CabinGirl and I (and Finn) knocked on 62 doors in Charlestown Township yesterday in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which is the most conservative of Philadelphia’s suburban counties. We worked off a list prepared by Organizing for America which was carefully calibrated to introduce us to people who support the president but who don’t have a strong voting history. Many of the people on the list were women in their early twenties who still live with their parents. Others were wealthy Asian-American entrepreneurs. But the people we met were all over the map. Our first contact showed up as we were leaving. His wife is dying of cancer and is in home hospice. We had already talked to family members from California who had voted absentee. This man was visibly suffering but he was pleased to talk to us and assured us that he would find time to make it to the polls. We commiserated with him for a little bit, offered our condolences and enjoyed his jokes about how much he dislikes the plutocrat, Mitt Romney. As we walked throughout this neighborhood, we noticed that Romney and the local Republicans had hired someone to hang literature on every single garage door handle. It was a completely indiscriminate carpet-bombing that was both inefficient and wasteful. They didn’t know who their supporters were, but we did. We knew who our strong supporters were and we didn’t bother to talk to them or give them literature. The people who walked that neighborhood today and the people who will walk it tomorrow, will not retrace our steps. They will hit only the houses of the people who were not home. This is how a ground game is properly run.

The Romney campaign has reportedly conceded Nevada, but we have a lot of data out of the Silver State, and we can use that data to draw conclusions about other states. According to Jon Ralston the Democrats have been very effective in using the same strategies we used here in Pennsylvania to outperform the Republicans in Nevada.

About half of the 26,000 new Democratic registrants since June 1 already have voted. The GOP new folks are coming out at a slightly higher rate (54 percent), but the raw numbers difference is more than 14,000 voters because of the Democrats’ registration advantage.

—-You want low-propensity voters? Of those who have never voted before, there has been 40 percent turnout among Democrats, almost identical to the GOP turnout among that cohort. But because of the registration difference, the Democrats have a 24,000-voter edge in that universe.

—-If you reduce this down to the parties and their percentage of the vote among newly registered voters or those who have never voted, the Democrats are winning in newbie ballots cast by more than 25 points. That is a huge problem for the GOP, especially because about a fifth of the early and mail voters in Clark have never voted in any election. The Democrats are capturing the lion’s share of new voters — and it could make a decisive difference in more than one race.

When we walk our neighborhoods, we have a plan. Our plan is to squeeze every last vote out of the voter file, and to do it with the most efficiency and at the least cost. The GOP is supposed to be the party of small, efficient government but their campaigns don’t operate that way. The cost of sending literature to every damn home in Pennsylvania is astronomical and totally reckless. When you talk to people in OFA headquarters, they just shake their heads in disbelief at the profligacy and waste they see in the Romney ground game.

And you better believe that this difference between how the two parties campaign will show up in how they govern.