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In the brave new world of political campaigns where paid political consultants, mass email, micro-targeting, daily polling, and TV ads reign, Ron Paul's campaign has gone old school. Hailed as the candidate who most effectively utilizes the Internet in his campaign, Ron Paul believes that what wins elections is not how much air time he can get, or what kind of consultants he has on board, but instead, how many people he can talk to. Consultants are out, and precinct walking is in at the Ron Paul campaign.
Inside
Saturday, January 5th, only days after the Iowa caucus, I attended an Orange County Ron Paul Meetup group meeting. This group, as I wrote in November, is quite large and well-equipped; in fact, it is one of the larger Ron Paul groups across the nation.
This meeting was different than last time, however. Rather than having a teleconference with Ron Paul, Saturday they held a seminar on precinct walking. In fact, a volunteer hired by the campaign was there to instruct the group members on how to do these walks. This volunteer, and now employee of the campaign, is going to Meetup groups across California to instruct them.
It is important to understand that these Meetup groups operate almost wholly independently from the central campaign. It is of particular interest, then, that the campaign is hiring volunteers to teach members of the campaign on precinct walking.
Door by Door, House by House
Ron Paul's central problem, people in the campaign believe, is name recognition. People know who Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Rudolph Giuliani are. They may not necessarily know what they stand for, but they know who they are.
Ron Paul does not enjoy the same luxury. Outside of the online community, most people have no idea who Ron Paul is. Unlike Clinton, who has been in the public's eye for fifteen years, Ron Paul is a Congressman from a small Texas district. Rasmussen Reports estimates that 42% of the U.S. voters do not know enough about Ron Paul to form an opinion.
Worse, in perhaps the best example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, the media is doing its best to ignore Paul, because he "doesn't have a chance." Adam Kemp of Newsvine reported on Thursday that in CNN's coverage of the Iowa Caucus, they left a fifteen percent chunk out of the Republican graph showing what percentage each candidate had received. Ten of that fifteen percent, coincidentally, belonged to Ron Paul, only one or two percentage-points behind McCain most of the night. Yet despite CNN's willingness to show Richardson on the Democrat's chart at two percent, CNN left Paul's spot a mysterious gray spot, denying him media coverage.
Perhaps, then, the Paul campaign is on to something with precinct walking. Neighbor-to-neighbor discussion is much more powerful than any mass-mailing or campaign ad could ever be. Neighbors listen to each other. But will the neighbors like what Ron Paul stands for once they know who he is?
Strategy
The Orange County Meetup group thinks they will. As they pointed out at the seminar, Zogby conducted a "blind bio" poll in late November that gave a biography for Giuliani, Romney, Thompson and Paul without their names attached. Ron Paul won handily. Red Pills.org writes:
Dr. Ron Paul wins 33 percent of the vote, nationwide, when voters are given four different biographies/campaign planks (sans candidate's name) to vote for, including Ron Paul's. The other bios were for Giuliani (19 percent), Romney (15 percent), and Thompson (13 percent).
Although this poll did not include Huckabee, this indicates that if Paul had more name recognition, Republican voters would support him. But is there enough time to use precinct walking to build up name recognition?
There may be enough time, but there is not enough organization. Paul's strongest asset has been the decentralized nature of his campaign. In this case, though, while it can bring results with precinct walking, there is no good way for the campaign to measure and coordinate it. Right now, Meetup group members are given lists of voters in their precinct, literature, and some basic training, and are told to get it done. While in many cases this may be effective, there is no real way for the Meetup group leaders, let alone the central campaign, to know how many homes they covered, or even if they walked at all.
But that is the very nature of this campaign: organized chaos. On November 5th, 2007, no one in the Ron Paul campaign knew how much money would be donated. No one knew how much would be raised on December 16th, either, but on both days, the results were astounding. If you asked me whether precinct walking will be effective in bolstering Paul's campaign numbers, I would say that it will probably not be.
But if you asked me the day before November 5th how much Paul would raise, I'd tell you he would be lucky to raise $100,000. I was off by some $4.2 million. And one thing is for sure: beginning this week, whether it will work or not, I will be walking my neighborhood.
