Like Molly Ball, Seth Masket notes Obama’s field office advantage:
[I]t’s not entirely clear what this means. Yes, I have a paper showing that field offices matter — they helped Obama win three states he’d have otherwise lost in 2008. But that, of course, is no guarantee that offices will have the same sort of effect this time around. And I don’t fully comprehend Romney’s approach to field offices here. I have a few ideas, though:
1. He doesn’t think they’ll yield him the same sort of electoral payoff that the Obama folks are counting on, so he’s investing more in ads.
2. He believes his offices can each cover more territory than the Obama offices can.
3. He’s counting on field organizational efforts from the parties, church organizations, and other allied groups to do the same sort of things that the Obama offices are doing.
