There is a definite buzz out there. Do you feel it? I certainly do.
Push is coming to shove and Cap can take this.
He knows how to identify his vote and get it out. He’s been doing it since he was an alderman. Don’t expect to see many Capuano poll workers tomorrow. He’s too smart for that. They’ll all be on the phones I bet. With the low expected turn out there are a high number of people who will vote if prompted. They voted in state primaries before and always vote in general elections. They just don’t plan on getting there ass to the polls tomorrow.
Capuano has been mining these people for votes and will put a well organized blitz on today and tomorrow. His fellow congressmen are helping. And they’ve done this numerous times.
Martha on other hand has never had to dig deep to get a vote out. She did well by being there. That’s the nature of D.A.s and A.G.s office. Count on your employees to hold signs. How many votes are Hillary and Bill really getting Martha?
And let us not forget that Cap will pick up some of Pags’ and Alan’s original voters who have since floated back to earth.
But Coakley’s folks seem to be doing the same, more specifically, the SEIU. I got an ID phone call earlier this week. Hopefully, when calling back they use Martha Coakley election date instead.
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p>Upset special tomorrow kids, make some popcorn and sit in front of the tee vee and enjoy, it might be a long evening.
A good GOTV operation keeps track of who has voted and calls in to HQ, at least with turnout numbers by precinct, though ideally with names. Then the people on the phones try to bump up turnout in friendly precincts. This is the conventional method anyway; I for one hate doing election day calls (more than I hate ID and persuasion) because it feels like nagging and most voters get sick of it quickly.
Most election departments send vote totals to campaigns, so you don’t need poll workers to get numbers.
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p>Poll checking is a whole other matter. What are there, like 2100 precincts in Massachusetts? You’d need to have a lot of volunteers to have an effective statewide poll checking operation. Boston alone you’d need 250 or so volunteers from 7am to late afternoon, and those would be people not on phones or doors. And then, it would only be effective if you had a way of entering all that information into a database so it could be useful in your door knocks and calls. So either a really high tech way of tracking who’s voted, or more volunteers to enter the data and spit out new lists.
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p>So in addition to the huge volunteer outlay, you’d need tens of thousands (if not more) of dollars poured into making that system effective.
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p>I’d be surprised if anyone is doing it, outside of maybe in a very few select “base” precincts.
…in statewide campaigns where this is done. I haven’t heard of being able to get midday turnout numbers by precinct from public officials. The operation usually is a sign-holder walks in at designated times, looks at the count, and calls it in. That of course is if you don’t have someone inside checking off names (and I’ve done that too).
From NYT:
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p>Amazing that a state wide race that typically spends exponentially more money on TV ads than anything else will come down to GOTV. The Capuano campaign has run a much better operation than Coakley’s (IMO) so far. I think they can close the deal.