Oh, Those Poor Voters

I haven't done anything activismish for a while, so when MoveOn.org called me one morning, I agreed to come in to make some calls.  The deal was to recruit other MoveOn.orgers to participate in Call for Change, the mandatory cheesy name for anything MoveOn.org does. CfC is supposed to generate 5 million phone calls into 30 congressional districts around the country that look promising for a Democratic win.  Not surprisingly, the targets of these 5 million phone calls are Democratic-identified voters who are not considered likely to vote. 

Typical of MoveOn.org, the "organizers" had just graduated from college.  I was a precinct leader in the 2004 election, so know what I am doing, but let them do their spiel.  I got a list of 40 names and called them in an hour and got 4 people to answer their phone.  Turns out the calls were to a college town whose team was playing that very hour.  Not very productive.  I'll go back tomorrow.

I started thinking about the 5 million calls, though. How many people are they going to be aimed at?  A congressional district has about 600,000 people in it.  About 75% of the population is voting age. In the 2004 election, about 72% of the voting age population registered to vote. Democrats make up about 35% of registered voters.  Multiplying those gives the total number of registered Dems in any district at about 113,000.  Using this data, as a rough guess about 20% fewer Dems will show up at the polls in a midterm. 

So, each district will have 23,000 Democrats who need to be prodded to get to the polls.  For the 30 targeted districts, the total to get out is 690,000.  So if 5 million calls are made, then each person will get 7 calls.  This seems reasonable to me if by "call" they mean "dialed the number whether anyone answered or not"; even if I had not been calling on a college football Saturday, I would not have expected to get more than 20% of the people on the phone.  On the other hand, if by "call" they mean "get someone on the phone", either 5 million calls is ludicrous or my numbers are fucked.

In any case, 5 million calls is a lot of calls.  And MoveOn.org is hardly the only outfit getting out the vote.  So between calls and people knocking on the door, those 690,000 are going to get a lot of attention in the next 30 days.  They're probably sick of it already.

Comments

[Gib]

That's actually a problem I wish I had. The tiny corner of America I inhabit is a safe seat for pretty much everyone running, so the grand total of electoral communications I've received consists of one mailing from our state senator (Democrat), and two from the Governor (Republican). I would love it if anyone running for office around here would think it was important enough to actually try and persuade me about something.

I'm sure if one lived in a nationally targeted district, one gets enough attention, and may even reach their breaking point. But there are a few of us who live in areas where votes are taken for granted who wouldn't mind getting a real pitch for support.

[Blackmail]

I answered the door Saturday and found two Dem volunteers standing there, asking me if I'd vote for Rendell and Casey. They were really surprised when I said that the casino issue was discouraging me from supporting Rendell [along with a million other things, but...] and that Casey just doesn't thrill me as a tough, oppositional candidate [mainly because he's not, and because the state Democratic Party hadn't solicited one either.]

I was more shocked when they both agreed with me, and just asked me to go out and vote on Election Day! While I appreciate that an effort is being made, it's symptomatic of the Democratic Party's national troubles when they have such tepid support at the local level.

[Bill Levinson]

Re: "While I appreciate that an effort is being made, it's symptomatic of the Democratic Party's national troubles when they have such tepid support at the local level."

I can't vote for Casey because he is knowingly and willfully accepting support from MoveOn.org, an anti-Semitic hate organization that is also into 9/11 denial. Google on MoveOn.org and "anti-Semitism" or even "racism" and you will see what I mean.

MoveOn is the Democratic Party's problem. It has nothing to do with what any Pennsylvanian recognizes as his/her Democratic Party, or that of his/her parents or grandparents. As long as people identify MoveOn with the Democrats, they will continue to get tepid support or none at all.

[Blackmail]

It's not possible to be critical of America's relationship with Israel, or Israel's policies at all then, huh?

[Incidentally, Bill, I didn't criticize MoveOn on those grounds, nor do I appreciate that attribution.]

[Adam Elkus]

I'm hoping we really sweep them this time. But somehow I'm just not that optimistic.

[IthinkI'llbeanonymous]

Election day 2004, they called me 11 times to urge me to vote. I never answered, because I was sitting in a polling place working real GOTV.

Today they called my husband and asked him if he was planning to vote. Sheesh, he's a Democratic committeeman.

What is it with this scheme of calling every Democrat with a listed phone number over and over and over again? Infuriating them so they switch their registration to Republican? I argued with someone on Kos about this who insisted that it's a proven GOTV technique to call all the phone numbers of all Democrats as often as physically possible, and that it's being drilled into heads at political action training camps.

Make them stop! If I had been home to get all those 11 calls, I'd have been (almost) mad enough to go vote for Bush. Real GOTV has precinct lists and checks off names as they vote. Then later in the day people who haven't voted are called once. It isn't a game of how many million phone calls you can generate to annoy people.