obama’s Radical Agenda” includes “attacks on religious freedom, same-sex marriage, waffling on Israel” and “abortion on demand.” They are also targeting liberal Senator Sherrod Brown.
One of the more interesting GOTV efforts this season has been undertaken by Citizens for Community Values (CCV) and its volunteers. In addition to mailings and phone calls targeting social conservatives in the state, the group is registering and courting Amish and Mennonite potential voters. Traditionally, many in these groups shun voting as a “worldly” endeavor, preferring prayer to proactive involvement in government affairs. They will, however, occasionally rally for a specific issue or candidate. In 2004, President Bush campaigned successfully in Amish areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania and increased both voter registration and turnout in this population.
Sue Ann Miller, who lives in Holmes County, said that she has worked with several friends, setting up tables at auctions and Bloodmobiles frequented by the Amish to encourage voter registration this year. “We worked right up till the registration cut off date of October 9. The Amish were very open to hear what we had to say and many signed up to vote for the first time.” Miller and others told the Amish about the president’s policies on abortion and same-sex marriage and warned them that their religious freedom would be in danger if Obama were to win a second term. “Most of them agreed and many of them registered on the spot or took the forms home to fill out and send in. “
CCV has also placed ads in the Amish and Mennonite community newspapers, including The Budget, which reaches 95% of Amish homes. The ad said that readers should think of their country as they do their garden:
Every good gardener knows prayer is essential for a good harvest…but so too are planting, cultivating, and tending it throughout the growing season. Likewise, our nation is currently in a political season, a time our Founding Fathers envisioned for pruning and planting when they established our Constitution. While it is vitally important to pray for Godly leaders, it is also imperative we take action to ensure a bountiful harvest. That means becoming informed on candidates and issues, being registered, and exercising our Christian citizenship by voting.
While this won’t translate into 10,000 votes for Romney, it could add a couple thousand to his bottom line on Election Day, which could be critical if the election is close.
One group that is investing heavily with time and boots on the ground is Americans for Prosperity. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t hear something from AFP, whether it’s a piece of mail, a phone call, or one of their non-stop radio ads in my area (the Cleveland market). If we manage to oust Obama and his rubber stamp liberal senator, Sherrod Brown, we should all send thank you notes (and donations) to Americans for Prosperity, in particular, for their unwavering support of Brown’s opponent, Josh Mandel. In a press release last week, AFP Ohio described their efforts in Ohio:
In the last two months, the “Obama’s Failing Agenda Bus Tour” has made pit stops at over 250 cities nationally, including 21 in Ohio. Ohio has made over 620,000 calls statewide and knocked on over 6,000 doors talking to citizens concerned about the economy. AFP-Ohio has 10 staff on the ground, 7 statewide offices and boasts over 112,000 activists statewide.
They planned to make a million phone calls in Ohio this past weekend and just made an additional $170,000 “War on Coal” radio ad buy.
Other outside groups are working hard to sway the election in Romney’s direction next month. The NRA is in my mailbox and on my answering machine weekly, sometimes daily. They’ve been running frequent radio ads against Sherrod Brown and they’re running anti-Obama, pro-2nd Amendment TV ads in swing states. The Tea Party Patriots produced a video expose on Obamacare, called The Determinators, which has been mailed to 360,000 micro-targeted undecided voters in six swing states, including Ohio.
Again, by and large, the outside groups are running in the anti-Obama, anti-Brown, anti-Democrat direction rather than outright promoting Mitt Romney and other Republicans.
While all this is encouraging news and the polls are trending in Romney’s direction, there’s an important word of caution. The unions and other special interest groups are also expending considerable resources to defeat Romney. Though it didn’t receive as much attention as Wisconsin’s union fight, Ohio Republicans went to war with labor unions last year and lost when the unions poured millions of dollars into a referendum to repeal the GOP’s union reform law. They convinced 62% of Ohioans to vote to support “workers’ rights.” In the process, the unions registered new voters and updated their databases. And because Citizens United now gives them the ability to expend union resources to contact non-union voters, that database has vastly expanded their ground game in the state. This represents potentially millions of names over and above the official Obama campaign contacts.
While we can look at raw numbers and count campaign offices and dollars spent on advertising, they don’t tell the whole story. As far as the campaigns’ ground games are concerned, Ohio should be considered a toss-up state until Election Day.
