U.S. Senate
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(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
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(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
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(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
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(D) A. Gonzalez
(D) George Stern
(R) Sheri Davis
50%↑
40%
30%
State Treasurer
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(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
December 03, 2008 12:48 AM UTC
23 Comments
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So you’re knocking on committed supporters’ doors. Big deal. They’re going to vote for you whether or not you knock.
The key is OUTREACH to NEW supporters, and new groups. And here the Republicans in every state – Colorado included – had their clocks cleaned.
I sat on my porch and watched a Republican candidate check his little voter list, look at me blankly, and walk right by. No effort to engage me whatsoever. (And no, I did not have a sign for his opponent on my lawn.)
Obama and Democratic supporters not only KNOCKED on doors – they were unafraid to have doors slammed in their faces. For every such door, many more were opened by people delighted to be paid attention to – for once.
That we did more then just contact a bunch of Republicans. The only time we bugged them was to try and get low propensity voters to actually get out and vote. Otherwise we were contacting unaffliated voters.
That could have been a little more effective, but to the Democrat’s credit, you were organized a lot sooner then we were.
People like you, Haners.
Very interesting that so many people were contacted, but that it didn’t translate into votes. That leads me to believe that the discussions around here, and nationally, about the future of the ideological GOP are very important. If you knock on well over a half million doors, and make 2.5 million phone calls, but your candidates perform worse than they have in over a decade, then you have a serious message problem.
Dick Wadhams is a hack, and if he gets another term as party Chair, it will be a huge boost for the Democrats.
At any rate, way to focus on the positives. That’s more than I can say for Scott McInnis.
It didn’t translate into votes was the scripts. The contacts were fishing calls mostly, to identify who we needed to contact on election day specifically to turn them out because they were going to vote our way.
If we had spent time convincing voters to vote our way, we might have won over some of the undecided-s. But that was the McCain camp’s direction, not the state party
We were encouraged to say something good about Obama and direct people to the web site, but not to spend much time trying to persuade people. At least they told me not to try persuading people; maybe they thought I’d scare supporters away if I talked too much?
Another primary campaign I worked on this summer gained it’s success on spending time convincing voters. We spent a lot of time on people’s doorsteps, and it was effective.
I wonder why parties frown on this…
because primaries are among people with similar ideological viewpoints. It’s much harder to convince people to cross party lines than to vote for someone who is slightly different (but mostly the same) ideologically as their opponent(s).
And I suppose that’s the purpose of talking to people early on to find out who your supporters are. It’s easy to assume registered Democrats are voting for the Democrat and such, but when the only information you have is “unaffiliated,” somebody needs to actually talk to the person to find out if they’re persuadable or if they should be ignored.
going outside their own party as much as they need to in order to win in their particular situations and according to all kinds of factors that go into their targeting.
The parties focus more on getting out their own partisan vote, talking to unaffiliateds and mixed households.
It also depends on the stage of the election season. Early on there is more effort to persuade but as the clock ticks down it’s all about getting out those you are pretty damn sure will vote for your guys.
For a Dem that means you don’t spend time or literature on a household with three Rs and no Ds or Us two weeks before the election. You only have so much time, volunteers and lit so you want to use them where they’ll do the most good. The county parties aren’t exactly flush with generous funds.
I worked as a volunteer for President-Elect Obama in Arapahoe County and frankly, I never saw any traces that the Republican Party was contacting anybody at any time. The Republican ground game in Arapahoe County, which in 2000 and 2004 was so effective, was invisible this year.
I’m still registered as a Republican at the Clerk’s office but never received any calls and the only contact at the front door was a door hanger put on my door Labor Day weekend. After that there was no contact, even though the other voters in my household are all registered independents which should be a prime target for the Republican Party, plus my precinct and the ones surrounding it where I worked for President-Elect Obama all have Republican registrations of over 40% in each precinct.
On the day before and on election day, the Obama campaign had 60+ volunteers working out of our neighborhood headquarters (there were 22 neighborhood Obama HQ’s in Arapahoe County alone) making calls and canvasing. I canvassed several precincts and never saw any activity by the Republican Party. The other vounteers had the same experience.
I realize the experience I cite is antedotal rather than empirical but it would be very interesting to see what kind of telephonic calls were included in the Republican totals. If they included robo calls, I don’t believe they have much to brag about. Those are the least effective kind of telephonic communication and they are pre-recorded. Those calls aren’t made by volunteers. They’re made by a machine.
