Were Mistakes Made in Dem. GOTV?

[JCMach1]

I just spent a number of minutes pouring over the data for Putnam County Florida (small rural country that went for Bush). What I saw was huge performance in Republican precincts and almost 2002 level under-performance in the heavily Democratic areas.

Did our GOTV focus to heavily on urban areas? Did we ignore rural areas that are Dem. strongholds? The Dems. need to take a very close look at their strategy before the next election in '06.

[mzmolly]

1. Lots of mistakes were made in the GOTV. Rove coordinated the entire GOTV

effort for the Rethugs. We had too many cooks in the soup and everyone was making a different kind. We can't let the 527's take charge of the GOTV, we have to coordinate at the top.

[JI7]

3. right

our side also underestimated the Republican GOTV effort. there was an assumption that the 2000 elections would be similar and then we just looked at our increase in registrations and saw it as hopeful to our side.

but the republican GOTV included enlisting many who were already registered but didn't vote in 2000. most of bush's increase in support came from the religious right wing as much of their GOTV included religious organizations.the added anti gay measurements and the parental consent for abortion thing on the ballots probably helped get many of them to turnout.

we did pretty well with turnout, but i think if we had some idea of the republican effort there would have been a change in plans. someone from the kerry team would probably have taken charge and been more organized. they would have been more conservative with how much support they had and more liberal with the republican support just to be on the safe side.

[mzmolly]

6. We need to monitor the R's better next time too. And we actually need to

start the GOTV effort for 06-08 NOW. The DNC must get crackin, Rove worked for FOUR years getting people out. He also polled to find out what 'hot button issues' were and put the so called moral bait on the hook to lure his herd.

What we need to do NOW is coordinate the GOTV for 06 at the DNC level. WE also need to monitor the Rethug GOTV effort. WE need to poll and ask people what they want to see from our leadership.

As you said, we did a great job with the GOTV, but we leave too much to the grass roots (who we need) but their efforts need to be delegated. We need to run the next effort more like a business.

Rove does two brilliant things:

1 he attacks his opponent where he is strongest
2 he learns from what we do well (GOTV) Grass-Roots etc. And if WE don't learn from THEM, were in for one long hellish road.

[jdj]

13. I believe we lost because of fraud.

However, we have got to have an organized campaign against these churches politicking and breaking IRS regulations.

They have us by the short hairs because of the groupthink nature of churches and the fact that preachers dictate to them exactly who to vote for.

[usrbs]

5. ACT did much better at canvassing than the Democratic party

I canvassed for both the party and the 527, and there's no comparison - the lists of ACT were more recent and more accurate, and the organization was better and more professional, and to a certain extent, the ACT volunteers seemed more dedicated.


I also disagree about doing more canvassing in the suburban areas. A canvassed mostly in suburbs in NH and W. Palm Beach, and a bit in the poor part of Manchester NH and I spent Nov. 2 in the poor neighborhoods in W. Palm Beach. I rarely felt I was doing much in the suburbs. Most people in suburbia are not going to change their minds because of a stranger coming to their door, or more likely, seeing a piece of literature stuck in their door. (The ACT literature we dropped off was better than the Democratic brochures as well). The people in suburbia don't need rides to the polls either. On the other hand, whenever I worked in the poorer districts, I could actually help people get registered, explain about absentee voting, and on the last day, give people rides. My conclusion is that we should have concentrated more on the poor areas and done most of our work there.

[mzmolly]

7. If act did better, we need to know why. I canvassed for Moveon and I

can't say I shared your experience.

We need to get all these groups together and find out what worked and what did not.

Also I think we need to focus on all areas urban/rural and do a massive voter outreach.

We need to start the GOTV for 06/08 today.

[Eric J in MN]

11. Were you pleased with your MoveOn PAC canvassing

experience?

I tried canvassing with MoveOn PAC one day, and we only found 2 Kerry supporters.

[mzmolly]

16. No I was not, I thought it a huge waste of time.

:shrug:

I had a similar experience to yours.

[LiberalFighter]

15. We shouldn't have to learn all over again every election.

Winning campaigns are basic.

Polling to find out who are your supporters.
Registering your supporters.
Targeting precincts based on voting history. (Meaning put more of your resources into those precincts that will produce the most results)
GOTV your supporters.

Those are the key parts that MUST be implemented.

The other thing is having someone in charge that knows what they are doing and it is organized centrally.

[underpants]

9. Rove ran the GOTV from inside the White House over 4 years

They went church by church temple by temple etc.

It is hard to make up ground on a taxpayer funded operation like that especially when you have the President calling the preacher/priest to enlist their support.

[Eric J in MN]

12. Democratic Senators and Congresspersons should start

calling churches now to prepare for 2006.

[DebJ]

2. In close elections, we really can't afford to ignore anyone, but

that did happen in areas of York, Pa, where we focused on the city primarily. What it comes down to, is two things: Time, and Manpower.

I think that the general thought process is that no one pays attention to an election until close to election day. I wanted to register voters last spring but nothing really got going here until the summer. We registered over 2004 people, which was our goal. But the fact is, voter registration needs to be an ongoing process, and so does communication with voters.
There were people who changed to Kerry thanks to information from volunteers. With more time and/or manpower, we would have reached even more.
I'm getting started NOW in my voting district. I want as many of our 1200-1500 voters as possible to get information on key issues as they occur, and to sign petitions of objection and make calls to our Congressional reps on every issue. You see, I don't think Wubya has support, even among Republicans, on issues like Social Security and the deficit. I think Republicans who voted for Bush would still object to many of his policies....I think this because I was actually told this, by them, over and over again. If I can keep up their awareness of their objections to his policies for four years, by then, we will have made converts. I have no doubt. For Liberalism is true Christian philosophy, NOT conservatism.

[JI7]

4. RIGHT , start early, but keep in touch so when election time comes around

we can be sure they are still with us or will be with us as that is when many start to pay attention.

[T Roosevelt]

8. Before you wonder about GOTV efforts (which I think were fine)

Consider this:

Looking at the Florida data by county,

Of the 52 optical scan counties

29 counties had more registered Dems than Reps (in some cases substantially more), but more votes for * than Kerry (1 county was opposite this, but the registered Reps were very close to Dems)

Of the 15 touch screen counties

1 county had more registered Dems than Reps, but more votes for * than Kerry (and none opposite)

Things that make you go hmmm...

http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm

[Eric J in MN]

10. I made phone-calls for ACT one night, and they wouldn't

let me leave messages on answering machines.

Most of the calls were picked up by answering machines.

These were calls looking for volunteers.

If they let us leave messages, people could visit the ACT website and decide in their own time if they wanted to volunteer, instead of being forced to give a quick answer.

[DemCam]

14. ACT had better lists, but we

did a bang-up job of cavassing. What counties we targeted, I don't know...even though I was a full-time volunteer, I wasn't staff and wasn't privy to the strategy. I can certainly find out though because a staff member directly involved in GOTV is "in the family." There just simply wasn't time for philosophy or discussion for the last two months.

My daughter worked for ACT for five months. Her conclusions? We had all the money in the world this election and there are just simply more of them...two myths that we have held that have been exploded about Republicans and Democrats.