Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton beats Republican nominee Donald Trump in field staff in every key battleground state, according to an analysis released Friday by statistics site 538.
Clinton currently has 489 offices nationwide, more than double the number of offices Trump controls. Clinton has 19 more field offices in New Hampshire, 23 in both Iowa and Colorado, and 28 in North Carolina. The divide is more substantial in several key swing states like Pennsylvania, where Clinton has 35 more offices, and Florida, where Clinton leads by 21 offices.
Trump and the RNC do have an infrastructure put in place, but it is overshadowed by Clinton’s machine. The Republican National Committee (RNC) announced a huge staffing increase in the first weeks of the month of September, hiring an additional 1,040 paid and trained staffers in Florida, as well as 443 in Ohio.
Despite such drastic increases in staffing levels, pundits argue that using Party offices is a much weaker strategy than using traditional campaign offices. Party offices don’t only have an allegiance to the national candidate. Some local volunteers could use RNC funds to advocate for down-ticket races for Congress or state-level politics.
Trump continues to follow a strategy of relying on the local Republican Party offices nationwide, cutting direct campaign costs in rent and salaries for staffers. This strategy proves the candidate is able to save money, according to Trump himself, but pundits aren’t easily convinced.
Previous candidates for the office of president opened their offices strategically, ensuring that any campaign offices were centrally located to neighborhoods that were specifically targeted by the campaign, making it easier for knockers to hit those houses, and making it easier for the national campaign to have a direct say in what materials are used locally.
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