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In the past three weeks, I’ve given my first three talks about Ground Wars, one at my launch here in Oxford at the Rothermere American Institute, one at Royal Holloway, and one at the University of  Westminster. It’s been good turnout and great discussions all around.

It’s been really interesting to see what people pick up and the directions the conversations take—the concept of “personalized political communication”, the instrumental use of people as media for political purposes through for example door-to-door canvassing has generally been well received, as has the notion that we need to pay more systematic attention to how such forms of campaign communication operate and how they complement and interact with other forms we already know much more about, most notably mass media and computer-mediated/online political communication.

One of the things that have been particularly good about talking about Ground Wars here in the UK is the range of different experiences people bring to the discussion. This has really brought out all the comparative questions the book raises, comparative between local and national, between points in time, and across countries. The discussions have been wide-ranging, from a student at Royal Holloway who won a seat in local government walking door-to-door with volunteers who talked about his experience, over faculty members who had canvassed from the 1970s onwards and talked about that, to people from India to Germany who could describe how things are done there.

Obviously, there is a lot of work to be done comparatively on personalized political communication, to what extent is it used, why and with what strategic objectives in mind, how is it organized and targeted, who are the people involved and their motivations, what are the differences in how well it works, the implications for democracy in different contexts and for different actors, and so on. Darren Lilleker (who has written a nice review of the book) has alerted me to one if his pieces that touch on some of this–and there are others. (One book I read and re-read while I worked on mine was Javier Auyero’s masterful study of Poor People’s Politics in the barrios of Buenos Aries.) There is much to be done here and I hope to begin some of that myself, having already dipped my toes in by doing a bit of fieldwork during the 2011 Danish general election.

Another area where it is also clear to me my work on personalized political communication can be extended is in terms of a more explicit and clearer analysis of the power relations between the staffers, volunteers, and part-timers involved in ground wars (relations that are also encoded into some of the various tools and technologies they rely on). Andy Chadwick rightly pushed me a bit on this point in the discussion at Royal Holloway, arguing that my argument is not always equally explicit about this. I’ve written elsewhere about what I call the “co-production of citizenship” in political campaigns, playing off Philip Howard’s notion of “managed citizenship”, and continue to think that the degree of control political operatives have over their surroundings is frequently overstated–but it is quite important to underline that the absence of complete hierarchical control over campaign assemblages and their environs should not be confused with the absence of power asymmetries, only as an indication that everyone involved have a degree of autonomy. Power in campaigns is, in short, about control, forcing people to act in certain ways, but it is not only about control–it is also enabling (nod here to Michel Foucault), about allowing people to become more active and effective citizens in certain ways. This is a theme I hope to explore more when I find the time to re-read my copius field notes from the time I spent on the campaign trail in 2008.

Mitt Romney won yesterday’s two primaries in Arizona and Michigan, but he didn’t win by enough to (re)establish a sense of inevitability around his candidacy. He has been the favourite for so long that everything but decisive victories ends up being framed as a bit of a disappointment.

Here is Whit Ayres, a Republican political operative, speaking to the Washington Post a few days before this week’s primaries—“if [Romney] wins Michigan by double digits, especially if combined with a double-digit Arizona win, then all the chatter will die down just like it did after Florida.”

But Romney didn’t win Michigan by double-digits, and the chatter hasn’t died down. Though Santorum lost both states, no one seems to really hold it against him.

Some part of this surely is about political journalists and rival candidates with a vested interest in keeping the “chatter” alive, but a larger part of it is arguably about the demonstrable and enduring unease with which many Republicans  regard Romney. He continues to win by pluralities rather than majorities (47.3% in Arizona, 41.1% in Michigan), keeping alive the “what-if” question: what if someone managed to rally the “not-Romney” vote?

It is not clear that the not-Romney vote is coalescing behind a single candidate. But the votes are there and many people are on the prowl for an alternative to Romney. A succession of revolving candidates have been cast for the role already–Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and now Rick Santorum. But the role isn’t necessarily Santorum’s to keep. Gingrich effectively didn’t content Arizona and Michigan, focusing instead on campaigning in the South, hoping for success on Super Tuesday. It is too early to write him off, and at the very least he will continue to siphon off a considerable number of votes, undermining Santorum’s challenge to Romney.

Romney has been the only constant in the primary, and he remains the favourite to capture the nomination, though at this point it is unlikely he’ll have it locked up anytime soon. Many people are still making up and changing the minds, so polls are tricky, but at this point, Real Clear Politics has Santorum ahead in Ohio and Gingrich ahead in Georgia, two of the most important states to vote on March 6. So get ready for some March madness, because this thing will go on for a while.

Moving towards Super Tuesday, Romney’s strategy is clear—focus on the economy when he makes his own pitch, leave it to his Super PAC “Restore our Future” to spend millions hammering Santorum and Gingrich with negative advertising while his various elite backers brief against them as unstable, not serious, unelectable etc, and count on his organizational strength to swing things his way. He is, as Amy Gardner writes in the Washington Post,

relying heavily on the methods that have served him well in past wins: a well-organized and well-financed ground operation, a heavy emphasis on early-voting recruitment, a growing list of endorsements, including from both establishment and tea-party leaders, and millions of dollars in TV advertisements.

