Campaigns' foot soldiers hit battleground states
GARY, Ind. -- Johnie Jennings raps on the storm door of a small white house on Louisiana Street in this former steel town. On a recent Saturday morning, no one in this neighborhood of alternately shabby and spruced-up houses is eager to rush to the door.
"Are you going to vote early?" she calls through the door to Danny Dalworth. Jennings' jacket is purple and yellow, the colors of the Service Employees International Union. Her voter list tells her that Dalworth, 60, supports Democrat Barack Obama, whom the union has endorsed. "Do you need a ride? Everybody in the household going to be voting?"
In the last days of the presidential campaign, battlegrounds such as Indiana, Florida, Virginia and Colorado are thick with political foot soldiers: Democrats such as Jennings — "You've got to have on comfortable shoes and be ready to talk," she says — and Republicans such as Anne Voss, a retired political consultant organizing canvassers at GOP nominee John McCain's headquarters in Tampa.
"It definitely is a close election," says Voss, who trains poll watchers for Election Day. "There's a sense of urgency we need to do everything we can."
Thousands of new voter registrations and reams of opinion polls won't mean much if campaigns can't get voters to actually vote. Get-out-the-vote efforts, known as the "ground game," are the final, crucial act in the political drama of electing a president.
This year, such efforts are marked in contrasts: A well-equipped Democratic effort is using a big-tent approach, trying to take advantage of the surge in registered voters — particularly young people — who identify themselves as Democrats.
Meanwhile, Republicans — historically outnumbered by Democrats but more likely to show up at the polls — are hoping the finely tuned turnout machine that boosted President Bush's re-election in 2004 by targeting certain voters will help McCain and the GOP overcome Bush's rock-bottom approval ratings.
Supported by Obama's well-funded campaign, Democrats are dispatching thousands of volunteers to key states, using voter databases of their own to target areas rich with potential votes.
Democrats are trying to improve on a database trend pioneered by Republicans, whose get-out-the-votes are crucial to identifying supporters — especially independents — in a nation where Republicans have lagged in party registration. Since 1988, Democrats have made up about 37% of the nation's registered voters, compared with about 26% for Republicans.
In 2004, the quality of GOP efforts outstripped the Democrats' superior numbers, says Donald Green, a Yale University professor who studies get-out-the-vote efforts. This year, Obama has the money edge: He began the final month of the campaign with about $134 million in the bank compared with McCain's $47 million for October, according to campaign-finance reports.
The candidates are supported by spending from allies: The AFL-CIO and unions such as the SEIU are kicking in a combined $335 million for Obama, and the Republican National Committee is able to tap $59 million in the bank to help McCain.
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