I haven't had a lot of time to write diaries lately. I've been dedicating as much time as I can keeping my pledge to phone bank for OFA here in Florida. I was doing extremely well keeping my promise until last week when both my husband and I were hit with a bout of the flu. Even so, I managed to make calls from home everyday except Thursday when I just wasn't up to it. I made up for it on Saturday though by spending a solid 6 hours on the phone making 368 calls and having 124 conversations with voters.
A majority of the calls go along the lines of, as one woman said to me, "Don't worry! I'm going to vote. I don't want that maniac to get in." Another recurring theme is "This entire house voted for President Obama at early voting today." This is usually accompanied by phrases like "all six of us" or "all ten of us." I always let out a cheer of happiness and thank the person I'm talking to for supporting President Obama. But then there are the calls when you know you've made a difference. A 67-year-old blind woman told me that she desperately wanted to vote during Early Voting but needed a ride to the polls and assistance in voting. Making sure that her need was passed on to the people in her area that could help her guaranteed one more vote for President Obama. There have also been quite a number of people who weren't aware that they could vote early, and providing them the place, address and times, encouraged them to cast their vote early. Voting early makes a difference!
I woke up this morning feeling like I'm finally over the flu, and so I'm ready to go all in and make as many calls as possible between now and Election Day. We need all the help we can get and I encourage you to volunteer too. Visit your local OFA field office, or if you just can't get out, go to BarackObama.com, hover over the "Get INVOLVED" tab and click Make Calls. The majority of the people you will talk to are supporters of President Obama and may just need some personal encouragement from you to Vote Early! The very few people you will reach who do not support President Obama will tell you so and hang up on you. All you have to do is brush it off, and move on to the next call.
Helping to convince people to get to the polls is important! We can talk about the issues or swoon over a great political ad, but the only thing that is going to matter in the end is who gets the most people to the polls to vote. Early voting started in Florida on Saturday, and on Sunday there was a large "Souls to the Polls" push, but there is still a lot more work to do.
FL Dems beat GOP by 73,000 early votes by Monday, wipes out GOP absentee-vote lead. But....
Perhaps more troubling for Democrats is the trend: The second day of early voting appears to have been smaller than the first. On Saturday, about 300,000 people early voted. On Sunday, that number appears to have dropped to 215,000 -- a 28 percent decline from the day before.
Democratic votes declined 26 percent, Republican votes declined 29 percent while independent voters declined only 18 percent.
That suggests the first day of in-person early voting was so heavy because it was releasing pent-up demand, not because of some great ground game effort by President Obama. Also, yesterday was the only in-person early voting Sunday, when black churches hold their "Souls to the Polls" rallies.
The possible trendline is bad news for Obama because he's trailing in the polls -- including among independents. Assuming the polls are right, a consistently largescale Democratic turnout would counteract any loss of independent support. Also, the percentage lead of registered Democrats over Republicans is down from 5.8 percentage points to 4.5 percentage points in 2008. They still have a raw voter lead of about 536,000.
We've got to get those Early Vote numbers up, Florida! We don't want to wake up next Wednesday morning wondering "What could have been?" Please donate some time to making calls and encouraging voters to avoid the long lines on Election Day by voting early!