One last crazy move
The McCain campaign is intentionally underfunding his Get Out the Vote operation so that he'll have something approaching TV ad parity in three key states.
I guess the logic is that "the base" votes anyhow, and if they can't convince x percent of the Obama voters, GOTV won't matter as much, but still, it seems like a pretty risky decision.
(How do you interpret this except that the McCain camp doesn't think it has enough voters even if it turns them all out.)
(And I'm sure all those downballot Republicans just love this idea.)
Related: 538 has a post (and pictures) of their visits to mostly empty or closed McCain offices around the country. (Maybe you just don't pour money into empty offices?)
I guess the logic is that "the base" votes anyhow, and if they can't convince x percent of the Obama voters, GOTV won't matter as much, but still, it seems like a pretty risky decision.
(How do you interpret this except that the McCain camp doesn't think it has enough voters even if it turns them all out.)
(And I'm sure all those downballot Republicans just love this idea.)
Related: 538 has a post (and pictures) of their visits to mostly empty or closed McCain offices around the country. (Maybe you just don't pour money into empty offices?)
posted by mikevotes at
1:32 PM
11 Comments:
Isn't it ALL about GOTV at this point?
I still won't believe it 'til I hear a McCain concession speech, but Team Obama looks like it really has it's stuff together on GOTV.
Kind of a side note, but with all the bashing of Palin I've heard from frustrated traditional Republicans, I have to say it's only BECAUSE of her that the base is energized to GOTV. I'm thinking that for the GOP, GOTV == Pastor Politics. That is, it will be fired up, evangelical, Protestant ministers telling their flock (sheep?) how Jesus want's them to vote.... or risk eternal damnation, or something. And that is because of Palin.
By
-epm, at 2:53 PM
That's why I posted this, it's freakin' weird. (notice the Palin "g" droppin')
If you asked me to read this, what this tells me is that the McCain folks don't think they have enough voters even if they turn them all out. (I may revise and stick that in the post.)
And, yeah, I get the Palin energizing the right thing, but this is nothing compared to the organized 2004 Bush effort where they worked off church phone directories, and had designated campaign volunteers in almost evrey evangelical church.
Maybe it's because Palin came in so late that they couldn't organize it, but the church vote has been largely left to turn itself out.
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mikevotes, at 3:20 PM
I wonder if the machine vote fix is in and there's no reason to spend money on a ground force that won't be needed?
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matt, at 8:25 PM
As a rule, I always include the possibility of vote rigging, suppression, and really, really dirty (or illegal) tricks, but it's always been my contention that such things can really only be pulled off "on the margins."
Maybe you can rig a couple of counties to tip a state or whatever, but the breadth of this election, across so many states, makes any sort of serious operation like that nearly impossible.
It's too big. You couldn't get away with it.
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mikevotes, at 9:52 PM
As far as I can see, Palin got volunteers for the campaign and got the base interested again after the primaries.
But given the dismal activity (documented by fivethirtyeight.com) at the campaign offices, it seems Palin merely moved the activity needle from "virtually non-existent" to "pathetic".
Evangelical support is not the silver bullet that it used to be. Huckabee proved to the evangelical base that they are very much the "junior partners" in the Party. It's clear that the Party thinks they exist to provide money and votes, and symbolic concessions will be made to the evangelicals but not much else.
Palin has seized the fundies' imagination, but she is not at the top of the ticket and that dampens enthusiasm.
The base that failed to turn out in 2006 is worn out, fractured, and disillusioned. They can be counted on to screech on cue, but the potent political force of 2004 is now largely spent.
We will see a poor turnout for the Republicans this cycle. We are already seeing it in the early voting, with rates around 29%. The GOP knew this months ago, which is why they wanted HRC as an opponent; the base would crawl on their hands and knees to vote against a Clinton.
The blame for this will fall on McCain for not being "conservative enough".
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Todd Dugdale , at 10:11 PM
Yeah. Again, I keep going back to the fact that they're having to pay canvassers by the thousands in Florida. Some more in Iowa. Pay for call centers to make calls on the campaign's behalf.
I think the evangelical base could have been there, maybe, it's just that the McCain campaign never tapped them, and they didn't get excited until just two months ago. That's not enough time to build a national election structure.
(Plus, if the experience at the campaign offices in miserable, those volunteers tend to drift off.)
I believe that group is still there to be tapped (although dispirited,) but nobody's really organizing them down at the church level the way Bush 2004 did.
And, I'm not ready to go low turnout, but I'm pretty sure, in absolute numbers, we'll see flat turnout simply because there is no "base" upside. They all came out in 2004.
But as a percentage of electorate, they will likely be down.
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mikevotes, at 10:32 PM
I'm beginning to wonder if the newly energized social-conservative base (fundies) are actually energized for Palin 2012.
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-epm, at 12:10 AM
Florida is a weird situation. Obama was never supposed to have done well there. There was no primary, and seniors were unlikely to vote for the riskier (minority) candidate.
Now Obama has more volunteers than he knows what to do with in FL, and McCain has to pay them.
Remember when Obama was going to lose Hispanics after HRC lost? The CW has been profoundly wrong so many times. It's wrong about turnout, too.
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Todd Dugdale , at 2:47 AM
EPM, good point. But she better have an Obama style grass roots fundraising model.
....
Todd, YEah, I always thought Florida was out of reach because of over 65. The stock market crash and home value collapse shifted that.
The polling has been solid for a month, and I'm pretty good about fighting the Obama frets, but I still wonder about the solidity of that.
But then again, they spent a whole lot of money there, and I do believe the new/lapsed/black vote will be big.
It may be because I really want Florida. I want it as an anti-Bush symbol.
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mikevotes, at 6:19 AM
I am not at all sure about Obama winning FL, but just him being within the MOE there is tremendous given all that was stacked against him. If he does lose FL, it won't be because of the ground game.
Florida is "do or die" for McCain, so forcing him to hire canvassers and spend money on the air war is brilliant because it means he can't defend several other states adequately. And McCain is broke. His GOTV organisers are now having to pay their own way (air, lodging, expenses) to go to red states and get GOTV efforts rolling. He's spending all of his remaining money on the air war to push points that people have already heard a thousand times.
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Todd Dugdale , at 11:39 AM
I still want Florida, though. I don't know why. It's a bit irrational, but I want to see it blue.
And, not objective here, but here's the Florida case. 600,000 registered and eligible black voters, another 500,000 or so new reg or lapsed coupled with the largest turnout effort ever in a state, over 1,000 staffers and something like 50K volunteers, against that pitiful McCain operation that's not really being aided by the Florida GOP.
One of my favorite Florida stats is that Crist and the state GOP are holding back $2 million for the 2010 election.
I know the polling, and the genral zeitgeist of those covering the state, and I know I'm kinda grabbing at straws, but I really really want it.
By
mikevotes, at 12:15 PM
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