Presidential Campaigning at the Grass Roots

Abstract

This study investigates differences in grass-roots party activity for the Democratic and Republication presidential candidates in 1992. Chairs of the party organizations and the presidential campaign organizations in a national sample of counties reported considerable variation in relative party effort at the county level in 1992, with the Democrats generally outperforming their GOP rivals. Four factors were examined as potential sources of these differences: electoral conditions at the state and county levels, capacities of the local organizations, integration of the local organizations into the national campaign, and responsiveness of the different local parties to one another. Only the relative organizational capacities of local party organizations (but not presidential campaign organizations) and integration of local and national organizations were strongly related to interparty activity differences, which confirms the importance of the standing local party organizations and the modern "coordinated campaign" for grass-roots party effort on behalf of presidential candidates.