The two presidential campaigns are pressing hard in these final days. Their focus is getting voters to send in their absentee ballot – vote early – or go to the polls on Election Day.
WUSF’s Bobbie O’Brien talked with both the Romney and Obama campaigns about their Get-Out-the-Vote strategies to push their supporters toward the ballot box.
Phone banks are nothing new to political campaigns. But, technology has made them a lot more efficient and persistent. Brett Doster, senior advisor for the Mitt Romney Campaign in Florida, says someone sitting at a phone bank with a predictive dialer system can literally make four and five times the number of phone calls they were making in 2004.
Doster also said, “If the person on the other line doesn’t pick up then we immediately may have former gov. Jeb Bush or Sen. Marco Rubio or Atty. General Pam Bondi with an automated message.”
He says technology allows the campaign to target individual voters with online ads on Facebook and through direct mail and to track if a voter has not returned a requested absentee ballot.
“We are relentless. You know people - they may often say I’m so sick of getting the phone calls, I’m so sick of getting the mail. And I always remind them and say look there’s one way you can make sure all that goes away. Vote,” said Doster.
Traditionally, Republicans have excelled at rallying absentee voters in Florida while Democrats have done better with early voting turnout. Doster admits this year the Obama Campaign has closed the gap.
“The Democrats did do a fantastic job and I give them some credit”, Doster said. “They’ve done an outstanding job of getting their absentee ballot requests up. We have done a better job of actually wrangling them back in and turning them into real votes.”
Ashley Walker is state director for the Florida Obama Campaign. She says in 2008 they only had 4 months to reach Florida voters compared to now, that they’ve had the last 1 1/2 years to mobilize and really grow their neighborhood teams.
“So we’re more organized which makes us more efficient thus more effective reaching supporters, undecided voters and our base voters so we can turn them out”, Walker said.
The Obama Campaign, she says, is using improved technology and social media to reach more potential voters and volunteers.
“Dashboard is an online interface similar to Facebook. Supporters can go on Dashboard they can learn about what they can do to make a difference in the campaign and how they can lend a hand and help”, explained Walker. “When a supporter joins Dashboard they get directly connected to an organizer and it’s just one more way that our campaign is trying to reach folks.”
But Democrats are not abandoning proven strategies like this West Tampa rally and march to the poll on the first day of Early Voting or the “Souls to the Polls” efforts throughout the state.
“There’s no one size fits all we’re out there to fight and earn every vote here in the state and in order to do that you need to utilize many different means to reach folks whatever means they use to seek out info”, said Walker.
The Obama Campaign has more than a 2-to-1 advantage when counting campaign offices – 106 to 49. The Romney Campaign counters it’s not the number of offices but the effectiveness of the volunteers that matters.