As a thoughtful gift the field organizer set aside the last walk packet in my precinct for me. We have bleed our precinct dry of voters. 25% more voters have already voted in this precinct than in any election before and that number comes even before the last day of early voting and election day have been counted.
I got to the HQ early because Deborah Ross was coming at noon. In a normal year I might have been calling people to show up, both as a favor them and to make sure that there were lots of people when the celebrity/candidate arrived. But there is going to be a hundred people showing up for the noon canvass, no need to make the congestion worse. Everyone has come to this HQ this year, from Al Franken, to Gloria Steinem, Chelsea Clinton, Wendy Davis, James Taylor and last week Will Ferrell.
In a normal year it is hard to encourage people to get out and walk up and down streets, knocking on strange doors and talking to strangers. It is not difficult this year. Those noon canvassers are going to be asked to travel not to the next town, not even to the next county, but in many cases to walk a turf two counties and an hour plus driving time away because there are no more packets to walk closer. And even though they didn’t know about the travel before they arrived, most of those volunteers will agree to do that. Now you know why that last walk packet was a gift.
It is the end of a campaign that was just about perfectly orchestrated by both the local county people and the national campaign, stronger together.
It is an absolutely beautiful fall day. It was a bit too chilly at the beginning of my walk, and a bit too hot at the end. It is homecoming weekend and the UNC football game is about to start. You can still smell the grilling fires and hear the TV sounds inside the houses. A large number of volunteers have shown up to complete the three Habitat for Humanity homes that are being built in the neighborhood. I’ve been up and down these streets, first with voter registration packets, then ballot and early voting information. Now one last walk here, many of my neighbors I have gotten to know.
I meet an old friend and he invites me and my wife over for dinner after all this is over. He escaped the Netherlands and the holocaust. Both he and his twin brother were soldiers in WW2. His brother earned the metal of honor for his actions in the battle of the bulge. He has been worried about the outcome of this election (and at 94 is still volunteering). I reassure him and move on. At one door the voter realizes that he has only a half an hour left of early voting. I give him directions and he grabs his bike and takes off. He will make the end of the line in time, but wait more than an hour to vote.
One family loves to sit out on their porch. Their son Anthony still hasn’t voted, believe me, he will. I meet a sweet little toddler, she is with dad. Her mom isn’t home and hasn’t voted yet. I give him all the information she will need and tell her to say hey to me at the table at the poll where we will have a sample ballot for her.
This precinct has some African Americans left in it from the 1960s, but mostly it is female college students. They have long ago registered and voted for Hillary. The kids are all right.
After a mid afternoon lunch is it time for data entry. I like doing data entry. You sit in the HQ and feel the pulse of the campaign. As you enter the results of all that walking/calling you can do some of your own analysis. Almost no Republican doors have been knocked, or homes called. Brooklyn knows exactly what they are doing. Their goal was not to persuade but to turn out, and according to Nate Cohn of the New York Times, 44% of NC Early voters were considered unlikely voters before the voting started. I hope so.
Another fun item of interest this year was the strategy of using volunteers to recruit more volunteers. Instead of using volunteers to call people who may or may not vote for you, this year the volunteers called targeted Hillary supporters to ask them to volunteer (and ask who they are voting for). The new volunteers would then be used to recruit even more volunteers. At this late hour, the massive numbers of volunteers are still calling targeted supporters to ask them to volunteer. Volunteer for what? Volunteer to call more potential volunteers? I love the people who are still saying that they will volunteer “later”. I do, however, think there is something creatively strategic going on here. First of all you don’t lose volunteers by infecting them with the negativity of maybe voters and no voters. And if you ask someone to volunteer, you may or may not get them to volunteer, but you are certainly going to get them to vote.
In 2012 there were 500,000 more Democrats than Republicans voting in NC and Obama still lost. This year, so far, there are only 300,000 more Democrats than Republicans. That is scary, but I still think we will win here in NC, I don’t THINK I am deluding myself.
I’m somewhat confident, because there are also 250,000 more Unaffiliated voters this year than in 2012 (245,000 newly registered just this year) and I know from my data entry that the kids 18-30 almost all register as Unaffiliated and it looks from the age of Unaffiliated early voters that they are really turning out in all the college towns. There is also lots of other hints that these new Unaffiliated voters are voting Democratic: mostly urban, younger age, higher education level. And these are the people the campaign targeted. This year, maybe, the 300,000 Democratic edge is from the group of people the campaign wanted to vote and not from registered Democrats voting for Trump. This was also the first year that lot of NC Democrats changed there registration to Republican (to vote for or against Trump), which means Democrats, might actually BE Democrats. And some, maybe a lot, of those Republicans are women who are not going to vote for misogyny.
A very small portion of the Unaffiliated voters here are Hispanic/Latino. “All the media repeats what the media repeats.” I have been chuckling about that one story (suddenly everywhere) about Hispanic/Latinos coming out to vote in NV, FL and … NC. NC doesn’t really have any kind of large Hispanic/Latino population, so you know that meme is just plagiarizing. At the start of this year only 2% of NC voters fit this category. Now 2.5% are Hispanic/Latino and they register Unaffiliated. Still that is 35,000 new voters who are not registered Democrats but who are going to vote for Hillary and the other NC Democrats. A half of a percent this year is important.
I am certain Hillary is going to be the next president (NC not required) and I think Cooper is going to be Governor (lots of Rs will vote for him). However, what I want, but am not certain of, is for Hillary to win North Carolina’s electoral votes and Ross to win a seat in the Senate. I want the NC Supreme Court to be controlled by the Democrats for the next six years (redistricting cases!), and I want the Republicans in the state house to pay a price for what they have done.
What I am absolutely certain of is that they know exactly what they are doing in Brooklyn these days, and Hillary is ending her campaign Monday night here in North Carolina for a reason. And that reason is that we have a chance, a very good chance, that we are going to have a very fun election night party here in Chapel Hill.
