I was at an Obama phonebank today in Southern California, and fully expected to be calling Nevada swing voters, our sister state of the battleground variety. This has been the modus operandi for some time here.
To my surprise we were handed out "persuasion" call sheets to...North Carolina.
We were told by the campaign that our region had been identified as one of the most effective at identifying Obama supporters and leaners, so we were being designated to be one of the first regions with the new persuasion call sheets. Roughly speaking persuasion call sheets are registered Undeclared Voters who do not have identifiable tendencies: they do not "lean Obama", "lean McCain" or are in any other way pegged in their votes.
Aside from the mildly flattering designation for us, the much more interesting demographic is that all of our calls were to go to NORTH CAROLINA, not Nevada, leaving Nevada for other phone banks I am sure. The reason is that the national campaign has changed its designation of North Carolina from "lean McCain" to "lean Obama," not even "toss-up" !
In addition, our calls went out, not to urban areas or college towns, but to small town Western North Carolina, Hillary country in the primary. It told me that Obama has a REAL shot at North Carolina.
And - oh - the result? Out of my 50 calls, with roughly 50% "not home" (that's normal), the remainder were divided into 10 Obama supporters, 10 uncommitted and willing to listen, and 5 McCain supporters. It's real out there, and it helped that Senator Obama was in the state today, but North Carolina is definitely IN PLAY.