Lessons from Chafee - Now That's How You Do It

TGoddard's Political Wire has a fascinating recap of just how Chafee was able to defeat a (at least somewhat) motivated right wing of the Republican Party in the RI-Sen primary yesterday.  The blurb is worth a read in its entirety, and you can read it here.

Here's the juiciest part:

"Behind the curtain, Chafee's campaign . . . searched for independents who voted Democrat in municipal elections but who had once upon a time voted for a Republican for president or governor or senator. . . They looked for non-affiliated voters in Republican neighborhoods. Using microtargeting techniques, they even tried to figure out which committed Democrats might be tempted to vote for Chafee."

"By the end of the summer, Chafee's campaign had identified 42,000 potential supporters. Then the second part of the program kicked in. . . The campaign 'messaged' these voters, often individually. Chafee himself called more than 100 of them who were identified as being capable of swinging the votes of colleagues and friends. "

More after the flip.

This is exactly the kind of science that Democrats need to employ.  We are the party of "reality" and facts determining policy - well, Democrats should use the best "facts" available to the marketing community to turn out votes.  Potterybarn catalogs, Costco memberships, whatever it takes.

It's all about reaching undecideds and influencers - the type of people Malcolm Gladwell talked about in Tipping Point that start trends.  Having Chafee call them is a masterstroke - 100 calls takes maybe 16 hours of a candidate's time over two weeks, but it probably can mean the difference of 2-3,000 votes if the right people are called.  Add a candidate's wife, or another popular politician, and you can sway and bring out maybe 10,000 votes.  Not much to a Presidential race, but enough to sway a close House contest.

People powered politics is as much about motivating the right people as anything.  Someone needs to beg, borrow or steal the Chafee playbook here - why not use it in 20 close House races and see if it makes the difference in 10 of them?  If so, we would be FAR along the way to reclaiming the House.