I've been sort of harping on this in my last few diary entries, but it's important, damnit, so I'll go once more. I'm working with ACT in St. Louis and, although Missouri never ever seems to show up on anybody's list of Kerry possibilities, I'm quite certain that it has the potential to be one of those states that surprises everybody and throws a monkey wrench into everybody's electoral math. I laid out the detailed argument for why I believe this
a couple of days ago, but allow me to break down the numbers:
The most recent poll is from SUSA. It is a likely voter poll with Bush 51, Kerry 45, 4 percent undecided, MOE of 3.9. So we've got 4 percent undecided As we know, undecideds tend to break for the challenger, so if we go low and assume that they go 2:1 for Kerry, that changes the numbers to Bush 51, Kerry 47, just on the cusp of the MOE. There's another poll from Mason-Dixon that has Bush 49, Kerry 44 with 7 percent undecided. If we apply the same 2:1 assumption to this poll, we find ourselves with Bush 51, Kerry 48 -- within the 4 point MOE.
And again, these are both LV polls and don't take into consideration the massive new voter registration and GOTV effort that we in ACT and other organizations have been working on all summer. And -- as I'm sure we all remember -- almost every poll showed Bush with a lead going into the final stretch of the 2000 campaign. Long story short, Missouri is a definite possibility for us, which brings me to the actual point of this diary: The state is going to come down to GOTV on the ground, and Missouri needs YOUR help. Yes, YOUR help personally, whether you're in St. Louis or San Diego. YOU.
The ACT operation in St. Louis is in dire need of people to phone-bank over the last days of the election in an effort to identify progressive-supporting voters that we're going to mobilize in just over 10 days (!). We're not doing any persuading efforts, we're simply surveying to find the Kerry voters. You do not need to be in St. Louis to do this! If you have a) a computer b) a printer and c) the ability to make long-distance phone calls, you can be a vital part of the effort to turn Missouri blue. I am dead serious when I say that making one or two hours of phone calls a night for the next few days could be the difference between 11 EV in Bush's column and 11 in ours, and 11 EV could very well be the difference in the election.
To get yourself set up as an out-of-state volunteer, call Lisa Young at 314-724-5347, or email at lyoung@act4victory.org -- and let her know you saw this on Kos, so we can determine if anybody actually read this far. If you happen to be close to St. Louis and you feel like being a Super Hero, come by the office and help us out -- we especially need help over the final weekend and Election Day itself.
10 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes to go, kids. It's game time and every single hour counts.