Also read: Are PA and MN Slipping Away from Obama?
Obama does not have a better ground game in Ohio. Romney will win Ohio 53/47. It won’t be close. Please stop publishing unjustified election fear porn, unecessarily emotionally terrorizing people that this administration might stay in power, because they won’t. Barry is going to lose big.
I heard the ground game squib from Kirsten Powers yesterday. Nobody responded to it. I’m glad Bolyard answered the question. Now I know why a “better ground game” may not dictate an Obama victory in Ohio.
Joe, it’s better to be alert and on top of the game as opposed to being complacent. It ain’t over until it’s over, and I won’t count Ohio in the win column until the Ohio Secretary of State certifies the results. I fully expect Obama to contest the results – they have already demonstrated they will do and say anything.
Who’s being complacent?
The combination of alienating white working class, catholics, the continued economic slide and higher unemployment, Ohio isn’t going blue this year. Obama has simply made to many enemies in that state and will lose by more than Kerry did in 2004. I think it’s even beyond the margin of fraud at this point.
Let’s hope so because the Obama team is capable of big time fraud.
Issa’s committee investigates Chicago USAO
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/30/issas-committee-investigates-chicago-usao/
We happened to be in Ohio right before the 2008 election when a judge ruled something like “people” could use park benches and sewer lids as their addresses in order to make them eligible to vote. Do you think for one minute the Obama people won’t take full advantage of numerous people using the same park bench or sewer lid as their address even if just passing through. I don’t know if Ohio has the register on the spot and vote immediately where you can’t verify a persons voting qualification but all this is ripe for voter fraud.
I would not be surprised if Oregon and Minnesota both are not Romney this election cycle. Why? Barack Obama is too partisan for the average citizen and OBAMACARE. Obamatax is costing obama this election.
the map from 2008 is interesting, considering many of the blue counties are in the most economically depressed areas of the state, and along the Ohio river, where power plants are shutting down…..wonder how much buyers remorse has set in? Ohioan’s generally are not fooled so badly, so hopefully an attitude change has occurred.
This article is very informative about a lesser known variable in the campaign and election process, then GOTV effort.
One thing I would like interest groups to understand is that I have about had it with the phone calls, especially the robo calls. I don’t want to hear a recorded message from Michelle Bachman like I get in a call yesterday. When there is that pause when I pick up the phone, I usually just hang up. I’m really tired of it.
I contribute money to constitutionally oriented candidates who I pick one by one. I have given Romney money. I would crawl across broken glass with snipers on the hill tops and mortars raining HE to vote against the various Marxists who are arrayed on our ballots. So would my wife and several of our friends. I don’t need any more damn phone calls. I don’t need to hear from the NRA, I already give them money too. Same with Club For Growth.
Reince Prebius and company need to figure out how to avoid pissing people like me off. That should be their next goal. I am an ally and I need to be treated as such. I’ve about had it with the heavy handed BS.
Amen, amen! Are you listening, campaigners? This will be the next frontier in micro-targeting- knowing not to keep shelling ground you’ve already won.
“I would crawl across broken glass with snipers on the hill tops and mortars raining HE to vote” I feel the same way, and am totally stealing that
LOL… I was telling one of my liberal friends yesterday pretty much that same thing. I left out the HE mortars but threw in a field crawling with rattlesnakes. But, I would go with the HEs raining down. WPs wouldn’t stop me either.
I know what you mean. If the doctor gave me one day to live, the first thing I’ do would be get an absentee ballot. Or vote early.
AN URGENT MESSAGE FOR AMERICA. WATCH HERE: http://bwcentral.org/2012/10/an-urgent-message-for-america/
How do Republicans prevent Dems from stealing the election? Everyone’s familiar with the tactics by now.
Here’s what needs to be done:
1. Republicans and conservatives need to win elections at the state level.
2. State legislators need to pass constitutional voter ID laws that are signed into law.
3. We need to get rid of Motor Voter same day registration.
4. Voter rolls need to be inspected and purged of deceased voters or illegally registered voters.
5. We need to get rid of early voting. Election day is election day, if you can’t be there get an absentee ballot and vote.
That would get rid of a good part of the problem.
