Setting aside any shenanigans the Republicans pulled in Ohio in 2004, the takeaway (as I remember it) was that Kerry had met his turnout model target but was overwhelmed by an unanticipated level of turnout in the rural areas of the state that was driven by evangelical organization. Karl Rove had made sure that an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment was on the ballot as a carrot for the churchfolk, and they turned out to approve it with 62% of the vote.
So, in that sense, I agree with Kevin Drum that a big part of the Republicans’ turnout machine is not going to show up if you are just looking at how many field offices Romney has established. On the other hand, this year there are no ballot measures in Ohio to act like catnip to the evangelicals. This year, the ticket includes a Mormon and an Ayn Rand/Catholic, instead of a southern Methodist. If the GOP is relying on the self-motivation and self-organization of a bunch of evangelical communities, they may not get as much of a boost out of that this time around.
There is also the issue of efficiency. A centralized organization allows you to take the voter list and winnow it down. You don’t want to be wasting time contacting voters who are definitely going to vote for you or who have already voted. You don’t want to knock on the door of someone who has already told one of your organizers to get lost. You want a contact list that is small and manageable that has as much meaningful information about the voters as possible. That’s why the Obama team pushes early voting so hard. Once someone votes, you can take them off the list and concentrate on people you actually need to reach.
When you are trying to coordinate with a bunch of megachurches, there is simply no way to match the kind of winnowing and efficiency with which the Obama Team operates. So, even if you have an equal number of bodies in the streets and on the phones, you won’t be anywhere near even. To give a real life example of what I am talking about, in 2008 I spent election day knocking doors in Coatesville, Pennsylvania for Obama for America. We had a great walk-list. But we were tripping over the heels of SEIU volunteers who were working the same turf without updated walk-lists. The only difference between us is that we had less doors to knock. We were doing the same job, but the SEIU was doing it less efficiently. We had that turf covered, so their effort was basically unnecessary. That was a failure of coordination between the campaign and the SEIU which may have been a result of some legal barriers to coordination. But the point still stands. If we had that minor problem of inefficiency and redundancy, the Republicans will have that problem on steroids.
The Republicans are relying on the RNC to do most of their voter mobilization, but the RNC is working mainly out of congressional or local party headquarters whose main responsibility is to elect state officials or U.S. congressmen. It’s important to realize that the GOP has the megachurches doing supplemental work for them just as it’s important to keep in mind that the unions are doing supplemental work for OFA. But it is safe to say that Obama’s turnout operation is and will continue to kick the ass of Romney’s turnout operation. And that should be good for two to three points in the final outcome. However, that doesn’t mean two to three points better than the polls indicate. A lot of Obama’s organizational advantage is already captured by the polls because they have already improved registration ratios and they have already made a ton of voter contacts, and they have already built up an early voting lead. But their advantage will continue to help them every single day the polls are open, too.
I was looking at an interactive map, I think TPM might have it, that helpfully shows the field offices of the respective campaigns. Just like 2008, there are more Obama offices in each state and in each county, by a huge advantage.
My county, Palm Beach County, Florida, while being reputed to being largely a Democratic county, is in Florida, a swing state. It is also the county where Romney made his famous 47%er comments. Romney has maybe 2 or 3 offices. Obama for America looks like a shotgun blast.
If Romney is counting on a “there” to be there, there ain’t no there, there.
Well, maybe, but this strikes me as wishful thinking.
Yes, Obama’s ground game is good, with targeted lists and counting the number of times you make contact and coding each contact in the database so that you can prioritize the contacts the next weekend. On election day 2008 the plan was to contact each voter 3 more times just to be sure – and they had the volunteers to do that.
But there was still a lot of inefficiency in that effort – I know, I was part of it in my swing state. It’s a great organization, but not perfect by any means.
However, your assessment of the Republican machine smacks of being hopeful:
This year, the ticket includes a Mormon and an Ayn Rand/Catholic, instead of a southern Methodist. If the GOP is relying on the self-motivation and self-organization of a bunch of evangelical communities, they may not get as much of a boost out of that this time around.
I don’t think so. You overestimate the level of conflict between the different factions on the far right and underestimate the power of hatred. My evangelical neighbor, a higher up (elder? deacon? board director? I forget the exact title) in his Missouri Synod (far right splitters) Lutheran church put a Romney sign up in early September – and he’s always hated political signs. Just one anecdote, yes, but I see it all over here. We have a lot of members of the New Life (mega) Church around here (you’ve heard of it – it was founded by Ted Haggard) and they ALL have Romney yard signs.
Yeah, the GOP doesn’t have the kind of contact lists that the Democrats have, but they bring a different advantage. Each big box church represents about 5-10k votes – and you can bet that 95% will vote and 99% for Romney. This is why the right wing billionaires have been quietly funding the big box church phenomenon for decades – they are probably the most effective vote-making investment they have.
It seems that Obama HAS to have this kind of GOTV organization because so many of his voters aren’t reliably going to vote no matter what – they have to be reminded and cajoled into voting. That is not a problem the GOP has. In 2008 the Chapal Hills mall in Colorado Springs had a 1/2 mile long line to vote early. The people (65% registered Republicans in that part of the Springs – and figure they get 60% of the independents as well) could have waited until election day when there were no lines at all but they were desperate to vote against the black man and for the idiot from Wasilla. If anything they are 10x more motivated now.
And if you believed the things they believe you’d be motivated too. If you believed that spending tripled under Obama, the national debt more than doubled, taxes have skyrocketed, Obamacare means the government decides who gets medical care, that half your taxes are going to welfare cheats, that almost half the country is on welfare living high on the hog while the other half works, then you’d make damn sure you voted too.
