Obama Leads Better Than 3:1 in Field Offices

[ccharles000]

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/obama-leads-better-than-31-in-field.html

As Sean has been writing in recent days, it has become increasingly apparent that the McCain campaign has no intention of matching the Obama campaign's formidable

presence on the ground. This becomes especially clear upon reviewing the status of field operations in each state.

The table below represents my best estimate of the number of field offices that each campaign presently has open in each state, or plans to open in the immediate future. I say "estimate" because there is no hard-and-fast source for this information. Each campaign has listing of its field offices on the respective state-by-state pages within its website (Obama example) (McCain example), however, in certain cases, the offices appear to be relics of the primary campaign that have since shut down. In states where the number of offices appeared to be dubious, or the listing did not appear to have been updated recently, I spot-checked the numbers by randomly calling a couple of offices in each state. It appears that all or almost all of the McCain campaign's offices in California are inactive. But this was a larger problem for Obama, where offices in a large number of states that were important in the primaries, like Kentucky or any number of Super Tuesday states, have long since been shut down.

My best estimate of the current state of the ground game follows. States are ordered by their current rankings in the Tipping Point metric:

[Hope And Change]

1. K & R!Thanks for posting!

[eshfemme]

2. K&R!

What would make my day is hearing the stories from the field from the street canvassers! Something unique about the Obama campaign is the generally positive tone the people on the ground always have!

[uponit7771]

3. Has this been done before and if so how has it worked out in the past?

[mucifer]

4. I think the ground game is the best hope we have in battling the msm

[AlinPA]

8. Yep. We can't beat them with the "air game", they totally control broadcast media

and most newspapers and magazines.

[kstewart33]

5. Great post. K&R. Thanks! nt

[DCBob]

6. McCain campaign "strategy"

Their strategy is strange and desperate. It seems they are hardly working at the state level but focusing mostly on national issues and attempting to destroy Obama's image. I think they feel they cannot compete money wise with Obama state-by-state so they are going with tactics affect voters in all states. I don't think it will work but I do think that is there only hope. BTW, newbie here, just a few posts, but I am a longtime DU lurker -- more than a year.

[AlinPA]

7. Great. But republicans have almost total control over the Chamber of Commerce

and have strong GOTV with them. Repigs are zealots and have strong local republican organizations. So it's great to hear that we are getting staff to fight them.

[mucifer]

9. something to know about IL. Obama has lots of supporters here and while he has no

volunteer office here, they have hired people who are organizing us IL volunteers to travel to surrounding states. I live in Chicago on the north side so I have gone to Iowa and will go again. They have a goal of getting 5000 IL volunteers to go to Iowa the weekend before the election. That is not counting all of the Iowa volunteers and all of the campaign offices in Iowa. Also, people from Iowa can register to vote soon before the election. That doesn't mean we will win, but this info does make me feel better.