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(Great observations! - promoted by Jennifer Daler)
I respect the need to vent about what went wrong on November 2. I definitely welcome a constructive discussion on how we can start laying the groundwork for a progressive victory in 2012. But I think we need a reality check regarding what can actually be achieved by strategic voter mobilization in a partisan wave election. As Donald Green and Alan Gerber point out in Get Out The Vote
"Using the most effective get-out-the-vote strategy will not guarantee victory. All the other factors that shape the electoral fortunes of a candidate - persona, platform, party, and campaign management - are relevant as well. A spectacularly successful GOTV campaign might lift an overmatched candidate from 28 to 38 percent or a competitive candidate from 48 to 58 percent. Often, winning elections is only possible when voter mobilization strategies are combined with messages that persuade voters to vote in a particular way."
In other words, when the mood of the national electorate favors the opposition party - as was abundantly clear going into this election cycle - executing a flawless field campaign can narrow a strong candidate's loss margin to a few points but it won't necessarily deliver a win.
I am a proud NH Democrat, and I have been reassured as to how important it is that we all vote.
Today, I went to a 'Get Out The Vote' rally at Nashua Community College, where President Bill Clinton, Governor John Lynch, Congressional candidate in the Second District Annie Kuster and Senator Jeanne Shaheen spoke to the crowd. I had a wonderful time, and all of the speeches were inspired, but President Clinton's speech was especially impressive and showed how much the former President deserves his reputation.
(Here's hoping someone will poll New Hampshire someday. Oh well, maybe next cycle. - promoted by Dean Barker)
Well, so much for hoping for a pollster who can come close to matching New Hampshire's demographics in their results. The usually-reliable PPP just put out another poll of Cloud Hampshire. Even there, Governor Lynch easily wins his historic fourth term.
The criticism of this one is simple. 28% Democrats. 37% Republicans. PPP is giving Republicans a 9% edge, when the actual Republican edge is, as has been noted repeatedly this election cycle, 0.6%. In a state that voted for President Obama by an easy ten point margin, PPP surveyed people who voted McCain by 2. While it's not so pronounced as the also-flawed UNH poll, PPP still undersampled voters in the 18-29 group, with 10% whereas, for example, in 2004 that age range was 16% of the electorate. And, of course, PPP does not appear to have polled cell phone voters.
The totally awesome folks at the Keene Dems sent me these wonderful graphs (the one here up top, and three more below the fold), some of which they used in local advertising. I think they make great handy printouts as well for your door-to-door, friend-to-friend, neighbor-to-neighbor GOTV-ing. Click the link on any of them to grab different sizes to download for your convenience.
The Tea Party is coming to town. Yesterday, Sarah Palin--Kelly Ayotte's biggest supporter--kicked off the Tea Party Express' national tour.
The Tea Party's final stop on their tour will be on the steps of our state house in Concord the night before the election.
Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Glenn Beck and their friends on the Tea Party Express are working hard on Kelly Ayotte's behalf. Ayotte proudly accepted Palin's endorsement and groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads and the Glenn Beck-backed Chamber of Commerce have spent millions of dollars to boost her campaign
If you haven't just turned off the TV and radio by now, you will have heard and seen a lot of very negative political ads this year. While you may not believe the distortions and lies (yup, lies) that these ads are touting, while you may not notice that you have no idea who is paying for them (and if you tried you probably couldn't find out), they have another, more insidious and dangerous effect. You may be thinking, "This is so awful, I don't even want to vote!"
Every once in a while someone links to these feisty old ladies' blog and I try to remember to bookmark it, but never do. This time Helen takes a pledge:
I pledge to remember that there are 6 billion people in the world and only 300 million of them live in the United States . And with 300 million Americans to choose from, we can't do better than John Boehner? Really?
And Margaret, my dear, I pledge that I will vote on November 2. I meant it. Really.
Go read it all, really! You will get a laugh and whenever you hear that NH phrase, The Pledge, you'll think of Helen.
(Great advice from Tim, veteran canvasser and state rep candidate for Goffstown/Weare! - promoted by Jennifer Daler)
Clipboard in hand, I pause for a moment. Check the name, age, party affiliation. Take a deep breath, smile, and press the doorbell.
