In what she described as the most bizarre election year she has ever seen, Indiana University political science professor Marjorie Hershey stressed the importance of context in media coverage during a presentation to the Bloomington Press Club on Monday.
Hershey, who has provided political analysis for outlets such as ABC News, PolitiFact and the Boston Globe, said one of the most surprising developments so far has been businessman Donald Trump’s successful bid for the Republican nomination, something she thought would never happen. The lack of a “ground game,” or field organization, was one of the many reasons why Trump’s success was so shocking, she said.
Trump put aside conventional wisdom that field organization is necessary to win a presidential nomination. Both major parties have national databases with an incredible amount of data on voter preferences. This information is made accessible to volunteers in cities and towns across the country to guide them in talking to voters, Hershey said. For example, by accessing a database from their smartphone, a volunteer might be encouraged to knock on the red door of a house at a nearby intersection, ask for the wife, not the husband, and talk about same-sex marriage but not terrorism.
“They have about 150 pieces of information about everyone in this room,” she said. “They know if you buy organic milk or Fritos.”
Volunteers who utilize this information in canvassing campaigns can be extremely effective, but Trump won the nomination without relying on this resource. One interpretation is that this type of ground game isn’t as necessary as many people thought, Hershey said. The other, and the one she is more inclined to believe, is that Trump is doing something unprecedented that no one will be able to duplicate.