Did dismissing Door knocking and ground game by Biden made it closer?

[Bootes Void]

The Biden campaign refrained from any door knocking for most of the year due to covid and did not have much of a ground game as a traditional campaign(supposedly).This also lead to the surge or closing of the gap with GOP registration, did this end up making the election than it was?

[SaneDemocrat]

Yes

[dspNY]

Absolutely. Having no traditional ground game cost Biden at least two points, maybe three, in each of the battlegrounds

[compucomp]

This was done because of the coronavirus, if Biden's going to campaign on taking the virus seriously and following public health precautions, it would be hypocritical to go around knocking on doors. So this could have been an unavoidable handicap.

However the pandemic did force almost all states to expand VBM and it was used far more this year than before, disproportionately by Democrats. How much did VBM expansion improve Democratic turnout, did it compensate for the lack of a physical ground game?

[JGibson]

Yes.

[DrScholl]

It most likely did. Ground game has been super important and whenever Democrats win big there has been a massive ground game.

[GP270watch]

 Yes, if the Democrats had a bit better election day turnout they would have cut into Trump's margins even if they lost election day and the victory would have been a lot easier.

[compucomp]

Also, let's not forget what happened in 2016 when Hillary had a huge well-organized ground game, Trump had none, and Trump won anyway. Are we saying Trump was actually winning the battlegrounds by 3 points or so and Hillary's ground game actually closed the gap? That feels unlikely to me.

[GP270watch]

Also, let's not forget what happened in 2016 when Hillary had a huge well-organized ground game, Trump had none, and Trump won anyway. Are we saying Trump was actually winning the battlegrounds by 3 points or so and Hillary's ground game actually closed the gap? That feels unlikely to me.

 Disagree in Florida at least. GOP in 2016 was much more active on the ground vs Clinton. Like a lot of things HRC 2016 campaign it was more hype than action. Trump beat her with rallies, affiliated Republican groups organizing when his own organization was in disarray, social media (both legal and unethical/illegal stuff) and mindshare with the media networks who covered Trump's every word.

[DaleCooper]

Also, let's not forget what happened in 2016 when Hillary had a huge well-organized ground game, Trump had none, and Trump won anyway. Are we saying Trump was actually winning the battlegrounds by 3 points or so and Hillary's ground game actually closed the gap? That feels unlikely to me.

I was under the impression that Hillary Clinton had a pretty weak ground game, especially in the Rust Belt where it was built around out-of-date data. I heard lots of stories from battleground campaign workers where as many as 30% of the people they contacted to GOTV for Clinton were actually Republicans or Trump supporters. The Wisconsin Democratic Party has definitely improved by a lot since 2016, though I'm not sure about the other two of the Big 3.

To answer the thread's question, I do think that sacrificing the door-to-door ground game was a big risk. What this election seems to indicate is that when both sides have massive turnout, the Democrats are still advantaged, so hopefully in 2022 and 2024 there's a better ground game to counter the GOP.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Yes

(Just continuing the simplistic answers in this thread)

[Progressive Pessimist]

Possibly. I wouldn't call it "dismissed" though. I'm sure that the Biden campaign wanted to do it but had to stay perceived as the campaign that takes the pandemic seriously. It's a bit understandable. Biden wouldn't be able to get away with blatant campaigning with a disregard for the pandemic like Trump did. In that sense between ground game and his rallies Trump had an advantage there with his shamelessness. I agree with Compucomp that mail-in voting's expansion probably made up for it, at least somewhat. Also we shouldn't forget about what a motivator Democrats and other Trump opponents being simply scared s***less of a second Trump term contributed too. Once again, I'll say that hindsight from 2016 was still the Democratic Party's best advantage in this election.

And it's true that Hillary Clinton's ground game was often remarked as being what was going to keep the election in her favor back in 2016, and it didn't.

I don't know, this is yet another one of many aspects of this election that is kind of difficult to wrap one's head around.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yes, bad decision.  I understand the thinking about the tradeoffs, but it was a bad call.

The main problem, of course, is that the media and the voters did not sufficiently punish the Trump campaign for flounting the coronavirus and behaving extremely irresponsibly.

[KaiserDave]

This was an error

[Rookie Yinzer]

We are in the middle of a pandemic. Democratic voters would have been repulsed at in person contact. He won either way so I really don’t care at this point.

[SaneDemocrat]

This was the only way in which they were too online.

[Bootes Void]

This is a damned if you do, damned if you dont scenario, If you have engage in door knocking during the campaign you would get criticized for being hypocritical about the pandemic. If you didnt, then you may lose the election and give trump four more years

[Skill and Chance]

Also, let's not forget what happened in 2016 when Hillary had a huge well-organized ground game, Trump had none, and Trump won anyway. Are we saying Trump was actually winning the battlegrounds by 3 points or so and Hillary's ground game actually closed the gap? That feels unlikely to me.

This is a good point.  I think everyone was just in awe of Obama in 2008 and "ground game" has been overrated ever since.  There's at least an argument to be made that it helped Trump some Southern states that were more or less fully open by September, but that's about it.