I thought I'd give a brief overview of what I saw doing GOTV for Obama and Kaine this weekend in Virginia. I went yesterday to Falls Church and today to Leesburg, which means I got a closeup look at the ground game in two very different places. Obviously, this is anecdotal, but what I did see made me extremely confident that the Obama team knows what it's doing.
I started each day at the local OFA office. Both offices were full of helpful, friendly staffers who were very quick in getting us processed and ready to go to the staging area (someone's house) to canvass. I should also mention that each OFA office was bustling with loads of volunteers. New ones were walking in every second.
When we got to the staging areas, even more volunteers were ready to help us get on the streets. We were very promptly checked in, and got trained within minutes. We got at our site yesterday at around 2, and every route had already been walked, so we were sent to go back and knock on doors of people who had not been home. The key instruction was to ask voters what their plan was to vote on election day. Studies have shown that just thinking about a plan is far more likely to get people motivated to go vote.
We got to the staging area today at around 1, and again, the route had been covered yesterday. At our staging area in sparsely exurban Leesburg, there were about 20 volunteers. The best part of the whole weekend? I didn't see a Romney/Ryan volunteer once!