Forget the 50-State Plan. Clinton’s Building for a Battleground Strategy.

Hil­lary Clin­ton has a paid staffer in every state in Amer­ica. But she won’t for much longer.

Her cam­paign’s much-dis­cussed 50-state grass­roots or­gan­iz­ing pro­gram is more a means to an end than the end it­self.

In the short term, it helps her team bol­ster the im­age of the front-run­ner tak­ing ser­i­ously the pos­sib­il­ity of a com­pet­it­ive primary (even if no one else is) while also ad­dress­ing the post-2008 cri­ti­cism that Clin­ton fo­cused too nar­rowly on big primary states, al­low­ing Barack Obama to sweep up del­eg­ates she hadn’t even fought for.

But it yields its great­er be­ne­fit six to 12 months from now, when vo­lun­teers trained in solidly Clin­ton ter­rit­ory, where their ef­forts are un­ne­ces­sary, shift their fo­cus to neigh­bor­ing states where Demo­crats will be fight­ing the Re­pub­lic­an nom­in­ee to cap­ture every middle-of-the-road, un­de­cided voter.

In­deed, though the cam­paign is stress­ing its work to­ward a ro­bust na­tion­wide grass­roots net­work—far more ex­tens­ive than her out­reach ef­forts in 2008—that 50-state net­work will ul­ti­mately be­ne­fit Clin­ton in the same small play­ing field of swing states that pro­pelled Obama to vic­tory in 2008 and 2012.

And not for noth­ing. With an in­creas­ingly po­lar­ized elect­or­ate, the num­ber of states that will prove de­cis­ive to Clin­ton on Elec­tion Night 2016 could total as few as sev­en and cer­tainly no more than 12.

While the team might not talk about a battle­ground ap­proach now, its tac­tics will soon re­flect that strategy. The paid staffers who have been de­ployed to every state around the coun­try are work­ing for the cam­paign on a tem­por­ary basis; at the end of May, the cam­paign ex­pects vo­lun­teers to take over loc­al op­er­a­tions.

Ul­ti­mately, the vo­lun­teer struc­tures they leave in place be­hind them will be to sup­ple­ment ef­forts of vo­lun­teers in con­tested ter­rit­ory—both in key primary states and gen­er­al-elec­tion battle­grounds.

“Staffers in those [blue] states provide a tre­mend­ous amount of vo­lun­teer out­put in­to neigh­bor­ing battle­ground states that can have a huge im­pact,” said Mitch Stew­art, a found­ing part­ner at 270 Strategies who served as the battle­ground-states dir­ect­or for Pres­id­ent Obama’s reelec­tion cam­paign. Stew­art ad­vised the pro-Clin­ton su­per PAC Ready for Hil­lary in the lead-up to Clin­ton’s 2016 an­nounce­ment.

“States like Nevada and Col­or­ado—we had a lot of vo­lun­teers call­ing in­to those two states,” Stew­art said, cit­ing New York (help­ing out with Pennsylvania) and Mas­sachu­setts (help­ing with New Hamp­shire) as oth­er less-com­pet­it­ive states that proved help­ful for vo­lun­teer man­power.

In 2012, Obama’s reelec­tion cam­paign had just 10 “battle­ground” states with a full-fledged staff: Wis­con­sin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hamp­shire, Ohio, Vir­gin­ia, North Car­o­lina, Flor­ida, Nevada, and Col­or­ado. There were an ad­di­tion­al three that were con­sidered “watch” states: Min­nesota, Michigan, and Wash­ing­ton state. That didn’t mean that oth­er states went un­noticed, es­pe­cially with or­gan­izers for Or­gan­iz­ing for Amer­ica sta­tioned across the coun­try—but they didn’t have the same kind of fully staffed op­er­a­tions that the swing states did.

Already, some polit­ic­al pro­fes­sion­als see an even more tar­geted map for 2016. (Larry Sabato and his team as­ser­ted last week that there are just sev­en toss-up states this cycle: Nevada, Col­or­ado, Iowa, Ohio, Vir­gin­ia, Flor­ida, and New Hamp­shire.)

Cer­tainly, the 50-state net­work would be use­ful if Clin­ton gets a real chal­lenge in the primary sea­son—from former Mary­land Gov. Mar­tin O’Mal­ley, for ex­ample. And when states start to be­gin al­low­ing cam­paigns to col­lect sig­na­tures to get on the bal­lot, the vo­lun­teer op­er­a­tions in place will en­sure that Clin­ton’s cam­paign is pre­pared for bal­lot ac­cess across the map—an is­sue that haunted some less-or­gan­ized Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ates in 2012.

It’s also a way for Clin­ton’s cam­paign to make good on its prom­ise to help build up loc­al and state parties, many of which are strug­gling in the post-Cit­izens United cam­paign world. Clin­ton’s team is already put­ting in sig­ni­fic­ant work in Iowa, for ex­ample, where 2014 losses have Demo­crats wor­ried about the fu­ture of the state party; her vo­lun­teer struc­tures, even in non­swing states, will be a boost to loc­al party op­er­a­tions.

Plus, some Demo­crats ar­gue, even states that aren’t com­pet­it­ive now could be more so down the line, so hav­ing pres­id­en­tial-level op­er­at­ives con­nect with and train vo­lun­teers across the coun­try could help pre­pare Demo­crats for fu­ture con­tests. That’s es­pe­cially true of states with grow­ing Latino pop­u­la­tions, such as Geor­gia, Texas, and Ari­zona, which could someday shift away from Re­pub­lic­ans.

“[Clin­ton] is run­ning not just for 2016, but for 2020 and to set up 2024,” said Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Celinda Lake. “Those are states that could be in play by 2020 or 2024.”

In­deed, if the 50-state or­gan­iz­ing ef­fort is meant to ac­com­plish any­thing, it’s cer­tainly not in se­cur­ing Clin­ton’s win in Con­necti­c­ut.