In the aftermath of the 2012 election, one rare point of bipartisan agreement has been about campaign tactics: Obama had a significant edge in the ground game, many agree. One piece of evidence for that claim was the Obama campaign’s almost three-to-one advantage in its number of field offices.
Still, persuading a voter face-to-face doesn’t always work out as planned. In fact, as Michael Bailey, Todd Rogers and I show in a new working paper, large-scale efforts at interpersonal persuasion can backfire. Especially with voters who are less politically engaged. [cont.]
Dan Hopkins, (Georgetown U.), Washington Post