Hostname: page-component-7b9c58cd5d-9k27k Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-21T12:30:28.472Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Party Activists as Campaign Advertisers: The Ground Campaign as a Principal-Agent Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2015

RYAN D. ENOS  and
EITAN D. HERSH
RYAN D. ENOS*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
EITAN D. HERSH*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Ryan D. Enos is Assistant Professor of Government, Harvard University, 1737 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (renos@gov.harvard.edu).
Eitan D. Hersh is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University, 77 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06520 (eitan.hersh@yale.edu).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As a key element of their strategy, recent Presidential campaigns have recruited thousands of workers to engage in direct voter contact. We conceive of this strategy as a principal-agent problem. Workers engaged in direct contact are intermediaries between candidates and voters, but they may be ill-suited to convey messages to general-election audiences. By analyzing a survey of workers fielded in partnership with the 2012 Obama campaign, we show that in the context of the campaign widely considered most adept at direct contact, individuals who were interacting with swing voters on the campaign’s behalf were demographically unrepresentative, ideologically extreme, cared about atypical issues, and misunderstood the voters’ priorities. We find little evidence that the campaign was able to use strategies of agent control to mitigate its principal-agent problem. We question whether individuals typically willing to be volunteer surrogates are productive agents for a strategic campaign.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 109 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 252 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

2012 Obama Campaign Legacy Report . 2013. Technical report Obama for America.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Hersh, Eitan. 2012. “Validation: What Survey Misreporting Reveal about Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate.” Political Analysis 20 (4): 437–59.Google Scholar
Ansolabehere, Stephen, Snyder, James M. Jr., and Stewart III, Charles. 2001. “Candidate Positioning in U.S. House Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 45 (1): 136–59.Google Scholar
Bailey, Michael A., Hopkins, Daniel J., and Rogers, Todd. 2013. “Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintented Consequences of Voter Persuasion Efforts.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Bawn, Kathleen, Cohen, Martin, Masket, Seth, Noel, Hans, and Zaller, John. 2012. “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 10 (3): 571–97.Google Scholar
Bedolla, Lisa García, and Michelson, Melissa R.. 2012. Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Benabou, Roland, and Tirole, Jean. 2006. “Incentives and Prosocial Behavior.” American Economic Review 96 (5): 1652–78.Google Scholar
Berinsky, Adam J., de Benedictis-Kessner, Justin, Goldberg, Megan, and Margolis, Michele F.. 2014. “Implicit Cue-Taking in Elections.” American Political Science Association, Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Bonica, Adam. 2013. “Ideology and Interests in the Political Marketplace.” American Journal of Political Science. 57 (2): 294–311.Google Scholar
Bull, Ray, and Hawkes, Caroline. 1982. “Judging Politicians by their Faces.” Political Studies 30 (1): 95–101.Google Scholar
Burger, Jerry M., Messian, Nicole, Patel, Shebani, del Prado, Alicia, and Anderson, Carmen. 2004. “What a Coincidence! The Effects of Incidental Similarity on Compliance.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 30 (1): 35–43.Google Scholar
Cohen, Geoffrey L. 2003. “Party Over Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political Beliefs.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85 (5): 808.Google Scholar
Cohen, Marty, Karol, David, Noel, Hans, and Zaller, John. 2009. The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Conover, Pamela Johnston, and Feldman, Stanley. 1982. “Projection and the Perception of Candidates’ Issue Positions.” The Western Political Quarterly, pp. 228–44.Google Scholar
Darley, John M., and Cooper, Joel. 1972. “The “Clean for Gene” Phenomenon: The Effect of Students’ Appearance on Political Campaigning.” Journal of Applied Social Psychology 2 (1): 24–33.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper.Google Scholar
Druckman, James N., Kifer, Martin J., and Parkin, Michael. 2009. “Campaign Communications in U.S. Congressional Elections.” American Political Science Review 103 (3): 343–66.Google Scholar
Gerber, Alan S., and Green, Donald P.. 2000. “The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment.” American Political Science Review 94 (3): 653–63.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Andra Nicole. 2005. Community, Coordination, and Context: A Black Politics Perspective on Voter Mobilization. Ph.D. dissertation. New Haven, CT: Yale University.Google Scholar
Green, Donald P., and Gerber, Alan S.. 2008. Get Out The Vote. 2nd ed. Washington: Brookings.Google Scholar
Grofman, Bernard. 2004. “Downs and Two-Party Convergence.” Annual Review of Political Science 7: 25–46.Google Scholar
Growth and Opportunity Project . 2013. Technical report. Republican National Committee.Google Scholar
Hersh, Eitan. 2012. “Primary Voters Versus Caucus Goers and the Peripheral Motivations of Political Participation.” Political Behavior 34 (4): 689–718.Google Scholar
Hersh, Eitan D. 2015. Hacking the Electorate: How Campaigns Perceive Voters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hersh, Eitan, and Schaffner, Brian. 2012. “Targeted Campaign Appeals and the Value of Ambiguity.” Journal of Politics 75 (2): 520–34.Google Scholar
Hillygus, D. Sunshine, and Shields, Todd G.. 2008. The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel, Imai, Kosuke, King, Gary, and Stuart, Elizabeth. 2007. “Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference.” Political Analysis 15 (2): 199–236.Google Scholar
Issenberg, Sasha. 2012. The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns. New York: Crown Publishing.Google Scholar
