Candidates’ Field Office Strategies In New Hampshire Are Similar
There simply aren’t as many campaign field offices in New Hampshire as in Iowa (61 compared to 127 among the five highest-polling candidates). This is in part due to the different sizes of the states — with a population of 1.34 million people, New Hampshire is much smaller than Iowa, which is home to 3.15 million.
But one thing is clear: Warren and Sanders are not taking their neighboring state for granted. Warren has the most total offices of any candidate (17), with Sanders a close second at 15. Meanwhile, the candidate with the most Iowa offices, Buttigieg, has 13 offices in New Hampshire, and the candidate most criticized for his Iowa field operations, Biden, has 11. Klobuchar has five offices.
There is one strategic difference between the candidates that stands out, though. Warren has four offices in Rockingham County, along the Seacoast, while no other candidate has more than two. That’s probably because Rockingham borders populous areas in Warren’s home state of Massachusetts, perhaps allowing her to recruit volunteers from her constituents. Sanders does not have a similar advantage in offices along the less-populated border with his home state of Vermont.
New Hampshire’s small area and mountainous terrain have left campaigns with fewer options to expand their footprint than in Iowa. In the three northernmost counties (Grafton, Carroll, and Coos, estimated total population 170,000), Warren and Sanders each have five offices, while Buttigieg and Biden have three and two, respectively. No campaign holds a clear advantage in the state’s most populous county (Hillsborough, estimated population 415,000), where Warren, Sanders, and Buttigieg each have three offices.
Overall, New Hampshire’s field operations are on a different scale than Iowa. The state only has 10 counties, compared to Iowa’s 99. Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg have offices in each county whereas in Iowa, Buttigieg dominated the state with 33 field offices. Warren is at least making a push to exploit her neighboring-state advantage, though, so I’ll be watching Rockingham County to see if it pays off for Warren tonight.