A Bigger Midterm Election Turnout

[applegrove]

A Bigger Midterm Election Turnout

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD at the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/15/opinion/a-bigger-midterm-election-turnout.html?smid=re-share&_r=0

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BETTER USE OF DATA Both parties are using sophisticated techniques to identify new voters or those who participated in 2008 and 2012 but are unlikely to vote this year. They are focusing not only on ethnic and socioeconomic groups but also on smaller subgroups like new students at politically active colleges or people from blue-collar neighborhoods who have lost their homes.


MORE PAID WORKERS AND VOLUNTEERS Research has found that broadcast ads and robocalls are far less effective at motivating people to vote than the personal touch: face-to-face, door-to-door reminders that there is an election coming up, in a direct conversation that discusses the high stakes. The Democrats’ turnout effort, known as the Bannock Street Project, is spending $60 million on both technology and carefully trained workers to mobilize individual voters. One technique — based on findings that social pressure is one of the best motivators — asks voters to fill out a reminder card about the election, which the party or a campaign mails back to them shortly before the vote.

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Single women (who have a poor midterm track record) are a particular target, and Democratic groups are making a special effort to remind them about Republican opposition to pay equity, abortion rights, education spending and a higher minimum wage.

BIG REGISTRATION DRIVES Georgia, where a highly competitive Senate race is taking place, has about 900,000 black, Hispanic and Asian residents who are eligible to vote but are unregistered. Getting even a fifth of them to the polls could make a major difference. (Mr. Obama lost the state by 205,000 votes in 2008.) The New Georgia Project, an effort to register hundreds of thousands of minorities, young people and single women, has already put 85,000 new names on the registration lists. This has infuriated Republicans, including the highly partisan secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who has accused the group of fraud and begun a trumped-up investigation.




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