When the offices are open, they have reduced hours. We can confidently plan to get evening good-light photographs of a town after we visit the local McCain office, because we know it will be closing by 5 pm, as the office in Wilmington, North Carolina was this past Sunday. The plan is, get to inevitably closed/closing McCain office, get an hour of photos near sunset, then visit the bustling local Obama office. In Cortez, CO, we had Republican volunteers pose for action-shot photos. The same in Española, New Mexico. Posed. For some time at the outset, we were willing to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. They convinced us they were really working, and that we had just had unfortunate timing. It wasn’t until the pattern of “just missed it” started to sound like a drumbeat in our ears that we began to grow skeptical. We never “just missed” any of the Obama volunteer work, because it goes on nonstop, every day, in every office, in every corner of America.
FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right: The Big Empty
In contrast, the Obama GOTV effort is efficient, contagious, and massive. It’s going to hit like a sledgehammer to the skull of the old regime on Tuesday.
I think it’s one of the great untold stories of this election. Neighborhoods in Reno were positively swarming with canvassers this weekend. At the SF for Obama headquarters, legions of standing-room-only volunteers made (literally) hundreds of thousands of calls. And keep in mind, this isn’t about convincing people to vote for Obama anymore, or swaying independents. This is entirely focused on getting millions and millions of people to the polls by Tuesday. Getting them to mail in their ballots or drop them off at the right spot. Getting them rides to the polls. Making sure that every single person in America who wants to vote for Obama actually casts a ballot. There were at least 1.5 million volunteers working the phones, computers, and streets for Obama this weekend. 1.5 million just this weekend. That works out to be one out of every 300 people living in America; more than one out of every 225 adults. This get out the vote effort isn’t just an operation, it’s a movement. Get ready. The Obama army is on the march.
And if you aren’t already. Go make a call. Knock on a door. Do something to get out the vote. The only way to win this is if everyone chips in.
