University of Dayton eCommons Political Science Faculty Publications Department of Political Science 8-2018 What if Hillary Clinton Had Gone to Wisconsin? Presidential Campaign Visits and Vote Choice in the 2016 Election Christopher J. Devine University of Dayton,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/pol_fac_pub Part of the Political Theory Commons, and the Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons eCommons Citation Devine, Christopher J., "What if Hillary Clinton Had Gone to Wisconsin? Presidential Campaign Visits and Vote Choice in the 2016 Election" (2018). Political Science Faculty Publications. 116. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/pol_fac_pub/116 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Political Science at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Political Science Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact
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[email protected]. What if Hillary Clinton Had Gone to Wisconsin? Presidential Campaign Visits and Vote Choice in the 2016 Election Christopher J. Devine Assistant Professor of Political Science University of Dayton
[email protected] ABSTRACT: Hillary Clinton’s failure to visit the key battleground state of Wisconsin in 2016 has become a popular metaphor for the alleged strategic inadequacies of her presidential campaign. Critics who cite this fact, however, make two important assumptions: that campaign visits are effective, in general, and that they were effective for Clinton in 2016. I test these assumptions using an original database of presidential and vice presidential campaign visits in 2016. Specifically, I regress party vote share on each candidate’s number of campaign visits, at the county level, first for all counties located within battleground states, and then for counties located within each of six key battleground states: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.