In the past decade, few topics have enthralled both political scientists and political practitioners like voter mobilization. Starting with the seminal studies by Alan Gerber and Donald Green (summarized in Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout, 2008), the topic has been covered profusely in the discipline, and has received considerable attention from the popular press as well. Nearly all of these studies, however, have been quantitative analyses of the effectiveness of voter targeting efforts. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen takes a fresh approach: Ground Wars summarizes his detailed ethnographic study of voter mobilization in two Democratic congressional campaigns during the 2008 cycle (Linda Stender in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District and Jim Himes in Connecticut’s 4th Congressional District). As such, the book offers a unique glimpse into the actual lived experience of conducting a get-out-the-vote campaign.

The book begins with a detailed history of voter mobilization efforts, paying special attention to the developments of the last 20 years. It then goes on to offer detailed insights from the author’s ethnographic fieldwork, reporting on how the staff and volunteers in the campaign actually carry out these voter mobilization drives. Nielsen pays particular attention to the complexities of the interactions among the full-time professional staff, the part-time staff, the volunteers, and the wider array of affiliated interest groups, and how these shape the eventual voter outreach efforts. In the end, he argues that contemporary mobilization campaigns represent neither the pure “astrotruf” campaigns some have feared nor the pure expression of grassroots democracy that some have claimed them to be. Rather, they rest somewhere in the middle—a mechanism for involving citizens in the political process, but in a way shaped by elites. Such campaigns, he argues, are nevertheless very important, as they increase voter turnout and political participation more generally.

Perhaps the most important insight in the book—especially for those who engage in the quantitative analysis of these get-out-the-vote efforts—is that these campaigns are rarely what they seem from the outside. Political scientists tend to see them as highly efficient efforts that effectively target voters. Yet Nielsen’s work problematizes this view, showing how the volunteers and part-time staffers on the ground have different lived experiences from the mental image many of us carry in our heads. Volunteers get tired and prematurely record “not home” on door-knocking sheets; they skip certain blocks, go off message when talking to voters, and so forth. Further, because of the hierarchical nature of campaigns, there are often frictions and tensions that shape how these appeals are actually delivered. The end result is that our data sets and field experiments on voter mobilization actually reflect a far more complex—and likely error-ridden—process than we realize.

As with any ethnographic study, Nielsen’s chooses depth over breadth, focusing on two congressional campaigns in a pro-Democratic year. This, of course, raises questions of broader applicability. While many features of the Stender and Himes campaigns are undoubtedly endemic to such campaigns more generally, one wonders about the applicability of these lessons to other campaigns. In particular, two issues stand out to me.

First, there are questions of partisanship and geography. Both campaigns are trying to contact Democratic, rather than Republican, voters, and they do so in the Northeast, a relatively pro-Democratic region. Is the process different by party or by region? I do not know for sure, but given some differences in where Democratic and Republican voters live, the ways in which they are most effectively reached may be different. In particular, mobilizing voters in a city such as Bridgeport might be quite different than mobilizing them in a more sprawling exurban community (like, say, the one surrounding many southern or western cities). While I do not want to make too much of this argument, it would be interesting to see how such campaigns differ—if at all—by party and also by region.

Second, there is a broader issue about professionalization. Again and again, we see that while both campaigns themselves may be relatively professional, the ability to carry out the get-out-the-vote campaign depends on a less professionalized part-time and volunteer workforce. How much does this mixing of professional and nonprofessional staff matter? Are organizations that have more professionalized staffs more effective at actually turning out voters, or does engaging actual community members result in more effective get-out-the-vote drives? Some prior work suggests that professional efforts are more efficacious in some settings (David Nickerson, “Quality Is Job One: Professional and Volunteer Voter Mobilization Calls,” American Journal of Political Science 51 [no. 2, 2007]: 269–82), while other work finds that using volunteers from the community is a more effective strategy (Betsy Sinclair, Margaret McConnell, and Melissa Michelson, “Local Canvassing and Social Pressure: The Efficacy of Grassroots Voter Mobilization,” Political Communication 30 [no. 1, 2012]: 42–57). Exploring how differing levels of professionalization and/or community-involvement matter is another question to be answered.

Perhaps the most intriguing question raised by this work is one raised by all voter mobilization research: Do these campaigns broaden the electorate by expanding the pool of voters or do they narrow it by focusing efforts on ensuring that likely voters show up at the polls? Existing work suggests that many of these drives do increase inequality in participation (Ryan Enos, Anthony Fowler, and Lynn Vavreck, “Increasing Inequality: The Effect of GOTV Mobilization on the Composition of the Electorate,” Journal of Politics 76[1]: 273–88). However, given the efforts of many campaigns, most notably President Barak Obama’s, to reach out to lower-propensity voters, it may be possible for get-out-the-vote drives to shrink participatory inequalities in some settings. More work will be needed to clarify when campaigns can broaden, rather than stratify, the electorate.

These points should not detract from what is an engaging and important read, however. Scholars of electoral politics will want to add this title to their bookshelves. It offers a novel perspective on an important topic, and helps illustrate the real-world complexity that goes into one of the activities most central to contemporary political campaigns.