Stop me if you've heard this one before: Democrats are second-guessing their presidential nominee's campaign strategy. This time, Democrats are reportedly concerned that Vice President Kamala Harris isn't holding enough campaign events compared with former President Donald Trump, which they worry could cost her the election. But how valid is this criticism?
The website VoteHub maintains a tracker of each candidate's public events, and their data confirms that Trump has indeed held a handful more events than Harris — although neither has exactly been tearing up the campaign trail. From Aug. 23 (the day after the Democratic National Convention) through Oct. 9 (a span of 48 days), Trump held 39 public events, while Harris held 28.*
And if you look just at events in the major swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), Trump has held 50 percent more events than Harris has. Trump held 33 events in those seven states during that span, while Harris held only 22.
But of course, Trump and Harris are only half of their respective tickets. And Democrats can take some solace in the fact that their vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, had more campaign events in the same span than the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance. According to VoteHub's data, Walz held 29 public events from Aug. 23 through Oct. 9,** while Vance held just 22. In the seven main swing states, Walz still outcampaigned Vance 26 events to 20.
But all this is kind of beside the point anyway. Even if one party were holding way fewer campaign events than the other, it probably wouldn't cost them the election.
"There's pretty limited evidence that presidential candidate visits 'matter,' in terms of durable persuasion, mobilization, or voter knowledge," Joshua Darr, a political scientist who studies campaign strategy, told 538.
One study of the 2012 general election found that most voters weren't even aware when a candidate had visited their area, and local campaign events had "only a small and evanescent effect on voter intentions." And an analysis of the 2016 election found that there was no statistical relationship between the number of candidate visits to a state and the results there. (This helps debunk a persistent myth about the 2016 election: that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost Wisconsin because she did not hold a single event in the state. Well, she visited Pennsylvania a whopping 15 times — more than Trump — and lost there too!)
The pandemic complicates any study of campaign events in the 2020 general election, but in the primaries, at least, they didn't appear to move many votes: Long-shot presidential candidates such as former Reps. John Delaney and Joe Sestak banked their campaigns on shaking every hand and kissing every baby in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and they came away with nothing to show for it. And here in 2024, the presidential candidate who had, by far, the busiest campaign schedule in the primaries — businessman Vivek Ramaswamy — dropped out after receiving just 8 percent of the vote in Iowa.
So campaign events may not be any good for getting votes, but they can matter in another way: getting money. One study of the 2016 election found that donations to Clinton and Trump increased after they visited an area — but, importantly, so did donations to the other campaign, so it may turn out to be a wash anyway. However, this does help explain why the candidates aren't simply holding 100 percent of their campaign events in the seven main swing states; a visit to New York or Virginia can still bear fruit of the financial flavor.
But these effects aren't the same for every candidate. A follow-up study of the 2020 election found that visits from Trump and then-vice presidential candidate Harris increased donations to both campaigns, but visits by then-Vice President Mike Pence did not. At the same time, the study found "weak evidence" that campaign visits by then-candidate Joe Biden boosted Democratic fundraising, but no evidence that it boosted Republican fundraising.
It seems like the level of excitement generated by a candidate among their base — and the level of antipathy they arouse among the other side's base — is what really matters here, more so than whether they are at the top or bottom of the ticket.
"The mobilizing impact of Harris visits in 2020 is particularly interesting, since there was not a similar effect for [Sen. Tim] Kaine or Pence in 2016," Darr said.
But of course, now Harris and Trump are the two candidates at the top of the ticket, so perhaps their visits will continue to generate the most donations. But as long as they're activating donors on both sides of the aisle, it shouldn't matter too much which of them hits the campaign trail with more vigor.
*VoteHub defines a public event as an in-person appearance by a candidate that is open to the public or to supporters by invite, such as a speech, rally, town hall or visit to a local business. They do not include closed-door fundraisers, interviews, press conferences or virtual events. In addition, 538 has excluded debates from the numbers in this article because they are geared toward national audiences, not local ones.
**Although two of those events — in Georgia on Aug. 28 and 29 — were joint appearances with Harris.