Between now and November 2nd, most of us will knock on hundreds, if not thousands of doors. It is essential that we do so. Ads, mailers, events, blogs and viral video are all important parts of political campaigning today, but we all know that the foundation of any campaign is the ground game. Nothing compares to face to face conversations with voters. Yet many candidates and volunteers are reluctant to go door to door. It's intimidating, some say. Some procrastinate, say it's a waste of time, find other ways to fill their schedule.
I'd like to share my personal experiences and hopefully inspire these reluctant door-knockers to not only tolerate and endure canvassing, but take pleasure in it.
If we're up by 4 in the polls in a state, we can win by 7. If we're tied, we can win by 3. If we all do our best right now, we'll not only win this election, but win the kind of mandate we need to actually change our country.
...I was in New Hampshire this past weekend, and it was incredible. The organization that the Obama campaign has built is enormous, and it's able to put huge numbers of people to work. But that organization depends on those people actually showing up to do that work. And "those people" are YOU. You are the bedrock of the Democratic Party, the activists who make it all work.
We've got a rare second chance in as many cycles to run up the board. We will only have ourselves to blame if we don't take advantage of the advantage in front of us.
The speech that sparked a YouTube phenomenon was given here in New Hampshire. The words of that speech and the resulting music video mash-up helped to electrify and wake-up a nation hungry for change.
Now, 10 months later, we find ourselves on the eve of a historic election; a significant milestone on this most improbable journey. The use of the word milestone is quite deliberate. Unfortunately for us, tomorrow is not the finish, but is really just the beginning.
While the years ahead may not be easy, I'd like to stack the deck in our favor. With this in mind, on Tuesday I will be saying:
Yes We Can to electing the first President of my generation.
Yes We Can to electing the first Democratic US Senator from the State of NH since 1975 and our first female Senator ever.
Yes We Can to returning the most excellent Paul Hodes and Carol Shea-Porter to the the US House of Representatives.
Yes We Can to maintaining a Democratic majority on the Executive Council.
Yes We Can to keeping our Democratic majorities in the NH General Court.
Yes We Can to making the NH Senate the first governing body where Women are a majority of it's membership.
and let's not forget, Yes We Can to putting Judd Gregg on notice that 2006 was no fluke.
Let's go Hamsters... Join Kelly N. and I in the BlueHamphire Group on my.barackobama.com and help make sure NH runs through the tape. (Note: you can be part of multiple groups if you already have an account.)
Great video introduction to the tool-set after the jump.
As we get closer to E-Day, keeping the lines of communication open on BH is paramount.
One perennial feature of that is getting out the vote. And Obama's campaign has been masterful at harnessing the internet for that purpose.
I hope to have more on this in the coming days, but for now, here's a link to Obama's organizing resource page, a NH Neighborhood Team program, and Neighbor to Neighbor.
This is it, folks. Elections are won and lost in street by street organizing in battleground states. Now would be a great time to press the advantages Obama has opened up nationally.
New Hampshire residents who will be 18 years of age or older on election day, and a United States Citizen, may register with the town or city clerk where they live up to 10 days before any election. You may also register on election day at the polling place. The town clerk's office can inform voters of what proof of qualification they should bring to register.
There is no minimum period of time you are required to have lived in the state before being allowed to register. You may register as soon as you move into your new community.
More info available at the NH Secretary of State website including this pdf regarding college students.
I was at a local candidates event yesterday that I hope to write up as soon as I can. But I heard something from one of them that caught my attention.
As you know, we no longer have straight ticket voting in New Hampshire. It was one of the first things accomplished by the new Democratic majority swept into office in 2006. Despite the challenges it might offer us in holding onto our state house seats, and getting new Obama voters to pay attention to the other critically important federal races, it was the right thing to do.
Back to the local candidate. In addressing this situation, he urged that in the voting booth to "start at the bottom and work your way up the list."
I thought that was really catchy, a "Bottom's Up" campaign, if you will. If only I were wealthy enough to hire an entertainer to get that point across outside every polling place across the state on election day!
So, in lieu of that, I'm asking for your help on this, on two fronts really. The first is to get people talking on the absence of straight ticket voting this time around, and what that will mean for their trip to the voting booth. If we each made a committment to include that simple point in every political conversation we had, and made it viral, we could make a difference. And the time to start up on that is now.
The second is to open the comment thread to ideas like "Bottom's Up". What have you been hearing on this issue? Me, I'm amazed at how few people know about it. What memes or branding or slogans can we come up with?
