Some notes on the current election cycle (below):
- There has been a lot of back-and-forth about which Democratic presidential candidate is more 'electable.' My personal take on it is that Barack Obama has demonstrated a remarkable ability to reach out to new constituencies that have not been previously moved to vote for a Democratic candidate. In my canvassing and voter registration activities I am constantly coming across people who tell me that they are Republicans but plan to vote for Obama in the general election. Over a much longer timeframe back in 2004, I probably could have counted all the Republicans who told me they would vote for Kerry on one hand. In contrast I see looks of disgust when those same people mention Hillary Clinton's name.
--The above is just anectodal. It would be nice if we had some numbers to throw around in the discussion, right? Well, my friend Karl Sigman and his colleague, Robert S. Erikson, both professors at Columbia University, have done a mathematical analysis of the nationwide, 50-state poll results reported by SurveyUSA at the end of February. They used the metadata from the results to infer a probability distribution of presidential preferences, and then used those distributions to run millions of computer simulations. The upshot of their results, reported at Pollster.Com, was that, if the poll numbers are indicative, then Barack Obama would have an 88% chance of winning the nomination whereas Hillary Clinton would have a 74% chance. In other words, Clinton is more than twice as likely (26%) to lose than Obama (12%).
- I'm out on the campaign trail again, this time in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. As has been reported extensively on this site, Pennsylvania is a closed-primary state but voters are allowed to change their party up until March 24th. This is a prime opportunity for the Obama campaign to generate votes; almost all of the registrants will be votes for Obama that would not have been counted without the voter registration efforts. It's not that easy to find voters who have not registered but when you do there's a good payoff. I figure that there are probably 1,000 volunteers working statewide for the campaign. If each one of them puts in 5 days of work in which they sign up 5 new voters, then we're looking at another 25,000 voters for Obama, which could be another 1% added to his statewide total. It appears that the Obama campaign is now running a dedicated phonebanking outreach effort to independents. If 10,000 volunteers make 100 calls each to Pennsylvania independents, we can reach 1 million potential voters. If we can persuade 5% of those voters to register Democratic to vote for Obama, that would add another 50,000 votes or 2% to the statewide totals. Those combined 3% might make the difference between winning and losing, or between winning and winning big, or between barely losing and losing big. So we all know what we have to do, right?
- In my work this weekend in Allentown, PA, I noticed that Siobhan (Sam) Bennett is running for Congress in Pennsylvania's 15th CD. I had the good fortune of working with Sam when I was a volunteer with ACT's voter registration efforts back in 2004 as part of my work to try to evict the current resident of the White House. I got the opportunity to work with her daughter Emma and to meet her husband Martin. They are all smart and decent people. Sam created a good organization for ACT in Allentown that filed more than 10,000 new voter registrations in the Lehigh Valley, which helped Kerry barely take the state's electoral votes; if only Ohio had some Sam Bennetts back then we might be arguing about Kerry's reelection now... Anyway, Sam is in for a tough fight against the Republican incumbent, but it seems like she might have a chance. The incumbent bushie couldn't even get 54% last cycle, and is pretty right-wing for this moderate district. In the current electoral environment, this is a prime district for the Democrats to reclaim: Help Sam Bennett's campaign here!