Saturday, October 11, 2008

Obama Battles Block by Block to Get Voters to Polls

This is why I think the election will turn into a landslide -- the Obama campaign's outstanding on-the-ground organization:

The Obama campaign has broken the country into a collection of battleground states, which are dissected into precincts that are parceled one more time into neighborhood teams. (Ohio, for example, is divided into 1,231 neighborhoods.) And each of these teams, if the recruiting is up to speed, has a leader who, ideally, lives just down the block from all those doors that need to be knocked on.

The concept could well be called the 2.0 version of President Bush’s effort from his 2000 and 2004 campaigns, which outclassed Democrats and left them determined not to be out-organized again. It is supplemented by get-out-the-vote efforts from unions and other groups backing Mr. Obama, and it is benefiting from national trends, like growing anxiety over the economy, that favor Democrats nationwide.

The first piece of the ground game plan began with voter registration.

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Obama Battles Block by Block to Get Voters to Polls

Published: October 11, 2008

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Lukas McGowan was sitting in an old barber’s chair, a cellphone pressed to his ear, as he contemplated a critical assignment for the closing chapter of the presidential campaign: the ground game.

The most pressing matter inside this field office for Senator Barack Obama was not the next debate or the latest scorching exchange with Senator John McCain, but getting every possible voter to the polls. As Mr. McGowan surveyed an assembly line of activity, a more immediate question popped into his mind: Have all the spots been filled in the 6 to 8 p.m. shift for walking neighborhood precincts?

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