I was in Centennial for the final 4 days and knew people out in the field (in Arap, Jeff, Weld and Adams) every day for 3 months who never saw a GOP canvasser and only the very rare piece of lit.
It’s not about just the state party or even the campaign but all of the independent groups as well. It was in the organization on the C3 side that the Dems swamped the GOP this year. I know of one C3 group that knocked on 200,000 doors, that’s just 1 group and they did 1/3rd of the work of the state GOP.
neighborhood HQ where I worked told me that the Republican Party had abandoned its voter turnout efforts in the other metropolitan counties and moved their entire effort into Arapahoe and yet, if that was true, we did not detect any Republican activity in our area on election day.
I have to wonder where these numbers came from and how they were tabulated. Did the Republican Party hand out walking lists and phone lists and then just assumed all those people listed were called or contacted at their doors? I’ve worked in precincts for decades and you can always tell when the other side is around based on door hangers, phone calls and just talking to my neighbors but I couldn’t detect any activity in my precinct or the ones aorund it.
After reading this article, I contacted some of my Republican friends in Larimer County and they confirmed there was no Republican activity in their respective precincts.
It just seems strange that no one on the ground saw or heard of any activity in major Republican counties or counties where both parties must contest the election if they are going to win.
I doubt the validity of the information cited by the Colorado Republican Party.
The Obama campaign would send people out to contact 70 people, and due to various people not being home (or not answering the door/phone), you’d typically contact only about 10 or 20 in any given session, and that’s all you could report.
Maybe the Republicans were reporting the full 70?
In other words, the Republicans had an aspirational goal of contacting 70 people, so they assumed that was actually accomplished even though they may have fallen short.
The documentation was much more concrete then that. We were given sheets to be completed, and the numbers weren’t counted unless they were turned in (I tried reporting numbers that I had, but didn’t have the correct documentation for).
I can testify to the fact that we had volunteers from Utah, Texas, Idaho, and Wyoming who came in for days at a time to help with phone calls and precinct walking. The volunteers were there and they were working.
Keep in mind it isn’t possible to contact everyone. Not even the Obama people could do that!
I’m just wondering how they were reported. Of course as a volunteer you’d report that you knocked on 70 doors and talked to 15 people. But when it’s counted how many you did, to report the numbers up to the campaign, do they use 70 or 15? The Obama campaign always used the smaller number, but I don’t know if everybody does that.
has places to record data, always including whether you made contact or just left lit or a phone message. That information is recorded so, yes, there would be a record reflecting that you did not talk to everyone on your list. Collecting that information is always a focus of canvassing for possible follow up GOTV contact, to recruit more volunteers, to eliminate those who say they are definitely voting for the opponent, etc.
My brother was registered in Adams County Unaffiliated HD34. He rec’d a knock at the door by an Obama volunteer who had a walking list with all the unaffiliated voters in his precinct and asked for him by first name. Very personable friendly volunteer. No republican volunteers knocked at his door. No phone calls either from R’s. The only thing he rec’d from the R’s was direct mail. The republicans were hoping to pick up 3 or 4 seats in the house and stay even in the State Senate. They picked up Bernie’s seat and an open seat HD30. They were really after Judy Solano’s HD31 seat also but she ran a great campaign, worked really hard knocking on doors and had some 527 help. Diane P. was targeted early but her fundraising caused the GOP to turn their efforts toward HD30 (Brighton). The republican, Priola, won that seat with 50.92%. The dems candidate had a primary and only $1,800 in the bank after the primary while his republican opponent had a head start with $20,000. The R’s only focused on seats that were winable and they won a couple. Picking up those two house seats was the only thing the R’s did well. They knew they were going to get blown out of the water by Oct so they focused where they could win. We dems really screwed up in HD30. This should have been a SAFE dem seat.
Let’s not forget that one of the “pick-ups” was really just reclaiming a seat that flipped D after the last election. Stafford’s seat wasn’t a true pickup, more like a reclamation.
made up about 1/2 the difference.
counts as “success” in Republican circles (watching Colorado go blue in the presidential race for only the 2nd time in 44 years, allowing one senate seat and one house seat to flip), then I wish my Republican friends more, even bigger “successes” in the future.
It may also explain why the Republican side is crowing about “victory in Iraq” and saying that the recession is all in our minds.
Or just signs of intense interest/fear of a specific outcome in a specific set of races?
Regardless, unless Wadhams has been on a 64-county campaign of his own, I think the locals deserve more of the credit than he does. In fact, did he really do anything to help with the door-knocking turnout?