Rubio’s Early State Problem
Joshua Darr explains why Rubio’s weak campaign organization could end up costing him votes:
According to political science research, Rubio avoids the establishment of a ground game at his peril. Field offices work because they provide a location for the coordination and training that make voter contact valuable. Campaigns that can contact supporters personally to encourage them to vote should make every effort to do so. Knocking on doors can increase turnout by nearly 10 percent, and effective phone calls can encourage an additional 4 percent of voters to head to the polls. Without a field office in an area, candidates will find it much more difficult to translate these tactics into victory.
The odd thing about the Rubio campaign’s neglect of their ground game in the early states is that it is a deliberate choice to fritter away their limited resources on advertising instead, and they are persisting in this course despite a lot of evidence from rival Jeb Bush’s campaign that television advertising isn’t an effective way to build support for a candidate. It’s not that they’re ignoring one state to focus on others as some campaigns have done in the past, but they’re failing to make much of an effort anywhere:
A nagging problem hovers over Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as he crisscrosses the country seeking support in the states with the first four nominating contests: With a month and a half until the voting begins, he still has not committed himself fully to trying to win any of them.
That’s more than a “nagging problem.” It’s a potentially fatal blunder for a campaign that is now defined in large part as being the last-ditch alternative to a Trump nomination. Rubio doesn’t need to win most of the first four contests to stay in the race, but he probably needs to win at least one to keep his donors happy and to ward off questions about campaign incompetence. If he gets to March without any wins, he could easily find himself in the same predicament Walker faced a few months ago.
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