Obama Counts on Boosting Voter Turnout in Republican States
By Kristin Jensen and Julianna Goldman
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Four years ago, Ralph Bresler, a Democratic county chairman in southeast Virginia, had to pay a college student to go to a nearby party office to get a list of registered voters he could use to target supporters of presidential candidate
John Kerry.
That approach yielded ``very few results,'' Bresler said, and Massachusetts Senator Kerry lost
James City County by almost 23 points.
This year, Democratic nominee
Barack Obama has an office in nearby Williamsburg, one of eight in the Hampton Roads area. Across the state, Obama and the Democratic National Committee have a combined 69 offices, compared with 20 for Republican
John McCain and his party.
Obama's supporters are armed not only with voter lists but with detailed ``walk sheets'' containing people's views on specific issues. They have reached most of the neighborhoods in James City County and registered thousands of new voters in the effort to beat McCain in Virginia, which hasn't been carried by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
``If you had told me a year ago that Obama would have an office in Williamsburg, I would have told you you had been drinking too much,'' said Bresler, 65.
Leading in Virginia
Going into last night's debate, the final one before the Nov. 4 election, Illinois Senator Obama was running slightly ahead in Virginia: A
Rasmussen poll last week showed the Democrat leading 50-48; other polls show a wider lead. Now, he needs to ensure he can translate that edge into votes.
That means boosting turnout, a feat Democrats haven't sufficiently pulled off in the last two elections. This time, Obama has built the party's strongest get-out-the-vote operation in decades, said
Curtis Gans, director of the
Center for the Study of the American Electorate at American University in Washington.
``It's the best thing that's going right now,'' Gans said.
To be sure, Gans said it was only the best operation overall since President
George W. Bush's in 2004, when strategist
Karl Rove crafted a program that allowed Republicans to target voters. The Bush campaign also had supporters reach out to others in their community, a model Obama is emulating this year.
``People who come to the door are authentic, enthusiastic and can immediately strike up a rapport,''
Donald Green, director of the
Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Now, ``both sides are on top of the idea.''
Across the U.S.
The Obama campaign is replicating this tactic in swing states and Republican areas across the U.S.
Cheryl Hibbeler, 54, took a sabbatical from her job as a customer-service representative last year to work for the Democrats in Missouri. She now spends 40 to 60 hours a week at an Obama office in St. Peters and on two local campaigns.
In her St. Charles County, which encompasses suburban St. Louis and went for Bush by almost 18 percentage points in 2004, Obama's campaign has registered about 11,000 new voters. Those and other supporters or possible supporters ``are going to hear from us two, three, four, five, six times,'' between now and Election Day, Hibbeler said.
Bill James, a 65-year-old retired electrical engineer in Nevada, told a similar story. He said he had canvassed for Obama near his home in Henderson several times, and in much more effective ways than when he worked for Kerry four years ago.
Kerry Campaign
``With Kerry they would just say `work these streets and put stuff up on every door,''' James said. By contrast, the Obama campaign provided a spreadsheet identifying only those homeowners who would be open to voting for the candidate.
On college campuses, the Democrats are even offering to drive students to their home districts to vote. They are also allowing voters to set up ride-sharing groups on the campaign's
Web site.