Dave Wasserman’s tweet here is one possible takeaway from these early returns: that field offices matter less than ever to the results of presidential primaries. I’d urge some caution though: The published peer-reviewed research on field office effects is all from general elections, and those articles estimate the effects to be around 1 percent. Biden’s performance in states like Virginia and North Carolina so far looks on par with his success in South Carolina, and if Bloomberg thought having offices in those states could provide a firewall against Biden there, it was a mistake. I find field offices interesting because they provide a snapshot of the communities campaigns want to invest in and give insight into candidates’ strategies, but I’m under no illusions: They’re simply not going to be decisive except in very close elections, and the states so far are not that.
