GOP won ground game, RNC chief says

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Republicans won not only because of the national mood but because they out-organized Democrats this election year.

{mosads}”The reason they’re playing up the wave is that they don’t want to admit the Republicans actually beat them at their own game,” he told reporters Friday morning at a breakfast hosted by The Christian Science Monitor.

“The ground game mattered. Our unprecedented investment in data mattered,” he continued. “I’ll admit Democrats’ ground game was bigger and more expensive. Our was smarter, targeted, more efficient and ultimately more effective.”

Priebus pointed to a pair of big Senate pickups in swing states as evidence the RNC has made large strides since 2012, when Democrats out-organized Republicans on the ground.

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“If we had not been laser-focused at turning out low-propensity voters in states like Iowa and Colorado we would have not been victorious,” he said.

Priebus said the GOP would need to continue to work hard at field operations, and he said it would be leaving its field staff in major presidential swing states after the elections. Campaign committees historically shrink after elections before rebuilding for the next cycle, but the RNC chief promised to add staff in other top states as well, saying the group will have to triple in size by the 2016 elections in order to recreate what they just did in the midterms nationwide.

“We need to have a full-blown field operation in place by March in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and that’s extremely expensive to do,” he said. “Our data and targeting has to continue to improve, and I think it will … and our early vote program has to decisively beat the Democrats’.”