PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNING AT THE GRASS-ROOTS

This study investigates differences in grass-roots party activity for the Democratic and Republication presidential candidates in 1992. Chai rs of the party organizations and the presidential campaign organizati ons in a national sample of counties reported considerable variation i n relative parry effort at the county level in 1992, with the Democrat s generally outperforming their GOP rivals. Four factors were examined as potential sources of these differences: electoral conditions at th e state and county levels, capacities of the local organizations, inte gration of the local organizations into the national campaign, and res ponsiveness of the different local parties to one another. Only the re lative organizational capacities of local party organizations (but not presidential campaign organizations) and integration of local and nat ional organizations mere strongly related to interparty activity diffe rences, which confirms the importance of the standing local party orga nizations and the modern ''coordinated campaign'' for grass-roots part y effort on behalf of presidential candidates.