New data: Obama Ground Game Leading in Swing States
The Obama Campaign is contacting a higher share of its supporters through door-to-door organizing in swing states, compared to Romney, according to a new Pew poll. That is a key edge going into Election Day, as the race turns from persuasion and undecideds to turning out committed voters.
So in swing states:
- 43% of Obama voters say they receive political email or texts about the campaign, compared to 30% of Romney voters.
- 25% of Obama voters say they’ve been visited at home by Obama backers. For Romney voters, that number drops to 14%.
Romney does lead in mobilization efforts that do not require deploying people in the field. In swing states, about 82% of Romney backers say they’ve received paid mail backing Romney, compared to 73% of Obama supporters. (Mail and recorded phone calls can be purchased by any well funded campaign; door-to-door field staff cannot be as easily scaled without volunteers on the ground.)
Social interaction and field organizing are key because they tend to mobilize voters more than softer contacts, such as mail and reported calls. Pew, which conducted the new survey on voter contacts, downplayed that fact its analysis of the new data, which emphasized that both campaigns were roughly even when all categories were combined (just over half of Obama and Romney voters say they’ve been contacted in some way). In politics, any campaign would rather have a lead on the ground than be tied thanks to spending cash on robo-calls.
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Reporting by Ari Melber
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Q&A with Jeremy Bird, the Man Who Plans to Turn Texas Blue
texasobserver.orgForrest Wilder for The Texas Observer, interviewing Jeremy Bird:
The insoluble dilemma for Texas Democrats has long been how to use Texas’ demographic change to break their epically long losing streak. Call it Waiting for Gomez.
…
O: I think one of the things that has inarguably held back Democrats in a lot of respects is a really low turnout rate, among Latinos especially in certain areas. Is that something y’all are mindful of and what’s the thinking in terms of what to do about that?
JB: That is probably the Number 1 and 2 problems. No. 1 is low registration rates. Two is low turnout rates. They’re both equally important. It’s a full process of how do get people on the rolls and in the electorate. But then you’ve got to turn them out or otherwise it doesn’t matter. We’ve gotta figure out what works and then do some testing of that.
The biggest thing is that if you look at right after the election [Latino Decisions] asked voters all over the Southwest and the West and in the South were you talked to by a campaign, did somebody knock on your door, did somebody call you, was there any interaction. With voters in Colorado it was well over 60 percent of all voters—and you know how hard it is to get to some people—had been communicated with by a campaign.
The number was in the mid-20s, I think, in Texas. Part of it is people aren’t asking, people aren’t going out. If you look at what Andy Brown did with the 21-precinct project, they actually went out and talked to people and saw a difference. We know from every study we did in the campaign and every election I’ve been involved in, you see bigger turnout when people are actually asked for their vote… And so we know that works. The question is can you do that on a scale enough to move the needle.
