The Buckeye Ground Game

Fall in Ohio usually means changing leaves, a crisp breeze, and Ohio State Buckeye football. However, this fall, the best ground game in the state may not belong to the scarlet and gray.

While all of us, including yours truly, overanalyze polls and election models, there is something happening in Ohio and elsewhere across the nation that could be much more predictive of which man becomes the 44^th President of the United States.

One the main advantages of the protracted primary fight between Senators Obama and Clinton was that it laid the Obama organization for the important fall campaign to come. As the long primary process dragged on, Democrats gained in registration all over the country. Coupled with gains in Democratic registration, Senator Obama got at least a two-month head start on Senator McCain in the all important ground game. As polls tightened during the month of August, the mainstream media wondered why Obama was not using his superior resources to outspend Senator McCain on the airwaves. But as the pundits chirped, Senator Obama’s ground game was quietly being built behind the scenes.

Recent reports have shown that Senator Obama has more field offices than does Senator McCain in all of the battle ground states except for Florida. Topping the list of battle ground states with the most field offices is Ohio, with 57 field offices according to a campaign email on September 3. To find out more, I decided to visit one of these field offices over the Labor Day weekend. The Shaker Heights, Ohio field office, one of the main arteries for the Obama campaign’s efforts in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, was bustling with enthusiasm. I was told by a staffer that the Cleveland area alone had eight teams of eight full-time paid staffers, roughly as many as the Kerry campaign had in the whole state of Ohio in October of 2004. Many of these staffers are very young, but gained invaluable organizing skills in three, or in some cases, four or five primary states this past winter and spring.

As I hit the suburban streets to canvass, I was actively recruited to come back during the month of October and the weekend before Election Day. A little known Ohio law that was passed in 2006 has created an early voting period from September 30 to November 3. With the state’s registration deadline being October 6, this law has created a unique window between September 30 and October 6 where one can essentially have “one stop registration and voting.” Many believe that this period could give Senator Obama at least a hundred thousand vote advantage before a single vote is cast on November 3. Senator Obama’s campaign took advantage of similar laws during the primary season in states such as North Carolina and Montana, organizing its supporters to get out and vote early. This strategy allows for more micro-targeting on Election Day itself as many supporters have already voted and can concentrate all their efforts on getting others out to vote. This strategy also will be especially valuable in urban areas, where many voters may find it much more convenient to vote early and avoid Ohio’s infamous long election lines.

Meanwhile, Senator McCain will try to make up for lost time and attempt to match President Bush’s famous 2004 ground game. Bush’s voter outreach efforts were credited with bringing hundreds of thousand of new evangelical voters to the polls in Ohio and Florida. (Bush won Ohio by only 118,000 votes in 2004.) It remains to be seen whether or not McCain can overcome a lack of enthusiasm from his base and match these efforts in 2008. Sure, 90% of Republicans are behind McCain, but voting for McCain is not the equivalent of having the enthusiasm to go out and motivate others to vote for McCain. McCain’s selection of right-wing conservative Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate is an attempt to narrow this enthusiasm gap.

Overall, efforts on the ground will always fail to get attention when compared to polls and ad campaigns. However, like in football, politics is won in the trenches. As such, Obama’s ground team is ready for an all-out push to begin September 30, just three days after the scarlet and gray take their ground game into the Big Ten schedule.