after seeing this diary by RandySF this morning, i set out to figure out exactly where the 5th district was in ohio, so i went to wikipedia and typed in 'ohio 5th district'.
at the bottom of the page is a chart of vote totals in the district since the 1920 election. the most interesting thing is the last two lines, where weirauch and gillmor faced off in both of those elections. it was interesting that, even in the 2006 'wave' election, robin weirauch got almost exactly the same number of votes she did in 2004 (95,481 vs. 95,955) yet gillmor's vote total crashed from 194,559 to 126,898.
i'm sure some of that had to do with 2004 being a presidential election year, and 2006 being the off year. and some of it had to do with disaffected republicans staying home. but it seems like democrats maxed out their totals here.
that got me thinking, since this election will have some of the features of an off year election (there is no presidential vote taking part at the same time to increase turnout), and republicans may stay home due to disappointment with the general mood against republican candidates in the country, that turnout could be the kicker here.
i think we need to push the GOTV activities more than anything here. just swamping the polls with all the democrats who have voted for robin weirauch in 2004 and 2006 might be enough to put her over the top.
so, i'm not trying to knock these good folks for their informative diaries. i just feel that there should be more of a focus on GOTV action, as that appears to be more likely than any ads to be a winner for this particular election.