While I wish it weren’t so, I have to largely agree with your take. I know here in my area, there is a certain guarantee baked into the cake for Mitt Romney. And while I do find a core group of enthusiastic supporters of the President, my county still went 67% for McCain in 2008, with Obama coming in at 31%. So our goal was to try and add some amount to that 31% this cycle, but it is an uphill slog. There are probably at least half a dozen Obama offices within a 25 mile radius of my house, and there is activity out of these on a daily basis. And the GOP only has an office at the county headquarters. But for them, in this county and this general area, that is probably enough.
And yes, there are certainly inefficiencies within OFA. I did persuasion canvassing earlier today, and found a few people, all strong Obama supporters, who said, “Hey, somebody from OFA stopped by yesterday.” Now why that person was still on the persuasion list is kind of puzzling to me. I could see knocking on their door for GOTV, but taking precious canvassing time to “preach to the choir” is not the best use of time. But I guess that type of thing cannot be avoided all the time. But when we are trolling such a heavily GOP area, any time which is wasted this late in the game is precious.
And as for what some of the Romney voters believe, I had a conversation today with a 19 year old young woman. I asked her if the President could count on her support, and her reply was essentially this, “Absolutely not. I cannot wait to cast my vote for Mitt Romney. We have to get Obama out of there. Everything he has done is going to completely destroy my future.”
When I asked her specifically what he had done that caused her to feel that way, she said, “Everything. Everything he has done is going to destroy my future.” That was as specific as she would get. Like you said, the things that some of these people believe have come right out of the fantasy fever swamps of the right wing noise machine.
I experienced those kind of inefficiencies last election. I suppose it makes sense on one level – they have millions of volunteers in the field and can’t rely fully on their data so better to send people back more times than necessary just to be sure – especially with so many volunteers. But it’s important for the team not to get into pat-ourselves-on-the-back-mode – the ground game is good but not decisive. I know my targeted lists of neighbors was a small percentage. Ok, very true that these neighborhoods have few Obama voters – but I know that my lists covered at most 50% of the votes Obama got in those areas.
The efficiency is part of why I chose not to volunteer on the ground game this time around – I have very limited volunteer time and there are other efforts where I can make a big difference. For example, on this election day I’ll be doing poll monitoring after getting legal training from OFA. Frankly, I think the actually allowing and counting of the votes are the biggest threat.
My mom’s church thinks Mormonism is a cult. When I attended, I remember a sermon dedicated entirely to the cult of Mormonism. It was like 7 years ago.
She and her church goers will no doubt vote for Mitt Romney. They think Obama’s a Muslim, and a Muslim is worse than a Mormon.
That is an amazing piece of logic there. How come they don’t take the pouty leftie approach and sit this election out?
Let’s see how many votes the 3rd parties get this year. Polls are suggesting the reich wing parties may get a higher percentage than Nader did in 2000, but there is unfortunately only very limited polling with the 3rd party candidates as an option.
Even though Palm Beach County, Florida is thought to driving directions be mostly Democratic, it is in Florida, which is a swing state. It is also the county where Romney said the famous things about the 47%ers. Romney might have two or three offices. It looks like Obama for America is a shotgun blast.
I heard similar stories from a friend who worked for Kerry in Ohio. They were tripping over other Dem orgs and he felt the effort was wasted. He also felt more focus on the urban areas instead of rural areas would have benefited Kerry.
FWIW.
In VA, there is a more efficient system that is currently in the phase of “dry runs” for Election Day. WIthin 30-45 minutes, information goes up the chain to Messina and then to Obama regarding where volunteers are needed. So, if precinct whatever needs 300 more volunteers, they can, in less than an hour, begin shifting resources from one area to another. That’s the short of it, but it’s a damn impressive operation this time in VA.
If the job gets done, Obama will win VA.
GreenCaboose is mostly right. It’s been shown the people who have the most problem with Romney being a Mormon are liberals (because Mormon’s are scary conservative not because they’re Mormons, full stop). All other groups including evangelicals are more accepting of Mormons, and evangelicals in particular are beginning to see them as comrades in the Culture Wars.
Second, I read something that made the statistical case that the anti-gay measures as driving Republicans to the polls is overrated or inconclusive. It’s hard to say that it actually contribute to the vote margin in the manner you suggest.
I guess part of the reason I say that I lived in a 1/3rd Mormon small town (6600 people) in Colorado as a high school teen in the 70s. The fundamentalists like the four square gospel church, as evangelicals called themselves then, quibbled with everyone who didn’t believe exactly as they did but I would characterize the differences even back then as “chiding each other”.
Liberals are sadly much worse about splitting factions … a la Life of Brian and the People’s Front of Judea … than wingnuts are. It’s a natural outgrowth of sharing an authoritarian follower mindset, I suspect, while liberals value independent thinking so we can really fight with each other over minor details. At the leftist fringe it can get extreme – I remember the 2 Spartacus Youth League devotees constantly at odds with the one Young Socialist at my college.
If you have any doubts about this post on a pro-Obama forum and suggest that maybe Glenn Greenwald has a point.
I was raised Southern Baptist so we had and undercurrent to the teachings that Catholics were idol worshipers, let alone Mormons. No need to explain that to me!
Of course I have no doubts about liberals, I read and comment at this site! Glenn DOES have a point but because he’s as hysterical as Sullivan, and for other reasons I don’t quite understand the response is nearly always mockery.