Oh, the Places They’ll Go: A Geographic Analysis of Gubernatorial Campaigns

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X241253259
• Author: Ryan E. Voris,Austin Trantham
• Date: 01 July 2024

Article

American Politics Research

2024, Vol. 52(4) 389–402

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X241253259

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Oh, the Places They’ll Go: A Geographic

Analysis of Gubernatorial Campaigns

Ryan E. Voris

1

and Austin Trantham

2

Abstract

Geography has long played a signif‌icant role in American electoral politics. Candidates engage in “retail politics”by visiting fairs,

festivals, schools, churches, and businesses, to meet and greet potential voters. However, systematically understanding where

candidates are actually going has plagued prior work due to small sample sizes and lack of data availability. Presidential elections

have been used with success in previous scholarship, but there are few viable candidates to compare within a single cycle.

Utilizing competitive gubernatorial elections, this work attempts to address these def‌iciencies by utilizing social mediaposts to

track multiple candidates in real-time across the 2018 campaign cycle at the state level. The paper tests competing theories of

candidate engagement regarding travel decisions: do candidates (1) focus their attention on their partisan base or (2) try to

attract independent or “swing”voters? Following an original and intensive data collection effort, we identif‌ied location-specif‌ic

information for over 4700 campaign stops made by major-party candidates across seventeen states. Our results lend support to

candidates spending time with their respective bases of partisan support, with Republicans going to rural areas with non-college

educated individuals while Democrats travel to urban counties with a more diverse electorate.

Keywords

elections, campaign stop, social media, nationalization, governors

States are a patchwork of large cities, small towns, rural com-

munities, and other cultural divisions united under one broad state

identity. For state-wide candidates, this presents a challenge as

they must f‌ind ways to appeal to a broad cross-section of the state

electorate. The solution for many is to take to the road and

crisscross the state. They show up at county fairs, parades, fes-

tivals, coffee shops, and any other place they can think of to

connect with citizens and promote their policy stances in hopes of

winning off‌ice. Candidates for governor spend months engaging

in retail politics, but where are they going?

Geography has always shaped American electoral politics.

Yet,few have examined the imp act of geographic concerns on

candidates’decisions to campaign –or not –in certain areas

of the state. Campiagns are dynamic situations and tracking

candidate movements has proven surprisingly diff‌icult

(Shaw, 1999;Shaw & Gimpel, 2012). Campaign stops are

subject to last-minute changes and few local media have the

resources to follow the campaigns in-depth. Social media

provides a possible solution to the problem. New media

provides candidates with new ways to signal their voters

while allowing supporters to follow in nearly real-time. In-

terested parties, including scholars, can instantly see mes-

sages, photos, and videos from the campaign trail and get a

better understanding of what, how, and where candidates

reach out to voters.

This paper uses social media to track gubernatorial can-

didates in multiple competitive races throughout the

2018 campaign season. Our original dataset, containing over

5100 individual campaign stops, is used to see how demo-

graphic and electoral considerations factor into candidate

travel strategy during the election. Are candidates tapping

into nationalized coalitions to turn out the party faithful? Are

they targeting persuadable voters in swing counties? Our

results show that both parties are primarily spending their

time on the campaign trail to target fellow partisans.

Gubernatorial Campaigns and

Electoral Strategy

Electoral campaigns are dynamic events, def‌ined by a

combination of ever-changing norms and practices. Candi-

dates adapt their strategies to evolving technology and party

1

Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Tifton, GA, USA

2

Saint Leo University, Saint Leo, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Ryan E. Voris, History and Political Science, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural

College, ABAC Box 20, 2802 Moore Hwy., Tifton, GA 31793-5679, USA.

Email: rvoris@abac.edu