FiveThirtyEight.com should be a part of your daily diet of getting a feel for how things are going in this election, and a nice progressive take on Obama's movement in the polls.
This is the first election I have been old enough to participate in and it seems to be wholly different from the lackluster effort I saw as a young teenager. People are more focused on the ground game, that is doing what is important. Making contacts with voters. I learned in my poli sci classes that a candidate has to make three contacts with every voter in order to secure their vote, which can be done by proxy using a well-organized campaign staffed full of eager volunteers. My clinical shyness and speech impediment may keep me from fully participating physically to this campaign to get Senator Obama elected, but I can do my part by using my keyboard to let people know where they can go to help, and embed video related to the campaign so people can see for themselves why a President Obama is just what this country needs after eight years of George Bush.
An example of that all-important ground game can be found in Nevada, an effort that was profiled on
FiveThirtyEight...
Obama's campaign thinks it has a hell of a left hook here in Nevada. More than 3,500 volunteers have gone through specific precinct captain training, and each of these captains has specific contact and voter registration targets. The volunteer and organizer energy at the Obama offices here in Clark was humming. Searer pointed out that it's unprecedented for a Democratic presidential campaign to open offices in places like Elko, Lyon County and Douglas County. Republicans know they've always held off Democratic Clark County by running up lopsided margins in the smaller rural areas around the state. John Kerry won Clark by 36,430 votes in 2004, and Clark was 66% of the statewide vote. But Bush won Nevada by 21,500 because of the rural county edge.
