Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and assistant professor at Roskilde University in Denmark.

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"If the medium is the message, Nielsen shows that a key medium in campaigns is person-to-person communication. His sharp analysis and careful ethnographic storytelling reveal both the high level strategic role and the human experience of personalized political communication in contemporary elections."--W. Lance Bennett, University of Washington

"Having embedded himself with the grunts in the political trenches of two ordinary congressional elections, Nielsen demonstrates how elections involve the selling of democracy to an often reluctant or uninterested public. Ground Wars is a sterling example of political ethnography."--Herbert J. Gans, former president of the American Sociological Association

"Nielsen provides a trenchant and thought-provoking account of what campaigns look like at ground level. His ethnography offers a rare glimpse into what canvassing and phone banking mean to those who try to reach vast numbers of voters in the run-up to Election Day. This book is a welcome companion to more abstract, quantitative studies of campaigns and elections."--Donald P. Green, Columbia University

"Nielsen presents a very compelling analysis of an often-neglected aspect of modern electoral campaigns. He challenges the idea that political communication must be tightly controlled and scripted, correctly arguing that personalized, labor-intensive communication prone to individual inflection and enthusiasm represents American democracy in action. Ground Wars is an important and timely book."--Dennis W. Johnson, author of No Place for Amateurs: How Political Consultants Are Reshaping American Democracy

"This is an excellent book that offers unique analysis and insights into an emerging key dimension of electoral campaigning: personalized political communication--that is, communication to voters in person either at the door or on the phone. This book contributes to political science in novel and decisive ways. Ground Wars is a pleasure to read."--Florence Faucher-King, Sciences Po, Paris

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Ground Wars

Princeton University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments...........................................................................viiPrologue Welcome to the Campaigns........................................................1Chapter 1 Personalized Political Communication in American Campaigns.....................4Chapter 2 The Ground War Enters the Twenty-first Century.................................35Chapter 3 Contacting Voters at Home......................................................63Chapter 4 Organizing Campaign Assemblages................................................95Chapter 5 Targeting Voters for Personal Contacts.........................................133Chapter 6 Always Fighting the Same Ground War?...........................................171Research Appendix.........................................................................189Notes.....................................................................................209References................................................................................221Index.....................................................................................235

Chapter One

Episode 1.1

Charlene is in her late thirties, African American, and looking for a job. Her home is in Bridgeport, Connecticut, a decaying, de-industrialized city with an unemployment rate over 10 percent and about 20 percent of the population living below the poverty line. Right now she is making ten dollars an hour canvassing for the Connecticut Democrats' coordinated campaign—and gets a gas card every week too. "It helps pay the bills," she says. She finished her Microsoft Office User Specialist class at Workforce, Inc., this afternoon, and since then we have been out walking door-to-door, talking to voters.

Charlene knocks on the door, holding her clipboard with the Jim Himes for Congress flyers and a map of the area in one hand and a PalmPilot with our script, walk sheet, and talking points in her other hand. I stand a couple of yards behind her, clutching my own clipboard and PDA (personal digital assistant), watching the house for any signs of life. We are about to leave when an elderly white woman opens the door. We know from our list that she is probably Anna Rizzo, a seventy-seven-year-old registered Democrat who lives here. She is our target because she is an infrequent voter. Ms. Rizzo leaves the door chain on, and asks, "What do you want?" Charlene says, "We're here to tell you about Jim Himes, the Democratic congregational candidate." I flinch as she says "congregational." She has done it before, just as she again ignored the script we have been instructed to use. Ms. Rizzo closes the door without a word. We write her down as "Not Home." She will be contacted again soon because she has been identified as a part of one of the target universes—sometimes called "lazy Democrats"—and because the campaign has her phone number and address.

"This is a bad list," Charlene says to me as we walk toward our next target, a couple of houses down the street. "I can't believe they've sent us out here. What a waste of time. Well, well—that's their problem."

Episode 1.2

It is late afternoon in Fanwood, New Jersey, Linda Stender's hometown, a town she has served as mayor and state assemblywoman for years and now hopes to represent in Congress. Her campaign office is in a worn-down demolition-slated building just across from the train station. Today we are four people working the phones, calling voters to tell them about Stender and ask them a few questions about where they stand on the upcoming election. Everyone on the phones is a volunteer. All are well over sixty (except me). We sit in a room separate from where the staff works.

Paula gets what she calls "a live one," her first since she arrived twenty minutes ago. So far she has just been leaving messages. She reads the first lines of her script to the voter, asking who he plans to vote for in the fall. It turns out he is leaning toward Stender's opponent, state senator Leonard Lance. Paula immediately gets into an argument with him. "I can't believe you want to vote for a Republican after what Bush has done to our country! Dragged us into a criminal war for oil, undermined the Constitution, handed over billions in tax cuts to the wealthiest!" They talk for a few minutes. From what we can hear, it is a spirited discussion.

After she puts down the phone, Paula says to the rest of us, "I can't believe there are people out there who aren't Democrats." We all chuckle. Clearly, Stender's campaign staffers and her outside consultants have an inkling that there are some voters in the district who aren't Democrats. Stender ran as a progressive in 2006 and lost narrowly to the incumbent Republican, Mike Ferguson. This cycle she is running as a moderate for what is now an open seat, without using her party affiliation or the name of the Democratic presidential nominee in her literature and advertisements. But many of the volunteers still see her—and present her to voters—as the woman they support, "the old Linda."

Episode 1.3

Election Day is only a week away, and the field organizers are struggling to whip the GOTV (Get Out the Vote) program into shape. People are on the phones constantly, calling paid part-time canvassers and potential volunteers, trying to get them to confirm their availability over the weekend. There are thousands of shifts to be filled, walk packets to be assembled, call sheets to be printed. This is a major logistical operation, with many moving parts, pursued under intense time pressure.

One of the field organizers complains that his volunteers are "flaky" and won't commit. The field director is stressed out: "We need more bodies!" He makes a call and then shouts to one of his deputies—who is technically employed by the state party and not the candidate—"We've got twenty more labor guys coming in. I need you to cut more turf. I'll send you the lists." Jack, the volunteer coordinator, is calmer, almost serene. He leans back and comments on the commotion around us: "We'll have to close some locations; it'll never work with all those phone banks. Multiple locations: great in theory, bad in practice. But they won't listen. We don't have time for this."

Around 100 million Americans were contacted at the door or over the phone by various political organizations during the 2008 elections. Millions of volunteers and tens of thousands of paid part-time workers did the contacting. Thousands of full-time staffers organized their efforts. At the surface it looked like nothing new under the sun. Even if the number of contacts made varies over time (and it has increased dramatically from 2000 onward), canvassing voters, by foot or by phone, is a staple of American politics. In some ways the conversations among people in 2008 probably were not all that different from those of 1988 or 1968: "Who do you plan to vote for?" "Here is why you should support my guy." "Now, remember to go and vote." That is the basic blueprint as campaigns try to identify where people stand, sway the...