Iowa Republicans beat Democrats at ground game

URBANDALE - Republicans beat Democrats at their own targeted ground game in the 2014 election with a coordinated effort that identified Iowans who normally don't vote in midterm elections and convinced them to cast early ballots, a top Iowa GOP official said Wednesday.

'This was a fantastic year, we all felt it coming, we could feel the momentum as the campaign progressed,” Chad Olsen, Republican Party of Iowa executive director told members of the Westside Conservative Club.

However, he said, the key element in pushing a strong contingent of Republican candidates across the finish line was 'significant strides” the party made in its voter contact program that capitalized on dissatisfaction with President Obama, campaign miscues by his Democratic allies and GOP financial and data resources to build a wave election turnout.

Democrats entered the 2014 election cycle ready to use social media and technology advances that proved successful for Obama to target Iowans in an early-voting strategy that initially was paying dividends while Republicans struggled to unite and get direction, Olsen said.

'I don't think there's any question that Democrats have been better at the ground game in the last few cycles and Obama took that to a whole new level. We were playing catch up a little bit this time,” he said.

However, Iowa Republicans brought in a new party leadership team in June that turned around fundraising and organizational disadvantaged with a three-pronged strategy that utilized direct mail, phone banks and door knocks by paid staff and volunteers to erase Democrats' edge and a one point surpass them in absentee ballots, he noted.

'That was their primary talking point throughout the fall that they were leading in early votes, they had enthusiasm on their side. We were taking that away from them,” Olsen said. 'We were able to match them and beat them on many levels.”

Particularly telling, he noted, was the fact that a sizable number of the absentee requests included in the early Democratic edge 'did not come home” as returned ballots cast in the midterm election. In the meantime, Olsen said his party produced an effective mailer featuring U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, employed a voter scoring system that also proved effective, and used an 'Iowa nice” version of social pressure mail to get low- and mid-propensity voters to participate in a non-presidential cycle when they otherwise may not have voted.

'The (Republican National Committee) has made a massive investment in data and we were able to see the benefits of that this time,” he said, with a ground game in a tight election that complimented a GOP turnout effort that was driven by paid media, message and candidates with 'the wind to our back.”

Looking to 2016, Olsen said Republicans plan to build a long-term ground game aimed at expanding the GOP base in a key swing state where registrations currently are divided relatively evenly among Republicans, Democrats and independents.

Asked about the future of the party's presidential straw poll fundraiser that traditionally has been held in Ames the summer prior to Iowa's first-in-the-nation precinct caucuses, Olsen said there are discussions underway now to decide what future direction to take given Gov. Terry Branstad has expressed concerns about an event last attended by all the GOP presidential candidates in 1995.

'We have a big role to play in Iowa,” he said. 'It would be nice to do an event in the summer - straw poll or something like it - where all of our candidates nationally were able to attend. We'll be talking about that a lot in the next couple of months.”