Bill Burton and David Plouffe held a conference call this morning. Plouffe announced that the campaign is putting up ads in Georgia and North Dakota and Arizona. On the early vote, Plouffe said the Democrats outnumber Republicans in Florida by 200,000 votes. In North Carolina, 19% of all Democrats that have voted early have never voted before.
Plouffe said they feel confident that they will all the Kerry states, plus they have a realistic path to win all the battlegrounds, plus North Dakota, Arizona, and Georgia. They sent Obama to Iowa today “to pad their lead.”
Because of the extensive early voting, people doing election-day GOTV will have to ‘drive-and-knock’ rather than walk.
In Florida, about a quarter of the sporadic-voting Democrats have already voted, which is roughly the same as the likely-voter pool.
The early vote is going ‘extremely well’ in Georgia. If they win it, they will win it narrowly. They have 4,800 neighborhood captains in Georgia.
In Arizona, their internal polling says that they’re killing with Hispanics and suburbanites. It will be a battle to get to their ‘win number’ there.
The McCain campaign has bought 5,000 points of Television this week in the Tampa area, ‘which may be the most ever in a political campaign.’
Finally, they are ‘laser-focused’ on getting 270 electoral votes and their decisions are not aimed at anything else. Helping Senate candidates is only of secondary importance.