Keeter, Scott, Funk, Cary, and Kennedy, Courtney. October 5–7, 2005. “Deaniacs and Democrats: Howard Dean’s Campaign Activists.” State of the Parties Conference, Akron, OH. Unpublished conference paper.Google Scholar
Krasno, Jonathan S., and Green, Donald P.. 2008. “Do Televised Presidential Ads Increase Voter Turnout? Evidence from a Natural Experiment.” Journal of Politics 70 (1): 245–61.Google Scholar
Layman, Geoffrey C., Carsey, Thomas M., Green, John C., Herrera, Richard, and Cooperman, Rosalyn. 2010. “Activists and Conflict Extension in American Politics.” American Political Science Review 104 (2): 324–46.Google Scholar
Leighley, Jan E. 2001. Strength in Numbers?: The Political Mobilization of Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lenz, Gabriel S. 2009. “Learning and Opinion Change, not Priming: Reconsidering the Priming Hypothesis.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (4): 821–37.Google Scholar
Lenz, Gabriel S., and Lawson, Chappell. 2011. “Looking the Part: Television Leads Less Informed Citizes to Vote Based on Candidates’ Appearance.” American Journal of Political Science 55 (3): 574–89.Google Scholar
Linardi, Sera, and McConnell, Margaret A.. 2011. “No Excuses for Good Behavior: Volunteering and the Social Environment.” Journal of Public Economics 95: 445–54.Google Scholar
Markus, Gregory B., and Converse, Philip E.. 1979. “A Dynamic Simultaneous Equation Model of Electoral Choice.” The American Political Science Review 73 (4): 1055–70.Google Scholar
Masket, Seth E. 2009. “Did Obama’s Ground Game Matter? The Influence of Local Field Offices During the 2008 Presidential Election.” Public Opinion Quarterly 73 (5): 1023–39.Google Scholar
McCubbins, Mathew D., Noll, Roger G., and Weingast, Barry R.. 1987. “Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 3 (2): 243–77.Google Scholar
McKenna, Elizabeth, and Han, Hahrie. 2013. Groundbreakers: How Obama’s 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Field Campaigns in America. U.C. Berkeley. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Michelson, Melissa R. 2003. “Getting out the Latino Vote: How Door-to-door Canvassing Influences Voter Turnout in Rural Central California.” Political Behavior 25 (3): 247–63.Google Scholar
Michelson, Melissa R. 2006. “Mobilizing the Latino Youth Vote: Some Experimental Results*.” Social Science Quarterly 87 (5): 1188–206.Google Scholar
Middleton, Joel A., and Green, Donald P.. 2008. “Do Community-Based Voter Mobilization Campaigns Work Even in Battleground States? Evaluating the Effectiveness of MoveOn’s 2004 Outreach Campaign.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 3: 63–82.Google Scholar
Miller, Gary J. 2005. “The Political Evolution of Principal-Agent Models.” Annual Review of Political Science 8: 203–25.Google Scholar
Munson, Ziad W. 2008. The Making of Pro-Life Activists: How Social Movement Mobilization Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Nickerson, David W. 2007. “Quality is Job One: Professional and Volunteer Voter Mobilization Calls.” American Journal of Political Science 51 (2): 269–82.Google Scholar
Nickerson, David, and Rogers, Todd. 2014. “Political Campaigns and Big Data.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 28 (2): 51–74.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Rasmus Kleis. 2012. Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Owen, Guillermo, and Grofman, Bernard. 2006. “Two-Stage Electoral Competition in Two-Party Contests: Persistent Divergence of Party Positions.” Social Choice and Welfare 26 (3): 547–69.Google Scholar
Popkin, Samuel L. 1991. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Popkin, Samuel L. 1995. “Information Shortcuts and the Reasoning Voter.” In Information, Participation and Choice: An Economic Theory of Democracy in Perspective, ed. Groffman, Bernard. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 17–35.Google Scholar
Rogers, Todd, Fox, Craig R., and Gerber, Alan S.. 2012. Rethinking Why People Vote: Voting as Dynamic Social Expression. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rule, Nicholas O., and Ambady, Nalini. 2010. “Democrats and Republicans can be Differentiated from their Faces.” PLoS One 5 (1): e8733.Google Scholar
Samochowiec, Jakub, Wänke, Michaela, and Fiedler, Klaus. 2010. “Political Ideology at Face Value.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 1 (3): 206–13.Google Scholar
Schoeni, Robert F., Stafford, Frank, Mcgonagle, Katherine A., and Andreski, Patricia. 2013. “Response Rates in National Panel Surveys.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 645 (1): 60–87.Google Scholar
Shaw, Daron, de la Garza, Rodolfo O, and Lee, Jongho. 2000. “Examining Latino Turnout in 1996: A Three-state, Validated Survey Approach.” American Journal of Political Science 44 (2): 338–46.Google Scholar
Sides, John. 2006. “The Origins of Campaign Agendas.” British Journal of Political Science 36 (3): 407–36.Google Scholar
Sides, John, and Vavreck, Lynn. 2013. The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Betsy. 2012. The Social Citizen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sinclair, Betsy, McConnell, Margaret, and Michelson, Melissa R.. 2013. “Local Canvassing: The Efficacy of Grassroots Voter Mobilization.” Political Communications 30 (1): 42–57.Google Scholar
Stone, Walter J., and Abramowitz, Alan I.. 1980. “Winning May Not be Everything, But It’s More Than We Thought: Presidential Party Activists in 1980.” American Political Science Review 77 (4): 945–56.Google Scholar
Tomz, Michael, and Van Houweling, Robert P.. 2009. “The Electoral Implications of Candidate Ambiguity.” American Political Science Review 103 (01): 83–98.Google Scholar
Vavreck, Lynn. 2009. The Message Matters: The Economy and Presidential Campaigns. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Schlozman, Kay Lehman, and Brady, Henry E.. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Voter Contact Summary . 2012. Technical report, Romney for President.Google Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1992. The Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zaller, John R. 1998. “Monica Lewinsky’s Contribution to Political Science.” PS: Political Science and Politics 31 (2): 182–9.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.