Santorum and Gingrich are both making versions of the same basic pitch as they fight back—the message is that Romney is a closet liberal and a flip-flopper willing to say anything to win, the implication is “don’t trust him.” The suggestion is clear: vote for me instead, I’m a real conservative and I speak my mind and stick to my guns. For both of them things are complicated by the other’s presence and unwillingness to withdraw. Also, while both of them have enjoyed periodic fundraising boosts off debate performances or unexpected wins, they continue to be at a financial disadvantage (Romney and his allies outspent Santorum and his allies by about 2-1 in Michigan and by 12-1 in Arizona). With less money and less developed campaign organizations, they are more reliant on help from their respective Super PACs and outside backers (most notably Foster S. Friess for Santorum and Sheldon Adelson for Gingrich) than Romney is.

(Then there is “the third man” facing Romney, Ron Paul, who is plugging away in his own inimitable style. I’m dying for more inside intel on his campaign, its operations, resources, technologies, it seems like a bit of a libertarian counterpart to Howard Dean in 2004, an innovative campaign that may not win but could shape how politics is done by many others. The New York Times reports that Paul’s campaign is focusing on the caucus states, where the rules of the game means that even modest support can be translated into a significant number of delegates for the convention is a campaign plays its cards right.)

What does the prospect of a drawn-out nomination fight amongst the Republicans mean?

First of all, most commetators argue it helps Barack Obama because whoever emerges as his challenger will (a) have had to throw some red meat to a conservative Republican base out of sync with most Americans, stuff that can be turned against him in the general election and (b) have had to endure relentless negative advertising by his rivals, highlighting his each and every flaw, giving plenty of ammunition for Democrats to make their case in the fall.

Second, there is the question of whether we risk a “politics of tedium” where people get fed up with the protracted fight and some lose interest before the general election. The 2008 primary fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton arguably served to energize much of the Democratic Party’s base and helped Obama built the campaign he led into the general election. It is less clear that the 2012 Republican Primaries will provide the eventual nominee with the same organizational and activist momentum–look at the turnout so far, for example, which is not particularly impressive. A couple of states have had higher turnout in the 2012 Republican Primaries than they had in 2008, but most have about the same or even less–not impressive, considering that this race is much more open and closely fought and that the number of registered voters has grown since last time.

My book, Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns, deals with how American political campaigns mobilize, organize, and target their field operations, using large numbers of volunteers and paid part-timer workers to contact voters at home at the door or over the phone. It has just been published by Princeton University Press and is available on Amazon.

(cross-posted to Politics in Spires)

So Rick Santorum swept Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri on Tuesday, and now all and sundry are scrambling to catch up on what that means and what his prospects are moving forward. Clearly the result took many (including me) by surprise.

There hasn’t been much coverage of his operation on the ground, and I don’t have any inside leads on this, so I’d be happy to hear from people who knows something about his campaign.

So far, he has operated with a pretty bare-bones organization compared to Romney or even Gingrich and hasn’t raised nearly as much money for his campaign or for outside groups supporting him as his rivals have.

Now his people are putting it out that he will be building a national organization. They have to say that. The hard thing is actually doing it. It will be interesting to see how they go about it and whether they succeed.

Here are some elements worth watching–

1. Can Santorum expand his base amongst wealthy conservative donors? So far, one man, Foster Friess seems to have been his major financial supporter (but not on a Sheldon Adelson scale). More money is bound to come in now, but how much, and from whom?
2. Will various Tea Party-type groups find Santorum more appealing than Gingrich and start rallying around him? These activists have in the past months been supposed to be coalescing behind a number of various candidates, including Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and now Santorum. Will they or won’t they? And will they ultimately matter much? (A recent article in the National Journal argues that the movement is in decline.)
3. How much will the support of many social conservative activists and groups help Santorum–in terms of endorsements and raising money, but also in terms of positioning himself and building an organization? Various parts of the Christian Right have played a central role in many previous Republican primary campaigns, and Santorum will have to hope they will this time too–because they sure don’t like Romney (who only got three votes at a meeting in January where Santorum with 57 votes secured the backing of a number of Evangelical conservative groups).

As said, there has been little coverage of Santorum’s campaign and its organization so far. To capitalize on his February 7 victories, he will need to build an operation on the ground (and his campaign is well aware of this). It will be interesting to see what they can cobble together on such short notice and how well it will work as we approach Super Tuesday.

My book, Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns, deals with how American political campaigns mobilize, organize, and target their field operations, using large numbers of volunteers and paid part-timer workers to contact voters at home at the door or over the phone. It has just been published by Princeton University Press and is available on Amazon.

(Photo by Gage Skidmore from Flickr)