I don’t want to hear about voter suppression because of ID requirements, it’s an idiotic charge that indicates to me that one who raises it has not bought a bottle of booze or flown on an airliner. Hell, you need a damn ID to get into an Obama campaign event. If you don’t like ID requirements it tells me you’re into fraud.
As I said above, I would crawl across broken glass, with snipers on the hill tops to vote. I can not be suppressed. I don’t really want to hear how you have less conviction than I have. This is not 1962 in the Jim Crow Democrat south for Pete’s sake.
That is a thing I never understood: why early voting? It is not only bad for democracy to have people voting before getting all the elements the electoral campaign was supposed to give them, there is no need of it at all.
Consider european countries: vote lasts for a single day. One. Not weeks. And despite this there are no long lines of citizens waiting in the snow for th opportunity to cast their vote like soviet citizens waiting to buy meat. In fact it is rare there is a line at all. It is just a question of having enough places where to vote. Period. No need for electronic gizmos. They use good, ols and auditable paper ballots. Before hand you are assigned a place where to vote. If you aren’t registered in that particular place (close to your domicile) you can’t vote in it. This prevents “fraud by overloading”. And of course you have to producve an ID. An ID with your mug in it and there is an official and very short list of documents who can be used for this purpose. You have to sign (ie if a candidate tries to use usurpers voting in place of people who arren’t going to vote there is a chance to catch him). Counting is made immediately after closure of election and it is done in a multipatisan way. In a few hours counting is over and they only have to aggragte the results nationally.
When counting is finished all the votes are stored in a safe place and this sealed so they can be verified by the judiciary. Ballots will be rejected if they hacve ever left a multipartisan chain of custody: doing an Al Franken, ie “finding” voting boxes “forgotten” in a car trunk will not land you at the house but in jail.
I simply cannot understand whey the leading democracy in the world does not take democracy as a serious matter.
BTW the US Constitution should be Amended in the following way: Federal governement has power to regulate federal elections.
JFM said, “BTW the US Constitution should be Amended in the following way: Federal governement has power to regulate federal elections.”
This already happens to a certain extent and with increasingly dangerous results. The Democrats have been using the Federal courts to interfere in the way states run their elections, including (as they did in Ohio this year), setting the dates and times for the polls to be open. They’ve also interfered with state photo ID laws. It is a serious infringement on the 10th amendment when the courts override state legislatures’ election laws. Nearly every federal election is also a state and local election. In fact, they are MOSTLY state and local elections. The states should decide how they want to run them.
In addition, do you really want Eric Holder running all federal elections in this country? That’s a recipe for eternal one-party rule.
“I simply cannot understand whey the leading democracy in the world does not take democracy as a serious matter.”
Because one of our two major parties relies heavily on voter fraud and will never willingly shut off that spigot. Why are we the only nation in the world that doesn’t take its own immigration laws seriously? Same answer.
I’m amazed that the election will be decided by a bunch of yokels from Ohio! have any of those people ever been to New York? Why are we allowing such people to decide the fate of humanity? We should be limiting the selection of future presidents to the State of NY, Conneticut, Mass, and Vermont….oh, and parts of California.
Don’t forget the bankrupt state of Illinois whose biggest city claims the honor as the Murder Capital of the country.
That may be why the capital’s “favorite son” believes the death of four Americans in Benghazi was no big f*cking deal. It was about 0.67% of the toll in Chicago.
“Though it didn’t receive as much attention as Wisconsin’s union fight, Ohio Republicans went to war with labor unions last year and lost when the unions poured millions of dollars into a referendum to repeal the GOP’s union reform law. They convinced 62% of Ohioans to vote to support “workers’ rights.”
That statement makes me worry that all the enthusiasm leading up to Nov. 6 in the Romney camp might be another “John Roberts” moment (with regard to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision).
I wanted to puke after Roberts defected to the left.
I don’t want to throw a went blanket on Republican hopes, but let it serve as a motivator to GET OUT THE VOTE IN OHIO.
This thing isn’t over until the last vote is counted and the last lawsuit is settled!
On that same ballot you refer to, Ohioans voted by a 60% margin to reject Obamacare. I feel confident that Ohio will go for Romney. Those 60% of Ohioans still hate Obamacare
Romney doesn’t have to win Ohio. Michigan will put him over the top. So will Wisconsin and Iowa. There are some other paths as well.
