Iowa GOP credits ground game for election success

DES MOINES - Iowa Republicans' dramatic victories in Tuesday's election can be traced in large part to the party's voter-contact program it has been preparing since the wake of the previous presidential election, top national Republican officials say.

Republicans in Iowa won the presidential vote for the first time since 2004 and just the second time in the past seven presidential elections post-Ronald Reagan.

The Iowa GOP's four congressional incumbents also won, and the party took control of the state Senate by defeating six Democratic incumbents, giving Republicans full control of the Iowa Capitol for at least the next two years.

Throughout the 2016 election season, national and state party officials expressed confidence in their voter-contact program, which was established shortly after the 2012 election. Those officials said this week they feel vindicated by Tuesday's results.

'I think that Tuesday's historic win for Donald Trump and really Republicans across the country was made possible because of (Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus') strategic vision to build a world-class, permanent, data-driven ground game,” Justin Johnson, the national party's regional political director for Iowa and Wisconsin, said Friday.

The national GOP determined after the 2012 election it needed to establish a long-term, data-driven voter-contact program in key presidential battleground states, including Iowa. The work began in late 2013 to prepare for the 2014 midterm elections.

The national party partnered with battleground state parties, including Iowa, to develop a long-term strategy that started early with building relationships with organizers and voters. Republicans modeled some of their work on President Barack Obama's successful ground game, making their own tweaks and additions.

They also trained staff to develop neighborhood outreach leaders and relied on a data-rich voter-contact program to maximize turnout.

While it is impossible to draw a definitively direct correlation, the short-term anecdotal evidence suggests the program has been effective.

In 2012, Iowa went for Obama for the second time, but the state had Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. Iowa's congressional delegation was a three-three split of Democrats and Republicans, and the Statehouse was under split party control.

In four years and two elections, Iowa now has five congressional Republicans and one Democrat, the Statehouse will be under complete Republican control come January, and the state went for Donald Trump by almost 10 percentage points.

Republicans also have grown their advantage over Democrats in state voter registration: As of Nov. 1, active registered Republican voters outnumbered Democrats by nearly 21,000. After the 2012 election, Democrats led Republicans by more than 27,000 active registered voters.

And they narrowed the early-voting gap: In 2012, Iowa Democrats cast 68,000 more early votes than Republicans; in 2016, that advantage was reduced to 42,000.

'The hard work that we set out to do definitely paid off,” Matt Dailer, the national party's Iowa political director, said Friday.

When Trump secured the Republican nomination, his campaign ceded the ground game operation to the party, which already was running its expansive operation.

'I think that we need to acknowledge and thank, frankly, the Trump campaign for their efforts. But I can give them credit for understanding what the RNC had built and had been working on for more than a year and a half and just fully bought into our plan,” Johnson said.