The FiveThirtyEight Team Goes To Iowa

DELTA FLIGHT 2541 — I’m on a plane right now, flying from Des Moines to Philadelphia (via Atlanta for some reason), and that means it’s time to shut down our week-long Iowa travelog. What did we learn? Well, we’ll be writing about that more in the coming days. But here’s one conclusion that reinforces an observation we first made in New Hampshire in 2012 : You can tell a lot about a campaign by dropping by its field offices unannounced. How organized does the office seem? Are you greeted when you arrive, or can you wander around for a while unnoticed? Is the office active, bustling with people making phone calls and stuffing envelopes? Is there not only activity, but — as Nate put it when we were making these visits — direction? Do you get the sense that the campaign has a game plan? Here’s what we found visiting the Republican candidates’ offices here this week (John Kasich and Carly Fiorina don’t seem to have any Iowa offices). When you’re stopping by a field office, there’s no guarantee you’ll get a fair or representative picture of a campaign, but the scenes we found jibed with other reporting on the campaigns’ ground operations. We’ve sorted the campaigns into tiers below. Thanks for following along all week, and so long, Iowa! Tier 1: Nobody Democratic presidential candidates have always invested more resources in the ground game than Republicans have, and that’s definitely the case this year. No operation truly impressed us. Tier 2: Ted Cruz

Cruz’s office in Urbandale had at least as many people as any other Republican office we visited, and they appeared to be busy making calls. Tier 3: Jeb Bush, Rand Paul

(Paul’s campaign asked that I not take any pictures.) Bush’s and Paul’s offices (in West Des Moines and Des Moines, respectively) had somewhat fewer people than Cruz’s, but they were still pretty full. Moreover, the people there seemed to be checking things off their lists. The phones were ringing. Tier 4: Marco Rubio, Ben Carson

Fewer people still. But Rubio’s headquarters in Ankeny and Carson’s in Urbandale both showed clear indications of professionalism: lists of goals on the wall, pin-dotted maps, etc. Tier 4: Chris Christie, Mike Huckabee

We didn’t see any volunteers in these offices (Christie’s is in Johnston and Huckabee’s is in Urbandale), just a handful of campaign staff. Tier 5: Rick Santorum

Santorum is clearly working hard in Iowa; his schedule is packed with events. But if his Urbandale headquarters is any indication — it was big and empty (and used to belong to the Scott Walker campaign) — Santorum may not have much infrastructure supporting him. Tier Donald Trump

Two Trump volunteers wouldn’t even let us into their West Des Moines office, so we can’t really say what’s going on with The Donald. That said, campaigns typically don’t hide flattering information.