One thing about Romney is that he is a good data guy, easily the best data guy in recent Republican history.
The biggest risk in Ohio is fraud, not the ground game. That’s why Romney can’t put all of his eggs in that basket.
Yokels generally denote non-thinking people. These now all live in the states you note.
It is a mistake to underestimate those of us who live in flyover country.
This may be a really stupid thing to say but: just because the Obama campaign gets voters to the polls that doesn’t mean those voters will vote for Obama. They may say they’re going to vote for Obama, but that doesn’t mean they will.
Hahaha so true. I’m just recently moved to FL for grad school and I registered to vote at the Obama table on campus because it was convenient. I marked my application as independent to make sure nothing “happened” to it. They also tried to get me to accept a bus ride to vote early, but I decided that spending the all that time with a bunch of Obama supporters would’ve been too much. I got my voter information card in the mail about a week ago, along with endless fliers from the Obama campaign. I figured why not bleed their campaign machine and inflate their hopes as much as possible? I vote in 1 week, and I vote for Romney.
This is a good point. There have been some very outspoken (and visible) pastors who have been speaking out about the president’s policies (especially on social issues) and urging their members to make informed choices rather than voting as a monolithic, traditional Democrat block.
I am an American citizen living outside the USA, and have been told by a surprising number of loud, ignorant Republicans that I should NOT vote (and many believe I have no RIGHT to vote) because I don’t currently live in the USA. I realize that there are an embarrassing number of Americans who have never been farther from home than Disneyland/World, but American citizens can vote in American elections regardless of where we happen to be living at the time of the voting. I wonder how many people don’t vote because they think the ignoranti are right?
You know what, your vote doesn’t count unless the votes in your “home” state are close. Hence, declare yourself an Ohioan, or Oihoan if you prefer, and send in your absentee ballot. Don’t forget, vote early, vote often.
“..and have been told by a surprising number of loud, ignorant Republicans that I should NOT vote”
I’ve been an expat for a long time and vote in every general election and have a hard time believing your statement.
The election is a fight between those who want a job and those who settle with a disability check.
What the article implies is that the Republican ground game is being run like a business while the Democratic campaign is being run like a government bureaucracy. That’s not surprising given the pedigree and background of each party’s leader. Guess which one is more efficient?
I like Romney’s chances in Ohio.
Here’s a glaring example of that: If you want to attend a Romney rally you can go online (via an email link, the Romney app, or the campaign website), reserve a ticket, and either print a paper copy or get the QR code on your iPhone or Droid (go Green!).
If you want to go to an Obama rally, you can reserve your ticket online, but you actually have to physically pick up the ticket ahead of time (first come, first served) at the venue, the union hall, or the campaign HQ closest to the venue. I considered going to see Obama or Biden this week (before they cancelled), but decided it wasn’t worth it to drive an hour round-trip JUST TO PICK UP THE TICKET!! I suspect that Obama’s crowds are largely union members who are handed tickets and groups they are busing in. Romnmey’s crowds are completely organic. You’d have to be extremely motivated to make an extra trip just to pick up a ticket (not even knowing if one was available!).
Dick Morris says Romney could lose Ohio and still win the election. I hope he’s right on that, even if my state goes into the wrong column (Obama’s). Maybe a Republican victory without Ohio will finally kill the idea that they need Ohio to win, as well killing off all the political ads from both parties that are driving me to throw my remote at my TV. To me, Florida’s 29 electoral votes are a lot more important than Ohio’s 18.
Careful what you say! Removing Ohio from “ultimate swing state” status would crush our economy. Think of all the lost jobs in the printing, bulk mail, advertising, robocall, polling, special events, and political consultant industries!
Yeah, I really feel sorry for them. Sarcasm intended.
This is the best and most complete guided to Roman Catholic voting patterns in Ohio that you can get for free —
http://www.completecatholicism.org/catholic-voter-guide#Ohio
Gary Johnson’s closing pitch: ‘Waste your vote on me’ Posted by Felicia Sonmez on October 23, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/election-2012/wp/2012/10/23/gary-johnsons-closing-pitch-waste-your-vote-on-me/