Interesting
article in the NY Times by Adam Nagourney on Democratic GOTV. The article is largely sourced from an interview with Dean. Dean addresses some of the questions people here have had regarding why the GOP 72 hour program is considered superior to overall Democratic GOTV.
But in an interview, Mr. Dean said that Republicans continued to have a clear superiority in identifying voters they can persuade to vote for their candidates and then getting them to cast ballots.
"I think we've closed the gap, but I don't think we are there yet," Mr. Dean said. "It's going to take some time. I think we could match them in 2008, if everything goes right, in voter turnout."
In contrast to the DNC the DCCC, DSCC, labor, MoveOn and other organisations are more confident of their own GOTV efforts. Even the RNC's Mehlman grants that "Democrats are smart, and they have learned from what we are doing,"
If you read between the lines it is clear that the DNC has low expectations (or is lowering expectations) for it's own efforts this year. One interesting thing that Dean talks about is working with the other committees to have a more coordinated program in the future. This is revealing because the DNC had an agreement to work with the other committees on voter databases and targeting in early 2005 but apparently abandoned that agreement by election time this year. Dean talks about 'repairing' the DNC's lists by 2008 but does not explain what the DNC has been doing since 2004 and why they were not prepared for 2006.
The article points out that the AFL-CIO and MoveOn are mounting sophisticated (read micro-targeted) turnout operations. According to news reports the AFL-CIO and other organizations are using the Catalist database. Catalist has been a target of DNC ire in the past, but, unlike the DNC, was apparently able to assemble a usable database in time for 2006.
I think if we build on what labor, MoveOn, the DCCC, the DSCC, and the netroots have been doing we can more than match what the GOP is doing. Programs like Ned Lamont's family, friends and neighbors and MoveOn's call for change, and Catalist show the way. The biggest challenge is getting everyone to share data, especially state parties. The DNC made progress with state parties sharing data through 2004, but it has fallen back under Dean's chairmanship. It also doesn't help that the DNC sees Catalist as a threat instead of an ally and opportunity for Democratic organizations to pool data and target more effectively.